Who are the real victims of cancel culture in America?
Are they Colin Kaepernick, Gina Carano, and Bari Weiss? Or are they people we’ve likely never heard of who have a hard time earning a living due to their past?
Of course, it’s the latter. In fact, the group most often victimized by cancel culture is ex-convicts — those who have been incarcerated for their crimes and face diminished economic opportunity as a result.
But Texas is fighting this malignant cancel culture. The Lone Star State reformed its occupational licensing laws this month to prohibit “denying, suspending or revoking a professional or occupational license when deferred adjudication community supervision was successfully completed resulting in a dismissal after a plea of guilt or no contest to certain criminal offenses.”
This action is long overdue. More states should follow Texas’s lead.
The top line is quite simple. If individuals have paid their debt to society, why deny them economic opportunity for the rest of their life? If people can’t find a job, earn a decent living, and take responsibility for their own future, they may engage in destructive behavior. Letting them work is good for the economy. Workers pay taxes, boost revenue, help create capital, put money into the local economy, and sometimes contribute to job creation. It’s better to offer people a means to work than give them government handouts.
While there are other occupational licensing reforms to help formerly incarcerated individuals get jobs (be it delicensing professions, reducing hours of training required, offering apprenticeship pathways, eliminating high school degree requirements for licenses, etc.), moral character clauses are an enduring problem.
Competence and relative confidence of good conduct are what should matter when hiring. Not pieces of paper, skin color, who you know, or past mistakes.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports ) is a political reporter for the New Boston Post in Massachusetts. He is also a freelance writer who has been published in USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other outlets.
