Calling Out and Calling In

History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

— Maya Angelou (from “On the Pulse of Morning”)

The whole point of racial-justice work is to effect positive societal change. Those involved in the work are not out to make the nation more equitable and more just, but to make it actually equitable and actually just. Yet while the United States has had its moments of collective action, it has not come close to achieving this goal. Not post-Civil War. Not post-Brown v. Board of Education. Not post-1960’s Civil Rights, