Calling Out Or Calling In?

We’ve been working on a research thread related to “call out” or “cancel culture” as part of what really influenced Robert Kieft to create the New City system. On the Phoenix Rising story stub, we’ve begun to work on Kieft’s back story, including him enlisting in the Democratic Union Army during the Second Civil War to specifically fight the “socially conservative and nationalist/nativist policies of the GOP”. This Civil War started as “The Cyber War” with “cancel culture” elements engaged in cyber-warfare online to censure what they saw as bigoted content and “mis-information,” leading even to the exclusion of non-Progressives starting with social media (continuing present-day trends) and eventually extending to online commerce and banking.

To bring the idea of cancel culture home, we explored the recent decision by the executors of Dr Seuss’ work to remove six of his books from publication due to offensive and racist content. Some people see this as “cancel culture” and a negative trend, other applaud the move and think other publishing and media companies should follow suit. Some want this kind of content destroyed so viewers won’t have to go through the negative experience of seeing their culture portrayed in a negative way, or to prevent it from feeding negative perceptions in those who already have a prejudice. Others would like to see this content survive as a historical record, but think it should be labelled or explained in a way that identifies it and warns consumers. Still others, think its fine.

As the public conversation about cancel culture heats up, some people who are in favor of progress on race, class, and gender issues are advocating for a different approach. They worry the cancel culture may be alienating bad actors even further, causing anger towards the progressive agenda, and leading to very little real change.

Anita Bright and James Gambrell are one example. They work in the field of education where it isn’t appropriate to have the kind of public shaming and excluding common in the larger media / social media world. If a teacher is fired for their views or publicly censured, they aren’t the only ones to feel the impact. There is an entire classroom of students whose educational outcome will be impacted by the discipline imposed on the teacher. If historical works are categorically excluded due to out-moded views, virtually no one will be able to learn from original sources to decide for themselves or connect directly to other ideas by censured thinkers that are still welcome and important. Students who make insensitive or bigoted mistakes, but who are “canceled” may never have a chance to learn from their error and may have their education or carriers cut short before they even start.

Bright and Gambrell have pointed out that “calling out”, “call out culture,” or “cancel culture” needs to be adapted to actually meet the goals of Critical Race Theory. They see calling out as having only short-term power. In the long term, its probably counter-productive because it is competitive rather than cooperative:

Again, acknowledging that for quite some time, the use of the expression calling out has been in common parlance as a way to engage in accountability, this expression, in many cases, may take on an accusatory, hostile, and challenging tenor. Often expressed in a public setting (on the internet, for example), and with heated emotion– anger, frustration, outrage– the act of calling out  is frequently expressed with sharpness and unambiguous language, with a literal or implied “how dare you?” layered into the communication. As might be expected, responses to this kind of confrontation are not always welcomed with humility and warmth, but rather, are met with defensiveness and a matching hostility, which may serve to further entrench disparate beliefs and/ or deepen wounds carried by both parties. So while calling out may serve some short-term purpose of silencing or redirecting the offending person, the longer-term effects may be paradoxical in that the “accused” may have initial stereotypes or negative ideas reinforced… In many cases, calling out leaves little space for human connection, growth, or cross-cultural connections that are healthy and positive.

Anita Bright and James Gambrell. “Chapter 11: Calling in, Not Calling Out: A Critical Race Framework for Nurturing Cross-Cultural Alliances in Teacher Candidates“, Handbook of Research on Promoting Cross-Cultural Competence and Social Justice in Teacher Education, Jared Keengwe, ed. IGI Global, 2017. pgs. 223-224.

Instead, Bright and Gambrell advocate “calling in”:

In contrast, the act of calling in takes some of the same key ideas of accountability, but recasts them into more humane, humble, and bridge-building constructs, and sets them in a more private domain. Ahmad (2015) explains that calling in “means speaking privately with an individual who has done some wrong, in order to address the behaviour without making a spectacle of the address itself” (para 2). While calling out sets up a clear binary of right/ wrong, good/bad, friend/ enemy, the concept of calling in carries the message of growth, kindness, and connection. As calling out may seek to pillory or shame, calling in seeks to foster new learning and understandings, for the betterment of all. While calling out is an accusation, calling in is an invitation, which may still carry the same outrage, anger and hurt that propels calling out, but with an intended outcome that is different.

Ibid, 224