Soulful Wisdom in Pivotal Times: Black Feminists in Conversation
Call Out Culture? No. Try “Call In” Culture
I first became aware of Loretta Ross—a legendary activist in feminist circles—when I read her August 17, 2019 Times op-ed, “I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic.” Since I’d been wondering when an elder Black activist with weight on their tone would speak out against the excesses of cancel culture, I found her perspective refreshing.
Call-outs happen when people publicly shame each other online, at the office, in classrooms or anywhere humans have beef with one another. But I believe there are better ways of doing social justice work. . . . Call-outs are often louder and more vicious on the internet, amplified by the “clicktivist” culture that provides anonymity for awful behavior. . . Social media offers new ways to be the same old humans by virally exposing what has always been in our hearts, good or bad.
She gave examples from her own life and career, making mistakes and learning from them, and making interventions in harrowing circumstances—when serving as executive director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center from 1979 to 1982, she spoke with and listened to convicted rapists in prison; as an anti-racist activist who served as the program and research director for the Center for Democratic Renewal in the early 1990s, she spoke with spouses of Ku Klux Klan members so their children wouldn’t end up in the Klan.
In both cases she responded with heart and strategic soul, sharing stories of insult and abuse from her childhood, which motivated the imprisoned men and the wives of Klan members to take action against violent behavior that perpetuates abuse and domination.
After 40 years of human rights work on behalf of women (and therefore on behalf of children and men), her activist credentials are impeccable. So when Loretta Ross speaks, young activists should listen. Young students at Smith College taking courses with her certainly do.
Call-outs make people fearful of being targeted. People avoid meaningful conversations when hypervigilant 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.
Professor Ross prefers and proposes “call-in culture” over call-out and cancel culture.
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.
There was so much wisdom and soul in that essay, and in subsequent interviews with Professor Ross that I’ve seen and listened to, that I decided to reach out to ask her to be a focal point of a discussion with several other Black women activist-scholars.
Join us tomorrow, April 20 @ 12 noon ET. To register free, click here.
Professor Ross’s BFF: Toni Bond
When I asked Professor Ross who she’d suggest join us, with no hesitation she chose her close friend, Toni M. Bond, a founding mother of the reproductive justice movement. In fact, Toni Bond helped to coin the very phrase “reproductive justice.”
Bond, a womanist scholar who recently completed her PhD in religion, ethics, and society at Claremont School of Theology in California, focuses her scholarship on the lives of Black women and religion and reproductive justice, womanist theology, and womanist ethics. She is one of the founding mothers of the reproductive justice movement and has worked in the reproductive health, rights, and justice movements for nearly 30 years.
Imani Perry
When I mentioned the third guest, Imani Perry, a Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, Professor Ross said that Perry had interviewed her several years ago. In Professor Perry’s work, she braids history, race, law and culture, emphasizing music, visual art, and literature. In a beautiful video profile sponsored by Google at The Guardian, she clarified a key intent found in her books, research and teaching:
If there were one impact I’d like my work to have, it would be that people would cease talking about African American history and culture in terms of deprivation or inadequacy and actually acknowledge its depth and complexity and beauty.
Like my mentor Albert Murray—who most certainly would’ve agreed with her statement above—Perry was born in Alabama. In fact, I see Perry’s work as a contemporary creative nonfiction extension of an imaginal dance between the artistic and political intent of Toni Morrison’s moral vigor and the Ellison-Murray Continuum’s emphasis on prevalence of excellence and morality of craft at the highest levels of aesthetic and social engagement.
That’s why in 2016, on the occasion of the centennial of Murray’s birth, I invited Professor Perry to present a favorite reading of hers from Murray’s work at a tribute to him I organized at Jazz at Lincoln Center. With images of Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald slide-carouseling on screen behind her, Perry read with a passion and humor Murray would have appreciated.
So, I invite you to join us to witness the qualities of spirit, wisdom, and soul at play above as we confront serious topics in these pivotal times, issues in which an emphasis on justice, a foremost concern and focus of each guest, is rendered in tones of compassionate grace and fierce humanity.
Register here to join us tomorrow, April 20th at 12 noon on Zoom.