A brief thread on Colin Kaepernick and cancel culture, in conversation with this Ta-Nehisi Coates oped: nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opi…
I've previously written that Kaepernick's protest was a patriotic defense of core liberties theatlantic.com/politics/archi… And I criticized Trump for bragging about ostensibly costing him his job theatlantic.com/politics/archi… So Coates & I agree on a lot, including calling that "cancellation"
But Coates is wrong when he echoes this ascendant view: "Until recently, cancellation flowed exclusively downward, from the powerful to the powerless." The idea is that the power dynamics are now reversed and that's what really upsets people. But the quoted assertion is wrong.
Defining cancellation as Coates seems to, history is rife with examples of cancellation flowing from the relatively powerless to the very powerful. There are big examples, like the French revolution, and small ones, like women's groups that closed U.S. saloons w/ public shaming
I think he's additionally wrong to treat cancellations in the NFL, an entertainment product, as more rather than less important than cancellations in academia, the institutions society relies upon to seek truth, test ideas, acculturate young people into public discourse, etc.
