Is it time to cancel "cancel culture"?
Human rights activist Loretta Ross prefers this alternative...
Human rights activist Loretta Ross prefers this alternative...
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00:00Like if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn't do something right or used the word wrong verb or
00:08then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because man you see how woke I was I
00:13called you out. We should really rethink carefully the desire to blow up somebody else's life
00:21simply because we disagree with them. A pluralistic democracy demands that we have debates
00:28without becoming disagreeable.
00:41We have to realize that when you call people out in anger as a public performance of their
00:46humiliation you actually decrease the chances for accountability because why would anybody
00:53ever want to admit to a mistake if they're going to be subjected to a mob
00:58and a frenzy of people calling them out.
01:10Calling in is really a call out done with love so you're still seeking to hold people accountable
01:17for the even the unintended harm that they did but sometimes the harm is intentional
01:23and so you want them to be accountable but you're doing it by offering love and grace
01:29and respect instead of anger and grandstanding. So I offer people startup sentences like
01:37I beg your pardon did I hear you say what I think you heard or that sentence didn't
01:44quite land on me the way I think you meant you can we go have coffee and talk about it.
01:49You have to learn a lot of startup sentences if you stop, pause, take a deep breath
01:56before you overreact to something that discomforts you or alarms you.
02:20In my 20s I was a rape and incest survivor and yet I learned to work with men who were
02:27incarcerated for raping and murdering women and it was by sharing my story of the violences I
02:33had experienced as a child that I got them to tell their stories about the violences that turned them
02:40turned them from kids into murderers and rapists. In my 50s 40s and 50s I monitored
02:49I monitored hate groups with the National Anti-Klan Organization and I learned that I had
02:55to learn to call in people who had been in hate groups that we were helping to deprogram
03:01and literally when a girl can't hate the Klan I mean who's left and so I learned that I had to see
03:08the humanity under the robes or beneath the swastikas and so those were practices.
03:27I have no problem calling out mean people like I have no problems calling out President Trump
03:32for example. I have no problem calling out people who intentionally hurt people or they're
03:40using their unmarked or unnoticed privilege to punch down on people but I'm more focused on
03:48what we do as a human rights movement to each other who are on the same team in the human
03:54rights movement. We don't need to be punching sideways against our other team members simply
04:01because they don't perfectly align with us as if we're all in a cult.