Our allegedly intelligent, enlightened culture has created a belligerent army of so called “woke” people set on lynching anyone and everyone who disagrees with their opinions. This epidemic of call-out culture is very disturbing to Professor Loretta J. Ross, a radical Black feminist who has been doing human rights work for 40 years. Profiled in the New York Times, she tells her students at Smith College: “If you need a trigger warning or a safe space, I urge you to drop this class.” She further clarifies “I think we overuse that word ‘trigger’ when really we mean discomfort. And we should be able to have uncomfortable conversations.”
The New York Times summarized the various
aspects of call out culture:
“Its characteristics include presumption of
guilt (without facts or nuance getting in the way); essentialism (when
criticism of bad behavior becomes criticism of a bad person);
pseudo-intellectualism (proclaiming one’s moral high ground); unforgivability (no apology is good enough);
and, of course, contamination, or guilt by association.”
Ross openly and publicly challenges call-out
culture: “I think you can understand how calling out is toxic. It really does
alienate people, and makes them fearful of speaking up.” She opposes, as just
one example, people being publicly shamed for admitting they once were big fans
of TV’s “The Cosby Show.” And the ever present mistake of sending out a tweet
they were later sorry for: “What I’m
really impatient with is calling people out for something they said when they
were a teenager when they’re now 55. I mean, we all at some point did some unbelievably
stupid stuff as teenagers, right?”
Professor Ross thinks call-out culture actually
cancels out positive learning opportunities, where someone in the wrong may
respectfully be corrected, instead of lynching them on the spot: “I think this
is also related to something I just discovered called doom scrolling. I think
we actually sabotage our own happiness with this unrestrained anger. And I have
to honestly ask: Why are you making
choices to make the world crueller than it needs to be and calling that being
‘woke’?”
In the early 1990s, Professor Ross
accompanied former spokesman for the Aryan Nations Floyd Cochran on a national
atonement tour. “Here’s a guy who had
never done anything but be a Nazi since he was 14 years old, and now he was 35
with no job, no education, no hope. And we helped people like them.”
Professor Ross takes the patient, long-term
approach: “You can’t be responsible for
someone else’s inability to grow. So take comfort in the fact that you offered
a new perspective of information and you did so with love and respect, and then
you walk away. We have a saying in the movement: Some people you can work with
and some people you can work around. But the thing that I want to emphasize is
that the calling-in practice means you
always keep a seat at the table for them if they come back.” Numerous
psychological and sociological studies have come to the same conclusion:
shaming makes people more resistant to change.
Ross confesses her own experiences being
called out:
“I, too, have been called out, usually for
a prejudice I had against someone, or for using insensitive language that
didn’t keep up with rapidly changing conventions. That’s part of everyone’s
learning curve but I still felt hurt, embarrassed and defensive. Fortunately,
patient elders helped me grow through my discomfort and appreciate that
context, intentions and nuances matter. Colleagues helped me understand that I experienced
things through my trauma. There was a difference between what I felt was true
and what were facts. This ain’t easy and it ain’t over — even as an elder now
myself.”
Confession almost always leads to good
and positive outcomes:
“When I worked to deprogram incarcerated
rapists in the 1970s, I told the story of my own sexual assaults. It opened the
floodgates for theirs. They were candid about having raped women, admitted
having done it to men or revealed being raped themselves. As part of our work together,
they formed Prisoners Against Rape, the country’s first anti-sexual assault
program led by men.”
Ross backs the #MeToo movement but
believes they have gone too far:
“I believe #MeToo survivors can more
effectively address sexual abuse without resorting to the punishment and exile
that mirror the prison industrial complex. Nor should we use social media to
rush to judgment in a courtroom composed of clicks. If we do, we run into the
paradox Audre Lorde warned us about when she said that ‘the master’s tools will
never dismantle the master’s house’ …… Every
time somebody disagrees with me it’s not verbal violence. I’m not getting
‘re-raped.”
Ross abhors treating any human being as
disposable and without dignity:
“We can build restorative justice processes
to hold the stories of the accusers and the accused, and work together to
ascertain harm and achieve justice without seeing
anyone as disposable people and violating their human rights or right to due
process. And if feminists were able to listen to convicted rapists in the
1970s, we can seek innovative and restorative methods for accused people today.
That also applies to people fighting white supremacy.”
Ross in rural Tennessee:
“On a mountaintop in rural Tennessee in
1992, a group of women whose partners were in the Ku Klux Klan asked me to
provide anti-racist training to help keep their children out of the group. All
day they called me a “well-spoken colored girl” and inappropriately asked that
I sing Negro spirituals. I naïvely thought at the time that all white people
were way beyond those types of insulting anachronisms.
