a response to calls to “call in” vs “out”

Author's note: This article was originally published on my LinkedIn page. You can view the original here.

I was recently privy to a conversation about calling people in vs. calling people out. The overarching idea seemed to be that call-out culture is unproductive and that efforts to correct someone when they cause harm are more impactful when they involve one-to-one conversation, compassion, and context.

I am a white-passing, cisgender, straight, able-bodied, uber privileged person, and I wanted to take a few minutes to offer some thoughts on this conversation to my fellow privileged peers:

Note: I am speaking, here, to a scenario wherein a person with privilege does harm to a person with less privilege.

First, calling someone in takes enormous effort, particularly if you have been directly harmed by something that person has said or done. Saying that a person who has been harmed needs to call the person who has harmed them in instead of out is kind of like saying, "Ladies, if you didn’t dress that way, boys wouldn’t assault you." We're saying: "Hurt folks, if you weren’t so rude in calling people out, they’d be more open to actually seeing your pain."

The responsibility is on the person who is doing harm, not on the person being harmed. If someone who has been hurt raises their hand and says, "ouch, that hurt", they shouldn’t also have to package up that "ouch" in a way that protects the feelings of the person who hurt them. That is an absurd thing to ask of someone in pain.

Second, any kind of correction is an act of service. When someone calls us out or in, it indicates that they believe we have the capacity to change. Regardless of how they correct us, it is an act of service because it shows us where we’ve gone wrong so that we can address it and do better. So that we can do less harm in the future. And isn't that the goal?

Third, while I acknowledge the power of a one-to-one conversation, I also believe there is a place and time for public correction. Here's an example:

Someone uses racist rhetoric in a public Slack channel at work. Another person calls that person out in private. They have a conversation, the offender acknowledges their mistake, and both people move on. But that rhetoric—that racist language—is still in the public channel. If no one addresses it in that channel, it can still cause harm. And that harm will likely be compounded. Someone scrolling by the statement might think, "Wow, it hurts that someone said this. It hurts even more that none of my colleagues care enough to correct them." Plus, folks who may not understand how or why that language is harmful will continue to not understand how or why that language is harmful. Whereas, if the correction had been public, that learning could be universal.

I used to tell companies that were trying to build a culture of experimentation: Transparency is critical. Share your results and learnings, especially when you fail. Acknowledge the failure and showcase how you’ll course correct. The more you can de-stigmatize failure, the more open you can be about this whole process—that’s how you will change organizational culture. That thinking applies here, too.

The prospect of being called out is scary. No doubt about it. But in doing this work—the work of understanding our own privilege and the roles we play in systems of oppression, and reducing the harm we cause—we are going to fuck up. So we need to get comfortable with being called out, called in, called every which way. We need to learn how to not take it personally, how to see it as an opportunity.

>> Resource: You've been called out for a microaggression. What do you do?

A final thought: Consider releasing the concepts of “calling in” and “calling out” entirely. The semantics are a distraction and the discussion allows us to stay fragile. If someone corrects me for something I’ve said or done because it harmed them, my brain will immediately want to justify my behavior to keep my own internal peace. That’s human nature. These labels allow me to tell myself a story: That the person who is calling me out rather than in is actually harming me, so I don’t have to listen to them. That I am the victim, not them. That story is a huge part of why we are still prioritizing white comfort over the safety and prosperity of all humans.

>> Huge shout out to Rachel Ricketts, Maryam Ajayi, Ijeoma Oluo, and many more Black women who have written about this topic. Visit their pages, read their words, pay them, and keep doing your work!

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Addendum 1: I am not excusing performative call-out culture. Meaning privileged folks calling out other privileged folks in public spaces as a performance of allyship. I do not believe that is helpful. I also do believe that white and white-passing folks have a responsibility to bring our people along on this journey of healing, transformation, and dismantling white supremacy. If you are a privileged person and you notice another privileged person causing harm, your responsibility may, in fact, be to have a one-to-one conversation with that person. One-to-one, empathetic exchange is powerful—and is the place where hearts and minds will likely change. This post isn't about how we should be correcting others, it is about how we accept and respond to correction.

Addendum 2: We can't assume that microaggressions (using this term to describe the things we do or say that we don't necessarily know are harmful) are micro in terms of the harm they cause. These interactions might be extremely psychologically violent to some folks, and not even on our radar (a result of our privilege). So regardless of our intent, if someone has been hurt, and they gather up the courage and energy to call us out or in or any which way, it is our responsibility to hear, acknowledge, and affirm their experience as valid. It's our responsibility to make space for that, regardless of how someone expresses their hurt. We all need to build up a stamina for being corrected—no matter how it's done.