Cancel Culture Here,
There, Everywhere
Jonah Raskin
I
must admit it. I didn’t get the concept of “cancel culture” when I first heard
it, though after a while I did get and realized that in some shape or form it’s
been around for centuries. Right now, cancel culture is having a peak moment.
One
of the most recent targets is Enid Blyton (1897-1968), the popular author of
hundreds of books for children. But the attack on Blyton isn’t exactly new. For
at least two decades, her work has been deemed “homophobic, sexist and racist.”
Indeed, her Black characters are depicted in demeaning ways. In 2019, the Royal
Mint in England canceled plans for Blyton to be honored with a commemorative
coin.
In the past, cancel culture has been even more virulent
than it is today. After every modern revolution, the revolutionaries have often
changed the calendar and the names of cities. Now, cancel culture aims to be
the revolution itself, or something that passes for it. In 1924, shortly after
V. I. Lenin’s death, the Bolsheviks canceled St. Petersburg and replaced it
with Leningrad. Now it’s St. Petersburg again. At times, the Russian city of
Volgograd on the banks of the Volga River has been called Stalingrad. In India,
Bombay is now Mumbai and Benares is mostly referred to as Varanasi. The changes
might make one’s head swim.
In
the mid-1960s I was an advocate for "cancel" culture, though I didn’t
use the phrase. When I was teaching writing and literature at an all-Black
college in the American South I complained publicly about the statues to Confederate
generals like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Southerners replied that
northerners had statues to our generals, including Ulysses S. Grant.
In
the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, demands to remove the statues of
Confederate generals have escalated. That’s understandable. After all, Jackson
and Lee waged war to defend and protect the institution of slavery. Why
honor men who fought to perpetuate genocide?
Now,
close to my home, irate citizens have demanded the removal of the name “Jack
London” from the Square in Oakland. This is not the first time that the call to
cancel his name has been heard. Everytime that it has echoed in the Bay Area,
and across the nation, some of the London faithful have circled their wagons
and insisted that their literary hero was the best of fellows and certainly not
a racist, as critics have claimed.
The
problem is that for about twenty years, London made comments that seem to be
overtly racist. In 1899, for example, he wrote about "the niggers of
Africa,” and insisted that "socialism is devised for the happiness of
certain kindred races." London meant the white race. He added that while
the white race would improve, "the lesser breeds cannot endure."
In
other letters from the same year, London wrote that “The negro [sic] races, the
mongrel races, the slavish races, the unprogressive races, are of bad
blood—that is, of blood which is not qualified to permit them to successfully
survive the selection by which the fittest survive.” He added, “the black has
stopped, just as the monkey has stopped. Never will even the highest anthropoid
apes evolve into man; likewise the negro [sic] into a type of man higher than
any existing.”
London
also wrote novels and stories in which he appears to lash out at people of
color, On at least some level, he seems to want them to vanish from the face of
the earth by any means necessary.
In
the short story, “The Unparalleled Invasion,” (1910) London describes the use
of biological warfare against China that leads to the extermination of almost
all of the Chinese. The few survivors are killed in hand to hand combat. Then
China is colonized by the Western powers and an era of unparalleled artistic
expression follows. That sounds to me like wish fulfillment.
“The
Unparalleled Invasion” was published in a volume titled “The Strength of the
Strong” that also contains the story, “The Dream of Debs.” The narrator, a
wealthy San Franciscan, has supported Eugene Victor Debs’ idea of the General Strike.
Then there’s a real general strike and his servants leave him. The narrator
insists, “The tyranny of organized labor is getting beyond endurance.
Something must be done." Jack London had servants and insisted he needed
them and couldn’t do without them if he was to continue to write and publish.
