Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has revealed what she thinks about cancel culture.
While speaking during an interview on Newsnight to celebrate Half of a Yellow Sun winning the title of best Women’s Prize for Fiction, Chimamanda was asked about cancel culture.
She replied: “I generally just feel very weary of it. In general, I think that the response to bad speech is more speech and that can feel a bit clichéd but really I believe that, which is to say, if somebody says something one doesn’t like, I think that the response is to say more about why we don’t like it.
“The problem with cancelling people, sometimes for the smallest things, I think it then makes censorship become a thing that we do to ourselves.
“I often wonder how many people are not saying what they think because they’re terrified. And if that’s happening, how much are we not learning? How much are we not growing?
“And most of all, this assumption that one is supposed to know it all. Because sometimes, in certain circles in the US in particular, even asking a question can get you cancelled. And there’s something about it also that I just find incredibly lacking in basic compassion.
Watch the video below.
