The term “cancel culture” has become one of the phrases of the age. But as with all such terms, it not only encompasses a range of trends, but also conceals them. By focusing on the question of how, where, when and why people are “cancelled” it is easy to pass over the question of what happens next. What — if anything — happens to people once they have been “cancelled”.
A new book by Kevin Myers, Burning Heresies: A Memoir of a Life in Conflict 1979-2020, arrives at an important juncture. For Myers himself was “cancelled” in 2017 over a single sentence of his column in the Irish edition of The Sunday Times. This one clumsily-worded sentence brought accusations of misogyny, anti-Semitism and even “Holocaust denial” down on his head, all of them unfairly and ignorantly levelled, but significant enough in number and volume to see Myers not only sacked from his column but effectively ending his 40-year career in journalism.
I say the book arrives at an important juncture, because every day there is a fresh example of the cancelling phenomenon and every day there is a failure to contend with what people are meant to do once they have been so “unpersonned”, and what attitude the rest of society is meant to take towards them.
Just this week there have been two suggestive examples. First there was the case of of Greg Clarke, chairman of the Football Association — now former chairman of the Football Association, since on Wednesday, Clarke resigned from this position after making what the BBC described as a “remark about black players“. As with all such reports, if you were only to have read the headline you might come away with the impression that Clarke had specifically, deliberately or otherwise reprehensively insulted some black football players for being black.
Indeed the headline could encompass everything from the most appalling racial slurs, to what Clarke in fact did do, which was to use the term “coloured footballers”. The rules of the moment demand that Clarke should have used the term “people of colour” rather than “coloured people” and therefore perhaps should have said “players of colour” rather than “coloured players”. Of course the era has been through this linguistic discussion before, with some people pointing out that if the term “coloured people” is so offensive, what are we to make of the NAACP?
But all these debates are put to one side once somebody is found to have uttered remarks which some people take to be racist. Once again the words are made to transcend the context or purpose with which they are used. On this occasion Clarke was speaking to MPs about diversity and racial abuse directed against black players. Had Clarke been calling for more racial abuse of black players then perhaps his use of a slightly outmoded term would have been suggestive.
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