This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Solvable. I'm Ronald Young Jr.

The way cancellation makes it seem like one person is responsible for an entire system of behavior.

We never get at the system. And it allows us to be off the hook that we are all participating in the same systems.

You may have heard the term cancel culture, a few or many, many times before.

According to Urban Dictionary, cancel culture

is defined as a modern internet phenomenon where a person is ejected from influence or fame

due to questionable actions. It seemed by some as a way to hold public figures with power

accountable for their actions, while others see it as the new mob mentality.

But people have been canceling other people through the ages. Think back to the 1950s with

Senator Joseph McCarthy blacklisting folks he deemed un-American, and even further back to the

Salem Witch Trials. These days, comedians, politicians, authors, and actors have been

canceled for unacceptable and problematic behavior, such as racist tweets, inappropriate comments,

jokes, allegations of sexual misconduct or violence, transphobic and homophobic opinions,

and more. While the reasons for canceling vary, the quick and indignant anger and the mob's desire for swift action hasn't changed.

But is it right to cancel people?

Actually, we don't want to cancel people.

We want to cancel ways of thinking.

Adrian Marie Brown is the author of We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice.

The culture of disposability is a solvable problem.

Adrian, you first made your thoughts public on cancel culture through a post on your website, and that post was entitled, Unthinkable Thoughts, Call Out Culture in the Age of COVID-19.

What made you decide to write that then?

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