Professor of Philosophy a the University of Toronto, Mark Kingwell, has written an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail. In it he focuses on the recent Justin Trudeau black-and-brown face scandals, as well as some instances of US comedians getting axed from their jobs for making crude, politically incorrect jokes.
Kingwell criticises the multiple instances wherein the young Trudeau rather extravagantly painted his face (and most of his body) black or brown in order to appear in costume as some person of colour or other. In the piece, Kingwell states that Trudeau's decisions were 'bad, perhaps despicable...'
Personally, I don't care about these scandals. To my mind, they were exercises of poor judgement, but they weren't 'insensitive' or 'racist' let alone 'despicable'. They were imprudent decisions made by a young man who lacked the maturity to see how his actions could be judged. But even that seems to go too far: how could a 29 year-old Trudeau possibly know that his over-the-top, balls-to-the-wall Aladdin costume would cause so much 'hurt' and strife a decade hence? There is a whiggishness to the moral condemnation Kingwell and others have thrown at Trudeau that isn't warranted.
I think Trudeau probably dressed to impress - to go above-and-beyond in a cartoonish fashion and upstage people around him. He did it for attention and to hog the spot light. Retrospectively, he is also a hypocrite, and that is his worst offense, in this case.
Kingwell then ties this to the issue of 'Cancel Culture' - the phenomenon of boycotting someone who expressed questionable, problematic, or unpopular opinions, or has behaved in a way that is perceived to be either offensive or problematic called out on social media is 'canceled'. This is often accompanied by public shaming across social media.
The first instance I recall of this phenomenon was in 2014 when a twenty-three-year-old Asian writer and activist named Suey Park, attempted to start a campaign to get Steven Colbert booted from his show.
The catalyst: a joke...
The joke: a tweet...
“I am willing to show #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever”
This was intended to be a satirical analog to the Washington Redskins' team owner's announcement of the 'Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation' - which was a tepid attempt at trying to appease the public outcry against the team name 'Redskins' which had been deemed offensive and insensitive to North American Indians in the United States.
Park saw Colbert's joke as yet another example of the dominant white male zeitgeist poking fun at the US Asian community and immigrants. The joke went totally over her head. She took it to be callous, and wished to have Colbert punished. Luckily for Colbert, the public wasn't buying it and he was able to maintain his program.
To Kingwell, 'cancel culture' is right-wing code for 'political correctness'. Well, it may or not be right wing code (though I fail to see the 'code' as it seems obvious enough to me) but that in no way delegitimizes the concerns - unless you take 'right wing' to be, in and of itself, delegitimizing. Also, what else is one to call this form of social sanctioning and policing of disapproved speech other than political correctness?
That said, Kingwell provides no argument for why 'cancel culture' is permissible or a desirable mechanism for social policing. He just asserts that those who oppose it are '...just wrong. Wrong. Period'.
Well, consider that settled. QED.
He does follow up with the trope that actions have consequences, and that folks who get mobbed via the cancel culture had it coming.
Some people, lamenting the new vigilance over what public figures say and do, wonder if there is no statute of limitations on bad behaviour. “Sheesh, guys, it was 2001! I was a kid!” In 2001, Justin Trudeau was 29 years old. Shane Gillis was 30 when he recorded the now-infamous podcast. “But I’m a comedian who takes risks.” Again, no. It’s not being overly sensitive or too social-justice warrior or “millennial” to respond: “Sorry, no free pass on that one, now or ever.”
This isn't overly sensitive and social-justice warrior-y, is it? We have our moral essentialism about categories of social groups as conceived via the progressive stack, and we're going to publicly condemn and shame those who transgress the orthodoxy. And if you don't like it. Tough. You are just wrong.
Sure. Nothing SJW about that.
I wonder what kind of consequences Kingwell would suggest happen to Trudeau. After all, those comedians can lose their jobs because of un-PC statements. So, what should happen to Trudeau? Should he step down? Or should he be called out, be allowed to apologise and move forward? If the latter, why isn't that afforded to the others? Perhaps it is because he supports Trudeau's politics, and doesn't much care for the edgy comedy, and so Trudeau can be given more leniency whilst the comedians can be cast to the wind. But that seems totally arbitrary and capricious.
Our liberal traditions of the politics of power requires that the burden of justification of restraint be laid upon the person calling for the restraint. Mob justice doesn't change this, and adding numbers to the mob doesn't justify calls for restraint.
Restriction on speech/expression ought to be limited, and if they are to be enacted, they ought to be exact and clear. For my money, there are three criteria for the warranted restriction of speech/expression.
Restriction on speech is warranted if and only if:
1) The restriction of speech causes less harm than the speech being restricted,
2) The restriction of speech is effective (it targets what it aims to restrict without collateral damage), and;
3) The harm caused by the speech is substantive (degrades form or function) and not mere offense.
I also think that such restrictions have to be intelligible, justifiable or acceptable, in some way, to those upon whom the restrictions are being laid - albeit in some idealised form.
(3) is the main sticking point in our current zeitgeist. There are slogans such as 'Silence is Violence' as well as 'Hate Speech is Violence'. We have this bizarre misinterpretation of speech acts such that certain types of speech is violence and unacceptable, but punching 'Nazis' is permissible or encouraged.
I also think that such restrictions have to be intelligible, justifiable or acceptable, in some way, to those upon whom the restrictions are being laid - albeit in some idealised form.
(3) is the main sticking point in our current zeitgeist. There are slogans such as 'Silence is Violence' as well as 'Hate Speech is Violence'. We have this bizarre misinterpretation of speech acts such that certain types of speech is violence and unacceptable, but punching 'Nazis' is permissible or encouraged.
We need to be able to distinguish between harm and offense - this was an understood distinction that has since been muddied, for various reasons, and now we have idiosyncratic phenomenological responses to words and ideas motivating punishment and censure instead of argument and appeals to public reason.
The lack of clarity regarding the distinction between what is distasteful and what is intolerable is why Kingwell and those who agree with him shouldn't get their way.
