In this day and age, the dichotomy of freedom and bondage are no longer on opposite sides of the spectrum anymore. When we further examine the two, we uncover the fact that there’s a very thin line between freedom and confinement. One thing is for certain, we are not the ones who’ve constructed these boundaries and regulations. This past week, we’ve seen Nick Cannon lose his television show over some controversial comments he had made. Although the interpretation of Cannon’s comments can be up for debate, we should dissect the situation as a whole. Cannon’s autonomy over his show was completely out of his possession because of his dependence to those above him. His termination was done rather rapidly and I personally do not believe the repercussions of his comments were necessarily fair, but to my own evaluation of the situation, it makes me reconsider the system as a whole. Cannon has expressed remorse over the situation, but there is still no solace in the fact that he no longer has his show. Understanding the current political climate of America right now, there’s a plethora of issues we should be concerned about, yet Cannon’s show is where we’ve brought our attention towards.
For one, Breonna Taylor’s murderers are still roaming America’s streets with zero penalties or restrictions. The officers involved in the death of George Floyd have been bailed from the crimes. The United States still hasn’t progressed in containing the Coronavirus and the leader of this country is still referring to it as the “China Virus”. Nonetheless, we’ve been given an abundance of distractions followed by an even larger series of distractions. In this current age, we should ponder and reflect over what is deemed to be “acceptable”. There’s a lot of unjustified things that we let slide and this is predicated on norms that we have not established. It’s easy to follow what is trending. It’s easy to follow what our intuition craves in terms of substances whose sole purpose is to distract us from what really matters. But we shouldn’t fall victim to tolerating the given because what we’ve been given is not enough! Complacency is the arch-nemesis to growth and we can’t be complacent or live passively, especially in times like these.
The world is not in its best condition right now and we cannot forget that. We have not healed in a multitude of areas and we can’t lose sight of what it is we genuinely need to address. Who is offered liberation in this country? Who is given a fair chance in the criminal justice system? Who controls the media? Above all else, we should be at least in control of our own attention spans to grasp what it is that needs to be altered. Reverting back to Nick Cannon’s business, why are we concerned of whether or not he should be “cancelled” for making his initial comments or apologizing for making those remarks? Why are we more alarmed by the need for his cancellation and not the fact that it took less time for his show to be cancelled than it did for Breonna Taylor’s murderers to be brought to justice? It took less time for him to lose basically everything and he didn’t break down a young woman’s door and murder her. But so much energy has been into whether or not he should be cancelled. In 2020, what is it that really matters?
