A poster on a social media site (yes, again with the “social media” mining) wanted to know why, with today’s “cancel culture,” a song from a famous band had not received untoward attention. The poster had previously shared a meme about the Dr. Seuss Foundation choosing to cease publishing six of his books. I slapped my hand to my forehead, then calmed down, remembering what I’d said to someone: “When you know better, you do better.” And then, I read a New York Times editorial: “Do Liberals Care if Books Disappear?” Face-palm.
In 1982, I was a fully formed adult living with his wife, daughter and dog, in a house in Clarksville Indiana. I had quit a 10-year job and decided to go to college. I enrolled at Indiana University Southeast and took art and English classes. One of the professors was Dr. Richard L. Brengle, who, in one class, discussed a 1955 short story by Flannery O’Connor. Dr. Brengle, who once saw me passing his office door and called me in, saying that he wanted to share something beautiful. In his warm and mellifluous voice, he read to me a James Wright poem: “A Blessing.” On the day he introduced the class to O’Connor’s short story, he began by saying that the language in the story was a product of the era documented in it, and used words that we find repulsive today.
In the story, a man and his grandson travel from rural Georgia to Atlanta, where the boy encounters Black people for the first time. After getting lost in a Black neighborhood, the boy gets separated from his grandfather, and has some adventures. When he is reunited with Mr. Head, they pass a figurine in a yard. Mr. Head comments to his grandson, “They ain’t got enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one.” One of the terms used in the title of the story is the same one used in comedian Dick Gregory’s autobiography, a term that could be considered the third rail of race relations. But Dr. Brengle was careful to make the point that, though Flannery O’Connor’s short story is an important literary achievement, some of the language might be offensive to readers.
I imagine the term “cancel culture” arose from the observations of some who, for instance, object to the removal of monuments to those who went to war against their countrymen to defend their “state’s right” to own human beings, or people who object to a person’s right to define their own pronoun, or perhaps to being challenged about using “boy” as a diminutive when addressing a man. When I was spending time in the bars and poolrooms of Morgan County Indiana, my unusual presence created no pressure on the regulars to temper their language, and I made no demands of them to cancel their casual insults (although generally, the first insult was rarely followed by a second).
People who denigrate transgendered people by calling them “just another bunch of people who don’t know what bathroom to use” (I have heard that statement made) do not want to alter the ways to which they have become accustomed. They do not listen, reflect and concede the point being made by groups who merely want to be treated with dignity and respect. And while I was slow to understand “LGBTQ+,” I did not demand that the people who identify with the terms encapsulated within the letters conform to my thinking about who deserves to be considered human.
Rather than a “cancel culture,” consider that we have entered another “age of enlightenment.”
cjon3acd@att.net