Cancel culture needs to be dismantled. Why would you want to cancel someone when you have an opportunity to turn them into an ally instead by sharing a different perspective? Would you really rather expose and humiliate someone than teach them a better way of thinking and being?

There has to be something more productive than cancel culture, and trust me, there is. Cancel culture is basically you thinking you’re providing the karma for someone’s mistake by tearing them down completely. This is an ego game. It’s destructive. It’s cruel. It’s wrong.

Before you take this the wrong way, let me be clear. This doesn’t apply to murderers, rapists, pedophiles, or abusers. Those people don’t need to be canceled. They need to be locked up.

I’m talking about people who made insensitive statements that seemed, but didn’t intend to be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. Don’t cancel them. Instead, help them understand why they were wrong. Unless they’re a complete sociopath, if you teach them better, they’ll do better.

Not every flirtatious man is a potential rapist. Not everyone who says “all lives matter” is racist. Not everyone who voted for Trump is an evil xenophobe. And if you try to cancel them abruptly, the message you are sending to others isn’t: you need to change. It’s: STAY SILENT.

We’ll never know what they really think, and we’ll lose the opportunity to engage with them. Meaningful conversations won’t happen if hypervigilant tattle-tales police people on social media. Some corrections can be made privately. Others can be done publicly, but respectfully.

Many politicians—yes, even those on the left—used to vote against same-sex marriage. They weren’t canceled. Instead, they were taught better. They were educated. They were encouraged to listen to firsthand accounts from LGBTQ people that were powerful enough to sway them.

Some people take immense pleasure in pointing out that someone else is wrong—and that because they are wrong, they need to suffer, and their careers need to end. Come on. If I were a public figure, I’d probably be canceled right now for something dumb I did 10 years ago.

If someone dug deep enough into your past, would your record be spotless? Are you perfect? Making mistakes is human. If we spend our time digging and trying to expose every single person for something offensive they said or did, we’d have no one left.

Let’s stop canceling people. Let’s stop using their pasts & words against them. Let’s focus on making progress instead—both singularly and collectively. Conflict and disagreements should be embraced, not discouraged. The only thing we need to cancel is cancel culture.