Canceling Cancel Culture and Racism

For me… understanding racism is like being at the zoo and looking at a beast through glass. I was lucky. My mom somehow grew up to be someone who didn’t hate anyone for any kind of shallow reason. I didn’t learn anything from my biological father except how that some people are just trashy. Like him.

The stark difference between my mother and father (who weren’t together from as far as I can remember) is like night and day. Mom taught me to be kind, and she worked hard as a single mom in the early 90s, so I was exposed to people of all kinds of backgrounds as a very young child.

The first time I ever heard my father say the word “nigger,” (I hate even typing this word) I was like 5 years old. I remember looking at him, eyes wide, and thinking: “That’s a really really bad word. Daddy should not say that.”

Of course. As a young kid, I didn’t even realize the weight of that word. I just knew it was bad. Racism wasn’t a part of my vocabulary. I had no clue just how bad it was.

Racism is still something I really don’t understand. I mean, I understand the stereotypes, and know the slurs, and have met people of all backgrounds and colors who have left an impression on me whether it be good or bad- because there are distasteful, bad, and not-so-great people everywhere you go, of every background. There’s usually a lot more good though…

I don’t understand hating an entire collective of people for any one reason. I don’t think I’m capable of even fathoming that. To me, the fact that wars, genocides, and decades of violence based on hate because of someone’s color or religion or sexuality or whatever is mind-blowing. When I look at another person, it’s not my first instinct to judge them by what they look like because the most beautiful of souls come in surprising shapes.

I can’t fathom that kind of hate. I know it exists. I’ve seen it, in person, on the news, across social media, and in the world. But I don’t understand it. For me, everyone is connected, we are all one… and hate on that scale bewilders me- and makes my heart and soul heavy.

As an adult, and with the recent years being especially loud, racism has led us to cancel culture. Now I’m going to be honest. I don’t understand cancel culture either. I hate it, and I can’t help but think cancel culture is so counter-productive in the reasons people stand for it that I just want to light something on fire.

Because here’s my thing. What you’re canceling - it’s probably offensive, right? It’s getting canceled because someone stood up and whined loud enough for a lot of people to hear that something has something about it that hurts their feelings. It had racist language, or displayed sexual violence, or had imagery that was clearly a racist idea.

I am here to tell you to get over yourself. In real life, as an adult you're going to be upset about a lot. You are going to see things that you can't just 'cancel.' Erasing it, acting like it doesn't exist by just wiping it out of existence... that doesn't solve ANYTHING. That doesn't help ANYONE. All that does is keep you naive and weak.

If you can't handle being offended, you're not going to get very far in life. Because life can suck, it's ugly, and the reality is that you cannot blind yourself to the harshness of this world. You will stumble around blind. Instead of closing your eyes and covering your ears, you should be weathering the offended feeling and growing thicker skin.

And then you need to be teaching your children to be as offended as you are about the things that you wish didn't exist.

Instead of canceling these things, we need to be using them as prime teaching opportunities.

You wanna know why you’re offended by that book that had a lot of racist stuff incorporated into it? Because racism is offensive. You want to know why you don't want your kids to see that show where that girl got raped by her dad? Because sexual violence is offensive. You don't want to see that show because it talks about genocide and the cruelty other human beings did each other? Yeah. Because that is OFFENSIVE.

You’re RIGHT. It wasn’t. But you wanna know why it’s important you’re offended? Because that shit was real. Because that’s how it really was. These things happen in real life, in history and even still happen today.

People are still racist. People are still sexually victimized by predators. War and hatred are still happening.

ERASING history doesn’t make it go away, or heal the wounds.

Canceling offensive media doesn't erase the problem. It doesn't cancel the problems.

But it does breed ignorance, doesn't it?

Canceling books like To Kill A Mockingbird isn’t going to cancel racism. Because humans don’t learn racism until they are taught it. Some children are taught at home with racist parents. And some kids learn what racism is from their English teacher and by reading books like: "To Kill A Mockingbird."

Listen. I was ignorant to the weight of racism before I read books like this. I thought racism was just a "oh, white and black people don't like each other."

I did not understand racism until I read story books and watched movies that enlightened me to the fact that there was a whole collective of people who were treated like property and livestock until they were freed, and then they were still wrongly murdered and beaten and treated like they were filth.

I did NOT understand that - because I was raised in such a way that I learned all people bleed red, and it was the reflection of their hearts and actions that depicted how I should feel about them. Not their looks.

And we can’t teach our children what racism is and how not to be that way until we have shown them how OFFENSIVE racism is. I am a prime example of that. I did not know what was racism is, and to this day I still cannot quite grasp its concept because I wasn't raised around it.

So I WANT my children to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Let them read those Dr. Suess books. EXPOSE them to the realities of our history. Racism is a huge foundation of our country - America was built on racism. The education system likes to gussy it up during the great migration era as the melting pot country, the most diverse in the world but in REAL history every group hated each other. Centuries of countries warring with each other and all of them taking refuge here? A country built in genocide of indigenous people and slavery?

People. We need to get real. History will repeat itself if it isn’t honestly taught to children. We need to teach them about the realities of slavery, genocide, war, and hatred. And we need to reinforce them with the knowledge that this is not how the world is meant to be.

Ignorance is not bliss. I want my children to be offended. I want to be offended. I am a human. We all need to be reminded every now and then why it’s important. We need to cancel this cancel culture bullshit.

These books, they were real. At the time they were written- the racist and inappropriate language was normal. And I want my children to know that - so that they can be offended by the actions of ALL of our ancestors. So that I can ensure that through my children and my children’s children… I am leaving the world a better place. Because I allowed them to be offended. Because I taught them how NOT to be. How NOT to think.

I want them to be offended and I want them to know exactly what racism reads as, sounds like, acts like- so they can be offended and they never become a part of the problem.

Thank you.

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