Can You Apologize Your Way Out of Cancellation?

What are the best examples of people saying "fuck off" when they find themselves to be the target of a cancellation? Dave Chappelle comes to mind, he genuinely doesn't seem to care whether his stuff is offensive. JK Rowling is another example. Both of these stand out though because they're already fabulously wealthy.

Jonathan Chait has an extensive new article on recent cancellations. I wanted to highlight Intercept journalist Lee Fang's situation though:

A few days later, Fang recorded several interviews with participants in a Black Lives Matter rally in Oakland. One of his interview subjects, a young African-American Black Lives Matter supporter, told Fang he wished the movement devoted more attention to non-police violence faced by minorities in his community. Fang posted the exchange without comment, other than labeling it a "measured critique."

It is easy to understand why somebody — especially one predisposed against Fang — would view this comment with suspicion. Bringing up crime in black communities to deflect away from systemic racism is a conservative trope so familiar and clichéd it is often summarized with the mocking shorthand "what about black-on-black crime?" And the simplistic comparison of deaths at the hands of white police versus minorities fails to acknowledge both the broader patterns of mistreatment by police that falls short of outright murder, and the fear this creates, so that a single police murder can terrorize thousands and shape their view of the state in a way that a local murder cannot.

Fang's interview subject probably lacks familiarity with the history of this issue being used as an excuse for racism, and almost surely didn't realize the cruel resonance of the phrase "black-on-black crime." Still, he was not arguing for focusing on violent crime as an alternative to demanding reform, but as an addition to the agenda of a movement he supports. ("It's stuff like that I want to be in the mix.")

Read more generously, his comment expresses a not-uncommon concern within the black community, where police abuse and neglect are often two sides of the same coin. White law enforcement has a long tradition of ignoring black crime victims as an expression of discounting the value of black lives. In "Worse Than Slavery," a history of the Mississippi criminal justice system being used to functionally re-enslave African-Americans after the Civil War, David Oshinsky wrote, "because the great bulk of this crime was black on black, the Negro community suffered most of all. As one white man noted: 'We have very little crime. Of course, Negroes knife each other … but there is little real crime. I mean Negroes against whites or whites against each other.'"

It seems likely that the man Fang interviewed simply wanted the movement to address an issue that has understandable importance in his life, without abandoning its core commitment to confronting racism, and that Fang posted the interview because he found it provocative and interesting.

But the interview became the match on the kindling. Lacy called him racist in a pair of tweets, the first of which alone received more than 30,000 likes and 5,000 retweets.

A journalist friend of Fang's told me he felt his career was in jeopardy, having been tried and convicted in a court of his peers. He was losing sleep for days and unsure how to respond. "All of us were trying to protect his job and clear his name and also not bow to a mob informed by an attitude that views that you disagree with are tantamount to workplace harassment."

The outcome of this confrontation was swift and one-sided: Two days later, Fang was forced to post a lengthy apology.

I'm not terribly familiar with Lee Fang's work, but if he's working at the Intercept, it seems bizarre that Glenn Greenwald of all people would acquiesce to a Twitter mob agitating for the firing of an Asian journalist. I understand Fang is operating out of place of fear, but I still feel physical revulsion and disappointment to see his reaction.

It's certainly possible that what I'm about to say is borne out of the same baseless braggadocio as "If he wasn't holding me back I totally would kick your ass". But seeing Fang's situation, it strikes me that the obvious course of action is to ignore it and just reply with "Just because I interview someone doesn't mean I endorse their views. If you have objections to that viewpoint, please direct it to the person who actually said it." The groveling does not seem to please anybody. You out yourself as a pushover and therefore an attractive target for the future.