On the "Young BIPOC Bypass Variant" of Cancel Culture & Anti-Elder Sentiment
intersections (and collisions) of age and race
Image Description: Toddler aparna thinking she’s the boss of the pumpkin patch and ignoring her elder because obviously, there’s someone else that needs a sermon from her tiny pulpit.
Disclaimer: This essay is really directed toward BIPOC folks, and though it may be helpful for white folks to understand, I’d urge you all to please not weaponize the term “Young BIPOC Bypass Variant of Culture.” It’s too long and clunky anyway.
Am I afraid I will be “canceled” for writing an essay on cancel culture within young, BIPOC communities? Yes.
I am not the first to write about cancel culture. And I know I won’t be the last.
I want to write about cancel culture because my life has intersected with the concept of cancel culture many times over the last eight years, and each time, I have been barreled over by a wave of big feelings and left with parts of me wondering if what just happened was cancel culture, and if so, who was canceling whom.
I want to write about cancel culture in the hopes that others have had similar wonderings, and maybe even some answers to the questions I have.
I want to write about cancel culture because this concept has haunted me for years, and I’ve been too afraid to write about it because … #canceled.
I want to write about cancel culture because I’m noticing a shift in the last decade plus that I’ve been doing DEIJ work. Historically white dominant nonprofits are becoming more racially diverse, as well as age diverse. And along with this diversity has come a culture of increasing divisiveness, distrust, and … cancel culture.
I want to write about cancel culture specifically within BIPOC movements because I have a biracial son who is so passionate about progressive issues that he sometimes #cancels his own white lineage, history, and identity because of the shame it brings him.
A disclaimer before I dive into what I want to say: the idea of “cancel” or “call-out” culture has its roots in marginalized peoples organizing to hold individuals and organizations with power accountable for behaviors that reinforced the “isms.” My brilliant friend Grace Anderson remarked one day, “what does reciprocity look like across uneven ground?” In the same vein, I suspect that public call-outs were the only way to hold people accountable across uneven ground.
That’s the history. But today, “cancel culture” is generously peppered throughout conversations and I’m often left to wonder: Is this really cancel culture? Or is it someone just trying to hold someone else accountable in the only way they know how? Or, is it just someone’s fragility when they’re being given feedback?
Let’s examine an anonymized excerpt of something I posted publicly on Facebook in February of 2019.
I agree with a lot of what my friends and colleagues have said about [Organization.] I have been sitting back wondering what to say that would be any different, what to say when I see so many of my colleagues of color hurting. I feel responsible in some way, as I could have done something about this when I served on [Organization’s] board and then subsequently worked for [Organization], and specifically for [Executive Director].
You see, the erasure of the intellectual and emotional labor of women of color is not new to [Organization]. I find [Organization’s] latest ploy ironic because when I was there wanting to do intersectional equity work and talk to the industry about bias, I was told in no uncertain terms that the industry wasn’t ready to talk about true intersectional equity. I was told to not use words like “bias” or “culture change” in meetings. More hurtful was that I was told repeatedly and directly, “Aparna, you are not equipped to have conversations with [white] CEOs,” all because I was direct, didn’t manipulate or play games, and was not willing to stay in [Organization’s] lane of talking about cis, white, straight, able-bodied, thin, upper middle class people. After consistent dismissal, belittlement, censorship, tone policing, micromanagement, and whittling away of my integrity, I left my position there. It was death by a thousand cuts, some tiny, and some bigger.
I left and didn’t really say much to many people because I wanted to continue to do the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion with the industry and I was scared. I was scared I’d be badmouthed, blacklisted, or maligned if I made any public statement and didn’t “play nice.” The lawyer in me was afraid too (my “litigadar” was up). And the respectability politics devil kept squeaking in my ear, "stay classy, Aparna." So I didn’t say anything. And I’m sorry to all my mentees, friends, and colleagues who hold marginalized identities. I’m sorry I didn’t say something earlier.
I do this now not because I want anyone to feel sorry for me, but in service of the myriads of people who have been harmed by [Organization] and by oppression generally.
I believe in the mission of [Organization] and I admire the staff whom I worked with there, as well as the board members with whom I served. But there is a serious failure of leadership. It would be a shame if an organization with this much potential and this many resources, and a member base of companies that are dedicated to doing this work in a real way, was sunk by someone who fundamentally does not understand what equity is. I believe that the industry needs new leadership in the realm of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The subsequent month was one of the most painful in my career, with community members coming out of the woodwork to either thank me for putting words to their truth, or to tell me I was “canceling” the ED by posting it on Facebook. Ultimately, the ED left, in part due to my and other folks’ efforts to hold them accountable, and the organization went through a multi-year transformation to become more equitable and inclusive.
So now that you’ve read what I wrote, the question is: was I “canceling” the ED? See, I think of what I posted as public accountability in a time where all other efforts had failed. I had tried one-on-one conversations. I had tried to reach out to board members. I had tried it all, and resorted to a public call-out because it was the only choice I had to show up in solidarity for other folks who were hurting at the time.
My experience is not unique. The co-option of “cancel culture” by white folks as a knee jerk reaction to being given difficult feedback or being held accountable ran rampant in environmental, outdoor, and conservation sector for years after 2019. I noticed that marginalized folks were organizing. They were gaining power as companies and organizations hired more people of color. They were even unionizing (#SierraClub, #DefendersofWildlife)
But just as organizations evolved, so did the concept of “cancel culture.”
Yes, there are still public take downs within social justice movements that come from some activists of color believing there is only one “right way” to be an activist. Yes, there are still social media posts that destroy the livelihoods of people who said one wrong thing, and were not forgiven but rather, demonized. Yes, white folks (particularly right wing white folks) are misusing cancel culture, distorting it to include all attempts to engage in equity and justice. That stuff still happens. But there is also a different, more insidious way in which “cancel culture” is rearing its ugly head. It’s a “cancel culture variant” if you will. I’ll call it that “Young BIPOC Bypass Variant” of cancel culture.
