Call out culture… is often weaponized against those it can actually harm (marginalized folks, for example) with little regard for the real life impacts it may have on that person. Do we need to treat every offense as a ‘five-alarm fire’ or we fueling ourselves with righteous indignation and perpetuating further harm? Does it help us reach our collective goals or does it further divide us and impede progress?
Calling in… Is something to be practiced and approached with love. Calling in has the ability to help us reach our collective goals, further our fight for liberation, and find the best parts of ourselves and others. Calling in considers the very real humans on both ‘sides’ with aims to unite instead of divide.
What is the purpose of a call out?
Call outs are the utilization of the tools we have: our voice, our experience, our courage, our resolve, and our anger.
In Calling In, Ross states that call outs are most effective when they:
• Target people beyond our reach and
• When public scrutiny is a strategic weapon we deploy against the ‘unreachably powerful’.
Ross goes on to state that criticizing such people is an important tactic for democratizing justice when appeals to democratic institutions appear futile. Ross also outlines how similar justified uses of call outs include:
• When serious harm or wrongs have been committed.
• When confronting a major power disparity.
• When other means of recourse have failed or are inaccessible.
• When doing so will prevent others from experiencing similar future harms.
• When doing so will help others who’ve suffered similar past harms come forward.
• When the individual or institution has a pattern of failing to address wrongs.
• When trust and good faith have already been exhausted.
Where do call outs go wrong?
In Calling In, Ross explains a variety of ways in which call outs are misused or abused. She outlines how critique has evolved to become a public performance in which we react angrily to one another instead of debating or discussing critical issues. Call out culture has enabled us to strive to been seen taking a stand vs. actually taking a stand. Ross states that it is easier to build outrage and lean into cruelty rather than building a society focused on healing with one another.
Ross outlines for us the ways in which she has seen call outs become destructive vs. constructive:
• When calling out becomes a way of asserting ego or power
• When the harm caused by said call out outweighs the harm of the original wrong
• When call outs create an environment where people are reluctant to engage or get involved.
I can see what Ross means when she calls them ‘addictive’. We often enjoy watching strangers online be picked apart and cherry-pick information that affirms our desire to label them as ‘bad’ or ‘problematic’.
Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data that may contradict that position.
In Calling In, we’re warned against abusing call outs or participating in call out culture as it often does not help us achieve our goals. Instead, we risk hampering efforts at reaching healing and accountability and fuel our ‘opposition’ by airing out our dirty laundry.
Further, we create an environment in which all parties are afraid of upsetting one another. In failing to separate actual threats from mistakes, errors, or lack of knowledge we alienate potential allies and begin interpreting everything as intentional harm. We begin treating one another as ‘competitors for justice’ vs. uniting for a common goal.
What is a call in?
A call in is an act that aims to connect with another vs. shouting them down. It enables us to view others as humans and to build bridges instead of burning them out. Ross refers to call ins as an act of love.
A call in starts by first seeking out what you have in common with the other party. It discourages us from requiring perfection (a tenant of white supremacy) and instead encourages us to bring people in with the understanding that most of our daily conflicts aren’t with people who are our enemies.
Call ins create an environment that allows people to admit their mistakes and do better. They provide us with room to grow. Call-ins:
• Start with the self
• Calibrate the conflict
• Approach with love
• Accept the reaction
• Reach a resolution
Call ins avoid the assumption that the damage has been done and nothing can fix it.
How do we find common ground?
Ross outlines for us that we are mistaken in believing that only perfectly ideological movements are effective. In our pursuit of a perfect ideology in which we sacrifice a good outcome for perfect results, we seek to create ‘political clones’ vs. independent, critical thinkers.
Instead of focusing on that 10% we don’t agree on, we acknowledge that we can still work together to become strategically unified. To do so, we can learn the value of a transitional demand.
Transitional Demand: A partial realization of your true aim (the optimal demand).
Transitional demands do the following:
• Move the needle toward radical goals in order to achieve fundamental changes.
• Acknowledge that ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking often offers no road maps for progress.
• Create ways to practice nonviolent social change.
Calling In Techniques
1) Start with the self. Give yourself space to breathe and check in with yourself to determine if you’re ready to call that person in. If you’re acting from anger, frustration, stress, or exhaustion? You’re likely not ready to call someone in (or out).
2) Calibrate the conflict. If the situation allows, Ross advises us to ask yourself the following questions:
• Have I or someone else been wronged in this situation?
• Have I been wronged intentionally?
• Am I certain that it was intentional and not a result of ignorance or miscommunication?
3) Lead with love. Invite the other person to think about what they’re saying, thinking, and presenting. Reassure them that you are open to mutual growth through an invitation for communication. Examples include:
• “Can I revisit something you said? It came across as X and I’m sure you didn’t mean it that way.”
• “I don’t understand what you mean, but I would like to.”
• “When you used that word, I heard it differently. Can we talk about what it means?”
4) Accept the reaction. Understand that while we know we are trying to be kind and understanding, the other person may not understand that. We accept that it is normal for that person to experience a fight-or-flight moment and they may not know if you’re prepared to attack. We also acknowledge that we don’t need full agreement on anything. Ross refers to this as persuading people to be with us, not agree with us.
5) Reach a resolution. Focus on transformative justice. Transformative justice goes beyond healing the harmed party and seeks to examine the root causes of how the harm occurred. Do so by letting the other person know that their behavior wasn’t innocuous and steer them towards accountability and subsequent transformation. Ross suggests these steps:
• Thanking the person for their good intentions. Innocuous intent doesn’t excuse their harm, but by considering their intent we allow them to take ownership of the impact.
• Let them know what they’re not doing right.
• Guide them to what would work instead.
When approaching conflict…
• Assume the best intentions
• Grand one another permission to be imperfect
• Bring a spirit of curiosity
• Offer each other grace
• Call each other in as often as possible
• Build power with, not over.
When conflict is underway…
• Avoid jargon/terms that make communication harder
• Be honest about your emotions, but don’t use them to shut the other person up.
• Postpone the conversation if you’re not in a positive headspace.
• Don’t just say your piece! Practice active listening
• Know what outcome you’re looking for.
When conflict is over…
• Maintain confidentiality: What happens here, stays here. What’s learned here leaves here.
• If you hurt someone, acknowledge it, apologize, and make amends.
• If you debrief with someone else, don’t gossip or exaggerate.
• Set up a time for the next conversation.
Applying these lessons
Calling In is a book that I think we should all read and consider the ways in which we can apply it to our daily lives. Reading this book caused me to examine the ways in which I’ve moved within online spaces and how I can do better for myself and for others. It has me reconsidering what criteria I may put an author on a DNR list for. Or how I would approach someone perpetuating harm in the book community.
In a recent Patron-only blog post, I spoke of a case in which calling in worked for me. When a white creator posted an insensitive video, I took a second to breathe. We reiterated why this topic was an issue over and over. But instead of lashing out, I just informed that person that I was going to tag them in a couple of videos. I explicitly told them that it may feel like an attack at first, but that it wasn’t. I just wanted to provide them with an alternate perspective. And that… worked. The creator thanked me, removed the video, and moved forward with a better understanding of the situation.
Can I really say I’ve ever gotten those results from a call out?
I’m not yet sure of how I will incorporate these lessons into the content I make, but I do know that what I’ve learned from Calling In will stick with me. It is a strong reminder that we are all deeply flawed human beings who will continue to make mistakes, learn, and grow.
Calling in will be released 02/04/25, but is available under ‘read now’ on Netgalley!
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