“Instead of reacting, I responded. I
couldn’t let my hurt feelings sabotage my agenda. I listened to how they joined
the white supremacist movement. I told them how I felt when I was 8 and my best
friend called me “nigger,” the first time I had heard that word. The women and
I made progress. I did not receive reports about further outbreaks of racist
violence from that area for my remaining years monitoring hate groups.”
The harm of call-out and cancel culture:
“These types of experiences cause me to
wonder whether today’s call-out culture unifies or splinters social justice
work, because it’s not advancing us, either with allies or opponents. Similarly
problematic is the ‘cancel culture,’ where people attempt to expunge anyone
with whom they do not perfectly agree, rather than remain focused on those who
profit from discrimination and injustice…..
“Call-outs make people fearful of being
targeted. People avoid meaningful conversations when hyper-vigilant
perfectionists point out apparent mistakes, feeding the cannibalistic maw of the cancel culture. Shaming people
for when they ‘woke up’ presupposes rigid political standards for acceptable
discourse and enlists others to pile on. Sometimes it’s just ruthless hazing.”
The solution: calling-in:
“We can change this culture. Calling-in is
simply a call-out done with love. Some corrections can be made privately.
Others will necessarily be public, but done with respect. It is not tone
policing, protecting white fragility or covering up abuse. It helps avoid the weaponization of suffering that
prevents constructive healing.
“Calling-in engages in debates with words
and actions of healing and restoration, and without the self-indulgence of
drama. And we can make productive choices about the terms of the debate:
Conflicts about coalition-building, supporting candidates or policies are a
routine and desirable feature of a pluralistic democracy.
“You may never meet a member of the Klan or
actively teach incarcerated people, but everyone can sit down with people they
don’t agree with to work toward solutions to common problems.
“In 2017, as a college professor in
Massachusetts, I accidentally misgendered a student of mine during a lecture. I
froze in shame, expecting to be blasted. Instead, my student said, ‘That’s all
right; I misgender myself sometimes.’ We need
more of this kind of grace.”
Sources
What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/style/loretta-ross-smith-college-cancel-culture.html
I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out
Culture Is Toxic https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/17/opinion/sunday/cancel-culture-call-out.html
Photo:
https://www.propergaanda.com/call-out-culture-is-it-doing-any-good/
Bill Maher, Megyn Kelly and 9 Politically
Correct Lunacies https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2020/03/bill-maher-megyn-kelly-and-9.html
The Harmful Effects of Today’s University
Thought Police https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/12/the-harmful-effects-of-todays.html
Top 5 Examples of Extreme Political
Correctness https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/12/top-5-examples-of-politically-correct.html
The Dark Psychology of Social Media
Manipulation https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2019/12/the-dark-psychology-of-social-media.html
16
Quick Tips To Enhance Clarity Of Thought https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2019/05/16-quick-tips-to-enhance-clarity-of.html
30 Prying and Probing Questions To Bolster
Critical Thinking http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2016/10/30-prying-and-probing-questions-to.html
17 Simple Ways To Spot Fake News:
Instructions For The Left and The Right
http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/04/17-simple-ways-to-spot-fake-news.html
9 Sly Ways Charismatic Leaders Manipulate
The Unsuspecting https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2019/10/9-sly-ways-charismatic-leaders.html
How MSNBC and Fox Use Outrage To Dupe The
Masses https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2019/06/how-msnbc-and-fox-use-outrage-to-dupe.html
Inside The Sensitive, Disillusioned,
Bewildered Heart Of Conspiracy Theorists https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2019/05/exposing-sensitive-disillusioned.html
How Puppet Master Trump Manipulates and
Controls the Left https://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/11/how-puppet-master-trump-manipulates-and.html
Pitchforks & Torches: 9 Excesses of the
#MeToo Movement http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/05/pitchforks-torches-9-excesses-of-metoo.html
9 Basic Ways We Fool Ourselves Into
Believing Things That Aren’t True http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2018/04/9-basic-ways-we-fool-ourselves-into.html
Coming Clean: 10 Candid Media
Confessions http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/11/coming-clean-10-candid-media-confessions.html
9 MORE Common Characteristics of People Who
Get Duped http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/08/9-more-common-characteristics-of-people.html
10 Common Characteristics of People Who Get
Duped http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/08/10-common-characteristics-of-people-who.html
Unhinged: The Left Now As Paranoid As The Right http://www.mybestbuddymedia.com/2017/07/unhinged-left-now-as-paranoid-as-right.html
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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