Allies don’t get to hide behind “cancelled.”
Last week a scandal formed around a YouTuber I personally find really insightful and even inspiring in my journey to see the world more clearly. Lindsay Ellis tweeted a comment comparing Raya to The Last Airbender (it should be noted that both works are the product of overwhelmingly white studios) and was called out by some South Asian creators as being overly reductive in the comparison. Twitter lit up over the interaction and thousands of angry white people got involved. She responded by deleting her Twitter and posting a 100 minute video (yes, you read that right) explaining her “cancellation.”
First, I want to get the points I agree with out of the way. One: most of the people declaring Ellis cancelled were in fact white guys with an axe to grind against a pretty liberal creator who has historically not catered to the very online white guy class who dominate YouTube trolling. I doubt very much that these guys had altruistic intentions or cared at all about Asian-Americans feelings around Ellis’ comments. Two: Ellis is right in saying Twitter is a contextless space. I very sincerely doubt her comments were meant in a racist way. In my opinion she was comparing the world building aspect of the animated shows, and not trying to say effectively “All Asian stories are the same.” — which is how some received her tweets.
Moving on from those points where we agree, you may imagine me cracking my knuckles as we dive into why this is another instance of a white presenting woman (Ellis is mixed race and white presenting like me) choosing her feelings over her impact.
“Cancelling” is a co-opted term
Cancelled as a term either comes from a song in the 70s or a movie in the 90s (depending on who you ask) and gained traction as a popular phrase on Black Twitter in the mid-2010’s. Ellis rightfully points out that originally cancelling was a joke term, used for personal preferences more than for meaningful political discourse. However, in the intervening years cancelling became a social power structure used to boycott a particular celebrity or movie or brand based on behavior that was racist, misogynistic or in general caused harm. In a free market economy, boycotts and selective divestment are a type of power for those who’ve historically been powerless. In spaces where the power dynamic is imbalanced, calls for “cancelling” has been a way to exert power on the market when the aggrieved don’t possess the power to produce structural change.
Fast forwarding about five to ten years, “Cancel culture” today has become a meaningless term white conservative culture uses interchangeably with consequences for their actions. Reasonable calls for accountability are regurgitated to the public as calls to “cancel.” Yet except for in truly egregious cases (think Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, etc.), celebrities and public figures aren’t truly being financially harmed by groups questioning their actions in this way. The boogey man in the “cancel culture” narrative is that a well-intentioned person can be cancelled for a minor mistake. This really doesn’t align with reality.
In Lindsay Ellis’ case, the comment comparing Raya and The Last Airbender was inane and overall unimportant to her body of work online. She says she went to sleep not even thinking twice about it and woke up to a torrent of tweets and calls to “cancel Lindsay Ellis.” She rightfully points out that most of those tweets came from white people on Twitter. She fails to point out that had she just prioritized engagement with the original valid criticism, she could have avoided the storm that followed altogether.
No one was concerned with the trolls or even listening to them except for Ellis. Responsible viewers were concerned with Ellis’ ability to engage with her blind spots. If she had chosen to center the reasonable criticism instead of positioning herself as a victim, the only people whose opinions actually mattered in this scenario (ie. the original South Asian creators) could have been heard and the conversation could have been productive.
Ellis is obviously not indifferent to the fact that in Western culture we have historically homogenized and mythicized all Asian people into the modern minority or into a general Asian, obedient monolith. Compressing two Asian-influenced narratives into one story by saying they’re all like Airbender poked at those wounds for some. It does not matter what Ellis intended with her comment, the objective impact was discomfort and pain.
Here I’ll point out that in her video, she does address the racist climate in America that leads to hypervigilance in communities of color… but AGAIN I repeat — couching any concessions of harm in a 100 MINUTE VIDEO is asking those who’ve been hurt to devote more of their time and their resources to your carelessness. It was a throwaway comment. All it needed was clarification and an apology and reasonable aggrieved people would have forgotten about the issue. Throwing a tantrum and deleting her Twitter showed Ellis’ feelings were the most important to her in this conflict.
Accepting responsibility is good, actually
Brene Brown says, “Shame is a tool of the oppressor.” Shame creates within us an inability to act, a fear and an anger that defies reason. I do think that the pile-ons we see on Twitter are most often oriented to the goal of shaming people rather than holding them accountable. But Check Your Privilege recently shared this bell hooks quote and it connected for me why Ellis’ actions didn’t sit right with so many of us:
“Taking accountability isn’t just going through the motions; but it’s fueled by the inner knowing that just as you were able to cause harm, you can still have an effect on present circumstances when you make genuine efforts to repair harm. It has to be genuine action.”
Society has historically protected white female virtue and feelings at all costs. Black and brown people have paid the price for that illusion of infallibility. Lindsay Ellis obviously didn’t rise to this level of harm, but she repeats this pattern of doubling down on innocence. The cost here is that the story becomes about her instead of about the types of Asian stories we’re ingesting in American culture (which could have been a really important conversation).
For someone so able to spot historical context in the course of her literary criticism, it’s baffling to me that she can’t accept her part in repairing harm that’s still going on today. What people wanted was just an acknowledgment of a blind spot and a genuine promise to do better. What they got was a response to the trolls. Ellis’ story became about her ongoing troubles with online harassment instead of a story centering the concerns of Asians engaging with her content. Claiming “cancel culture” makes Ellis the victim and protects her sense of innocence but prevents genuine action.
What many Black and brown activists understand is that insisting on shame is to decrease the chance of genuine action and to reinforce the status quo. The white reply guys that started up this “scandal” are in fact one of the bad guys in this story.
Ellis has to understand that to hide behind the “cancel culture” shield is to align oneself with the toxic whiteness that refuses to see itself as capable of harm. Yes, maybe you didn’t mean to hurt people with your comment. An apology and a willingness to course correct would have sufficed. But once you’ve hidden behind “being cancelled,” you have aligned yourself with those trying to take a powerful tool (the ability to boycott people and ideas) out of the hands of the powerless.
I do have sympathy for Ellis in this. We’ve been taught in white culture that to mess up and say the wrong thing is usually an unforgivable sin. We’ve typically not learned of that “inner knowing” that allows us to become better and grow. We’ve been given heavy doses of shame in the face of anything less than perfection. We’ve been taught that explaining ourselves can be an adequate substitute for admitting fault. All of that and whatever else we don’t know about her personally created a frenzied emotional response she describes in her Mask Off video apology (apology?).
I have sympathy, but I also believe we can all do better at processing through the defensiveness we learned from shame and moving instead toward reconciliation without requiring those we hurt to devote more resources to us. (Resources like 100 minutes of their time!!!!!! — sorry I just cannot get over this). As a rule, if you look up and realize most of the people using your strategy have been on Fox News in the last year, you may be doing something wrong. We have a lot to learn in white womanhood, and one of the most important things is that being criticized is not being cancelled.
