What We Can Learn About Cancel Culture from The Mahjong Line Controversy

The Mahjong Line — a company that produces tiles for mahjong, a tile game with major Chinese cultural and historical significance — was recently “canceled” by thousands of social media users for cultural appropriation. The company, which was founded by three white women, used explicitly colonist language in their website copy, such as describing their vision of the game as “modernized” and “refreshed” and describing their company as “for jaunty gals playing this civilized game with a wink.” The origin story written on the company’s website describes the founders “spotting a trend,” which reads like coded language meaning that they saw an opportunity to make the Chinese game more palatable to an upper-class white audience.

After days of social media outrage, the words “modernize” and “refresh” were deleted from the website and the co-founders issued a so-called apology. “Having thousands of online strangers hurl abusive, profane language at you and threaten your physical safety is daunting, especially for a tiny start-up,” they wrote. “Social media and national news outlets quickly amplified the rhetoric and generally did not address the long history of change within the game nor the current marketplace. The social media mob mentality is dangerous and not conducive to dialogue and learning.”

I’m still angry about The Mahjong Line’s response and I’m not sorry. It was clear to me that no matter how much The Mahjong Line’s creators genuinely admire the game, they want to whitewash a Chinese game, and double down on that defense in their apology. “It became obvious that many are not aware of the existence of American Mahjong as an established game, one that has been celebrated in the U.S. for over 100 years,” they wrote, before elaborating on the changes they’ve made to the game. In doing so, the company’s founders clearly do not realize that these distinct changes are precisely acts of whitewashing, that the familiar symbols they add — coins, dragons, and jokers — make the game more palatable to a white audience.

I had never heard of The Mahjong Line before it was canceled, and only learned about it through my Asian American circles (I’m a first generation Chinese American) solely because it was canceled. I didn’t have thoughts about the company before I saw the firestorm of critique, but empathized with Asian Americans who critiqued the site and its creators. In those three white women, so many Asian Americans saw the ignorance of mainstream white America — of people who have no interest or awareness in learning the nuances of Asian history and culture.

I can also empathize with the three white women creators, as I am a human, and one who is sensitive to criticism from others. Cancel culture can be tough, especially when you’re at the center of it, but these founders’ blind self-defense misses an opportunity to productively confront how they’re living out the values of equality and equity.

Ultimately, when we decide to cancel something or someone, we have to consider how to make that cancellation productive — namely, how to ask for changes. I asked myself that question in regards to The Mahjong Line, and decided to ask them to remove the word “civilized” from the copy and to hire a culturally sensitive copy editor and to donate profits to Asian American community groups in Texas, especially funding for ethnic studies at schools in the area.

One of the founders took my suggestion and removed the word “civilized” from their website copy. For that, I’m thankful. I know these founders may never understand my experiences as a Chinese American in the same way that I will probably never understand anyone who would buy a $450 mahjong set.

But hopefully, in the future, I won’t have to reach out to businesses like this one. Hopefully, in the future, these brands will do the research themselves. The Mahjong Line has shown they are socially aware enough to stop posting promotional ads on their Instagram account after the shootings of six Asian women in Atlanta, so I believe they have the capacity to come up with ways to meaningfully give back to the community from which they are appropriating their products.