Here’s how the Young BIPOC Bypass variant of cancel culture has manifested for me.
I’m in a BIPOC convening in which I (at 47 years old) am one of the oldest people in the room. I notice that younger person with a marginalized identity says something that unintentionally harms someone else with a different marginalized identity. Nobody speaks up because … because why? (I wonder). Maybe because there is a culture of toxic positivity in the space, and an assumption that we are here to uplift each other and therefore should never bring up hard stuff. Maybe because people are afraid of saying the wrong thing.
So I speak up and compassionately call in the speaker. I let them know I’m on a journey of dismantling my own tendency to use exclusionary terminology. I let them know the impact of the word they used. I suggest we have community agreements around this so we can continue to call each other in compassionately because BIPOC people are not a monolith, and we still have our own work to do in making sure we don’t hurt others with our language. My heart is racing. I fumble my words because I know I’m doing something courageous. But I do it. The speaker does not acknowledge my feedback in the moment, and moves on. But the person on whose behalf I speak up quietly thanks me afterward. Which means I know I did the right thing.
But the mood shifts. How dare I call in someone when we’re in a “safe” space of supporting each other? How dare I bring negative energy into the room? I’m called in to a meeting to discuss what happened when I gave the feedback. In the end, the speaker does not own anything and mentions “cancel culture,” I apologize and own I could have done it differently, cry, and I’m left holding the bag of my own shame.
Days later, I realized what had just happened. I call it the “Young BIPOC Bypass Variant” of cancel culture because I believe one of the cultural hallmarks of progressive movements that keep us from being able to work together toward equity and justice is young peoples’ distrust in elders.
Maurice Mitchell has written at length about several of these cultural hallmarks, such as anti-leadership sentiment and neoliberal identity. The Young BIPOC Bypass Variant of cancel culture lies at the nexus of several of these attributes, as well as another cultural attribute that intersects with all three: anti-elder attitudes.
Anti-elder attitudes manifest in several ways in our movements:
Younger people of color refusing to be accountable for their own behaviors, and using “cancel culture” as a shield to protect themselves from feedback and evade accountability (see my example above).
The institutional amnesia of movements that results in younger activists believing they are doing something for the first time, when in reality activists have done this work for generations.
Paying homage with performative phrases like “we know we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us” or liberally quoting movement elders, without actually inviting or including those people on whose shoulders we are standing.
Refusing to engage with elders because “they have not done their healing work and we’re left to do their healing for them,” which though true and particularly poignant when thinking about our own families of origin, erases the work of people before us in social justice movements.
The idea that “old dogs can’t learn new tricks” and the resulting distrust in older people.
The paradox of a on the one hand, a seamless embrace of intersectional experiences across gender identity and sexual orientation, resulting in the phenomenal queering of young BIPOC movements; but on the other hand, a refusal to engage in the nuances of our intersectional experiences across age.
A reprise in what some people call “oppression Olympics,” in which young Black people feel their experiences of anti-Blackness should be centered based on histories of enslavement and generational trauma, and young Indigenous people feel their experiences of settler colonialism, genocide, and erasure need to be centered, and Latine people feeling they have been erased in the term “BIPOC” (which doesn’t include Latine people), and so on and so forth. I don’t disagree that our movements need to center those whose histories and lived experiences are in proximity to legacies of settler colonialism and enslavement. But the way this plays out within younger BIPOC spaces undermines our solidarity work and divides us.
I can only begin to surmise the root of this phenomenon. Perhaps it is because younger organizers have been operating with the trauma resulting from intersecting crises that include the COVID pandemic, the movement for Black lives, and a recognition that we are in a climate collapse. Maybe it is because the evolution of healing justice movements and visibility of mental health issues has supported younger activists in naming their own pain—whether it’s generational trauma, or current lived experience—and they’re unable to see that they too can contribute to others’ pain.
Whatever the reasons, I sit here at the age of 47, in the liminal space between young activists and movement elders, wondering how we can bridge this deep divide, which seems particularly exacerbated in BIPOC spaces.
The idea of a principled struggle occurs to me as one clear path out of the morass that we find ourselves in. N’Tanya Lee of Left Roots and adrienne maree brown talk about a principled struggle as a struggle we engage in for the sake of building unity and where we actively practice our values; a struggle in which we are honest and direct, compassionate, own our own imperfections and mistakes, take accountability for impacts we have, and embrace criticism and generative conflict.
To me this means that the antidotes to the Young BIPOC Bypass Variant of cancel culture are:
Recognizing that we are all human, neither “good” nor “bad,” fallible in the ways we behave and communicate and that, as Lutze Segu says, “that our behaviors are sometimes trash.”
Understanding the intersections of our intersections, including ways in which we benefit from systems based on our identities in addition to ways in which we have been oppressed.
Practicing difficult conversations across our myriad identities within the “BIPOC” umbrella, including age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and more, and welcoming conflict as generative rather than avoiding it.
Treating feedback from peers of all identities as a gift, rather than dismissing it. In the scenario I described above, a simple “wow, I didn’t think of that and I’m so sorry for the impact my language had” would have been a simple way to diffuse what became a tense situation and move on to the work at hand.
Remembering that systems of oppression hurt all of us, and that the path toward collectively liberating us from oppression means being courageous enough to engage in solidarity work, even if it makes you unpopular.
Inviting and engaging with movement elders, despite their flaws. Because we are all flawed.
In the spirit of learning in public, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Does this resonate for you? Does it feel trite? Does it feel wrong? I’ll try to role model receiving any and all feedback with grace.