Self-Cancellation in the Era of Public Shaming

Over the decade-plus that I've added to this blog, there have been times I self-censored, and times I lobbed bombs. If anything protects me, it's probably the sheer volume of posts. It's difficult even for me to find the 2010-ish posts on shipping car seats to Africa rather than shredding them. But my experience with trying to do that, during a 2 year stint running Retroworks as a Thrift Store / Electronics Recycler, was an early example of public shaming. A woman on my staff stridently refused, saying we'd be putting African children in danger by exposing them to "expired" car seats.

But increasingly I've had some very revealing draft blogs sit unposted, unpublished. I've learned from Facebook and Twitter that no matter how insightful or pithy a thought, that it runs a high risk of being "cancelled" by someone critical of my privilege and race and gender.

Last week I tweeted an image of Chewbacca repairing Hans Solo's starship on Twitter, to cheer the #RightToRepair in Africa. A tweeter was quick to imply that I was comparing Africans to Chewy as an Animal, rather than the series arguably most beloved character.

Over the weekend I drafted a blog here which offered my insights into racism, and the fundamental differences in the way Africans discuss it and the way younger Americans discuss it. Africans all know the history of the slave-trading (winner) tribes. But I feel I have to leave that discussion to Henry Louis Gates or perhaps one of the older (yet to be cancelled) BBC documentaries. 

It just isn't worth it, sometimes, to have a very intellectual discussion, even if it serves the best interest of both the consumer and the environment and the people of the emerging world. If we dare to delve as deeply as Dr. Steven Pinker, someone out there will try to tie us to Jeffrey Epstein. The decades of moral lessons I heard from Bill Cosby are muted. I'm almost too cautious to celebrate my childhood heroes - Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and Ozzy Smith.

What is disturbing is how many "dittoheads" there are who retweet and share cancellation messages. A tweet that is explaining the cultural if not racial structural power over definitions of "waste" and "reuse" needs to be reviewed because the point is being made by white men. White men who have defended Geeks of Color and the Tech Sector in emerging markets for 20 years, but compromised nevertheless.

I have things to say, some I think informative from a point of history, some insightful from the point of view of a Peace Corps volunteer and cross-cultural trainer, some vividly demarking lives like Joseph "Hurricane" Benson, ruined by a white savior complex. But my wife and kids warn me that it's riskier and riskier to speak in public. My sons are afraid to wear African gifted shirts, for fear of falling into a discussion about "cultural appropriation". I still wear mine, for the sake of the tailors and artisans in Africa, whom I'd be thrilled to buy from again. 

Planned Obsolescence and Big Shred dollars are out there, willing to pay bounty for NGOs who hunt the scalps of the secondary market. How long before cancelculture is adapted to be another arrow in their quiver? It's ironic that the "crime" of GPS-tracked trade is based on misrepresentation of nerds in emerging markets. Not only did they make it appear to be an "environmental crime" by replacing photos of valedictorians with slum-dwelling-dropouts, swapping photos of recently imported reuse items and 25 year old units imported to Africa 20 years ago. They successfully appropriated our environmental concern. I expect them to do the same with cultural victimhood/righteousness motifs.

My wife, a Middlebury College Professor, warns me that it's profoundly different today in the culture wars. She's gone completely offline, and forbidden me from sharing anything personal about her history (such as her summers picking grapes in the mountains of southern France, work so hard that she couldn't get up the next morning - an experience we shared when we met. Working next to your grandparents, uncles and cousins in the fields gives one a profound appreciation of those who work "by hand", and an equally profound confusion when reporters press releases conflate "by hand" with exploitation or primitivism). 

Sneaking a post in today in place of the one I wrote about history of slavery one the weekend.