I think this is why the "cancel culture" moral panic gets under my skin so much. *So* many of Americans' false understandings of people and events come from the fact that the media was traditionally run by a tiny number of gatekeepers. https://twitter.com/maplecocaine/status/1280526301095497729

The clearest example of this, to me anyway, is the 1996 "Ebonics" controversy. In brief, a school district in Oakland released a statement saying that it was going to recognize the language of its Black students as a valid form of expression.

The district was majority Black. A number of studies had demonstrated that using what we now know as African American English was a more efficient way to teach Standard English. Instead of shaming students, teachers could meet them where they were.

Despite the technique's support in academic research (not to mention that majority-white districts do experimental stuff all the time without controversy), the national media *lost its mind.* Congress hauled teachers and administrators to an emergency hearing to investigate.

Critics completely misrepresented what Oakland was doing and why. The district was going to teach white kids Ebonics! Teachers were giving up on Shakespeare to teach rap lyrics! Kids would be deprived of the English skills they needed for essays and job interviews! Waaaaah.

None of it was true, of course. But it didn't matter. The entire American media apparatus systematically suppressed the more nuanced story of Oakland's decision.

The New York Times ran a full-page ad denouncing the decision. Researchers later discovered that editors had given away the space *for free.*

Meanwhile, when linguists put together an open letter (ahem) stating their support for Oakland and the validity of African-American English, the Times refused to run it.

I spent a lot of time on LexisNexis looking into this. At the time, opinions were divided between "Oakland was bad" and "Oakland was terrible." Defending the decision was completely unthinkable.

There was a finite number of news sources at the time, with a finite number of editors. Most were male and white and straight and cis. If this group of, I don't know, 75 dudes decided an opinion wasn't worth hearing, it wasn't. Like, it *really* wasn't.

We're in a different media environment now with different problems. I don't know if the 'Ebonics' controversy would play out better now, but it would certainly play out differently.

The "cancel culture" moral panic feels like it's a backlash by those 75 dudes who are used to defining the parameters of acceptable opinion. I realize this is an exaggeration, but that feeling is why I have such an emotional reaction to stuff like the Harper's letter.

We're objectively *not* living in a time when free speech is being constricted. Instead of too few gatekeepers, we arguably have none at all. The debates now shouldn't be about who gets to speak — anyone can post anything anywhere — but about which opinions get platformed.

That's what's at the heart of the James Bennett and JK Rowling and "American Dirt" controversies. That's the debate we should be having. That letter, and everyone who signed it, is pretending it doesn't exist.

(If you want an hour-plus of me ranting about the 'Ebonics' controversy, see here) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ebonics-controversy/id1380008439?i=1000465289876

Sorry to go all Soundcloud on you, but I also made a video about this, which has some interesting footage from the Congressional hearing