Was London a supporter of the General Strike? Perhaps. He
belonged to the American Socialist Party for about twenty years, and he admired
Debs, who ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920, when he was in prison
serving a ten-year sentence for violation of the Sedition Act. By 1920 London
was dead and buried. He resigned from the Socialist Party in 1916 in part
because American Socialists were opposed to the entry of the U.S. in World War
I and London wanted to come to the aid of the Brits.
In the current debate about the naming, and the proposed
renaming, of Jack London Square, one London’s biographer suggested that the
name of the Square be changed to one of the stars of the professional
basketball team, Golden State Warriors: either Draymond Green or Steph Curry.
Others have tossed into the ring the names of Black Panther Party co-founder
Bobby Seale, who once ran for mayor of Oakland, and Oakland’s progressive
Congresswoman Barbara Lee.
Some of London’s defenders argue that while he may have made
some inappropriate comments about race in his early days, he mended his ways.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case. In a magazine
story from May 1914 titled “Mexico’s Army and Ours,” London wrote it was the "duty"
of the U. S. to interfere in nations with "millions of mismanaged and
ill-treated subjects." He added that the U.S. was an "enlightened
nation" and should "police, organize, and manage Mexico." In
June 1914 he wrote that Mexico was a nation of “half-breeds” and that Mexicans,
"like the Eurasians, possess all the vices of their various commingled
bloods and none of their virtues."
Some
of London’s racist comments were made in private correspondence with friends.
His views about Mexico, Mexicans and the duty of the U.S. to police and manage
Mexico were made in articles published in Collier’s,
a popular magazine. London made his anti-Mexican comments when the U.S. went to
war against Mexico, and invaded, occupied and administered the port at Veracruz.
The American flag was raised over the city. In that conflict, London took
sides. He advocated war and military conquest. He sided with white people and
the white race and against those he called “half-breeds.”
He
was proud of the fact that he identified with whites. London supporters point
out that he was raised by Virginia Prentiss, an African-American woman who was
once a slave. They say that proves he wasn’t a racist. It proves no such thing.
Before the Civil War, white slave owners in the American South had sex with
Black slaves. White children were nursed and raised by Black women. Jack London
was nursed and raised by Virginia Prentiss, whom he referred to as “mammy.” He
called himself her “white pickaninny.”
This
summer, I received a phone call from the symphony in Santa Rosa, California,
where I lived for many years. The caller explained that the symphony was
considering the commission of a piece of music that would honor the life and
times of Jack London. What did I know about London’s views on race? I explained
as dispassionately as I could that he was a racist.
After
careful deliberation, the symphony decided not to commission the work because
it might be attacked as racist. The Santa Rosa group took the path of least
resistance. That’s understandable. In the U.S., if someone or some work is
deemed racist, the attacks become virulent and unrelenting. Twitter, the social
networking service, makes it possible to spread the word, whether true or not,
rapidly and widely. It’s almost impossible to defend oneself.
Later
this year, a new novel by me will appear in print. Titled Beat Blues it offers several key Black characters. It could be that
I will be attacked simply because I am a white person writing about Blacks. We
shall see. The attacks might blow my book out of the water. The publicity might
lead to sales. But it’s also possible that the book will be totally ignored.
That’s one way to censor.
Jonah
Raskin, former chair of the Communication Studies
Department at Sonoma State University, U.S.A., is the author of fourteen
major books. He has taught English and American literature at the
State University of New York at Stony Brook and for most of the 1970s he
worked as a reporter, a journalist and an editor at University
Review, a monthly magazine of politics and the arts. During the
height of the cultural revolution of the 1970s, he served as the Minister
of Education of the Yippies (the Youth International Party), and
maintained close connections with the Black Panthers, the White Panthers,
the Weatherpeople, and with radical groups in France, England and Mexico. Since
1975 he has lived and worked in northern California – with the exception
of one year as a Fulbright Professor in Belgium where he taught American literature
at the University of Antwerp and the University of Ghent. He serves on the
advisory board of Re-Markings (www.re-markings.com)
and is a regular contributor to the journal.
