The Obamas keep attacking “cancel culture” because they are scared of being held accountable
[Extended version: Original post with the Black Youth Project]
A few days ago, my feed, TL and story were covered with the Obama Foundation Summit in Chicago. Michelle went viral for saying that being a good person is the best way to show racists the error of their ways. Meanwhile, Barack lectured young people that activism is not the same as posting online, and specifically not what many refer to as “cancel culture.”
I was shocked at how many Black people agree with the former president and first lady, mainly because these same people also claim to support the broader movement for Black lives. One good friend pointed out her experiences with people who gaslight and bully others towards agreeing with their holier-than-thou political perspectives. She would later point out a celebrity who many cancelled, but then came back with new insights on racial politics and a renewed commitment to grassroots causes. I want to revisit our hesitations about online participation and so-called “cancel culture” in the interest of empowering our people at the grassroots and uniting us around our liberation.
I’ve always been curious about who defines movements, where the hard lines are drawn, and where we separate enemies from allies in our fight for freedom. And as much as some of us can recognize that the root of this self-hate are white supremacist and patriarchal systems of domination, we can just as easily miss the ways our problematic fave’s are feeding us water from the same poisonous well. Scholarly research from Robin Kelley and organizers around the world similarly talk about everyday acts of resistance — as small as feet dragging at work and refusing to comply with an abusive supervisor — being central to overcoming domination.
As far as twitter fingers are concerned, the evidence strongly if not overwhelmingly agrees that online participation is at the center of multiple political uprisings — from the Arab Spring to #BlackLivesMatter to #HallwayHarry to #PermitPatty to Starbucks to so many others we’ve identified because somebody put it on the internet. Look at it this way: the current president built an entire political career and is continuing to stoke violence on the radical right largely because of the internet. In fact, one of the biggest factors that undermined Obama was the birther conspiracy that the current occupant started. It matters.
As for “cancel culture”, this false label is another symptom of a poisonous well. Abusive behaviors are wrong on every level — but they’re not what inspires cancelling. Cancelling is about accountability — it’s about challenging and building politics around a culture that speaks up in the face of harm. Does this mean that you’re always right when you speak up? No. Accountability is a two way street, so if someone is always pointing the finger at others and never reflecting on self then they absolutely have a problem that they need to work out — that’s not an issue of culture, that’s an issue of self-care. What we call “cancel culture” right now is the same as culture of poverty arguments that disproportionately target the political and radical left. People who levy these types of criticisms are undermining healthy community practices of transparency and vulnerability. These are the Obama’s.
Michelle has told us to go high in the past, and most recently to just be a good human. And I appreciate these perspectives within loving communities and not, as Son of Baldwin says, towards those who align themselves with “oppression, denial of my humanity and right to exist.” Misguided as she may be, Barack is the one who decided that judgmental and woke people will never accomplish change because they’re misinformed about what activism is really about. The audacity of a man who pump faked support for Palestine; who started his political career supporting LGBTQIA+ people, then stopped, then started supporting marriage equality; who campaigned on change we can believe in and claims DACA as a triumph while having deported more people than every other administration and laid the foundations for what we see in ICE today — this man wants to define activism? Hard pass.
As Howard Bryant (@hbryant42) shared on twitter: “It always feels like Obama’s admonishments are more pronounced, spirited for the people who supported him than the ones directed at those who undermined him when he was in office and try to undo his policies now that he’s not.” A similar point was made by Cathy Cohen and the Black Youth Project, who in 2013 were forced to petition the then president to get him to address gun violence in Chicago — exactly where these recent comments were made. That’s the thing about the Obama’s: they’ll show up to deliver pound-cakes of respectability politics, and then blame organizers and activists for letting people in power like them ignore the direction and spirit of the movement. The Obama’s teach us that “cancel culture” is an excuse for people who won’t state plainly that they refuse to be held accountable to nor establish solidarity with those of us who fight to end oppression and fight for justice.
The Obama’s embody the elitism in the “cancel culture” conversation — those whose desperation for hierarchy ends in telling people “you can’t teach me, heal me, or help me — whether I hurt you or not.” Nevertheless, we shouldn’t be accountable to nor establish solidarity with abusive people. We must also support survivors of the many abuses and oppressions that plague our lives, homes, nation, and world. Among the many things we must do to support survivors is listen to them, stand in solidarity with them, and be accountable for our words and deeds. However, categorizing groups of people under a banner of cancel culture contradicts our ability to listen to the needs and grievances of vulnerable people. Get over the idea that you’re not doing enough; your participation has been felt. We don’t need your criticism, we need you to embrace the community as you learn how powerful you really are. So even when it’s Michelle telling you to be nice and Barack telling you to be quiet — it doesn’t matter: never co-sign people who take away your righteous power. Those people have much to be accountable for, and that accountability-culture sometimes does start with a cancel.