Should William Ellsworth Robinson be “cancelled”?
Two important things: I'm not Chinese so take my opinions with a fist of salt. Because the most important question should be how Chinese magicians (and non-magicians) feel about what he did. Secondly, I'll admit I wasn't aware of the issue before reading this (grateful because now I'm informed).
But to weigh in on whether to cancel him or not:-
"Cancel culture" isn't real. At least, not in the way we often think it is.
People (most infamously, pop celebrities) are "cancelled" on a daily basis and yet most of them are still raking in millions. Being cancelled often isn't an end-all-state, instead it's a phase. More aptly, I think of the ''cancel culture'' as the ''call-out culture" because cancelling somebody doesn't really work or even mean much.
Of course, the severity of the effect of being cancelled depends on the offence, which can range from a petty celebrity feud or an ignorant comment made by somebody young, to dicriminating or even criminal acts.
Basically, anybody defending or attacking, having faith in or blaming the ''cancel culture'' is, for the most part, doing all this to something that doesn't exist. The best that comes out of the "cancel culture" is that people are forced to take accountability and the worst that comes out of it is of course the psychological impact that somebody who's "cancelled" has to suffer. Nothing more than that really happens in the long run.
So if cancelling somebody alive and thriving doesn't work, then trying to cancel somebody who isn't alive any more, makes no sense to me. What should be done, in my opinion, is that what he did should be condemned and it should be acknowledged that his actions were directly or potentially harmful, and certainly insensitive.
Simultaneously, in my personal opinion, defending somebody because of the time period they lived in (or their age when they did/said the questionable stuff) is not entirely correct either. People should take accountability for ignorance no matter what their age was at the time and we should recognise why their actions were harmful no matter which period of history they're from. There isn't any shame in being ignorant. There is shame in defending ignorance or refusing to educate oneself.
Obviously if they're dead, there's not much they can do to apologise, nor much we can do to make them take accountablity. So we as a community should educate ourselves about why what he did was wrong, make sure we don't do or encourage the same, and move on.
