What it’s really like to be canceled — and how I overcame it

Kevin Hart, Megyn Kelly, Joe Rogan, Kanye West and other celebrities have all faced cancel culture — a merciless, social media backlash targeting their comments and beliefs, which seeks to remove them from society. 

But this social firing squad isn’t just for the elite. In fact, most cancel culture victims are young, voiceless, financially vulnerable or don’t have a major platform on which to defend themselves. 

Last year, I became one of those victims. 

In the summer of 2020, when defunding the police became a popular refrain and white supremacy was considered the greatest threat to the West, I wrote an essay sharing my experiences with racism growing up as a young Sikh boy in a majority-white area in British Columbia, Canada. However, I also argued that making broad racial generalizations and stripping minorities of human agency and self-determination does not lead to racial progress — it does the precise opposite.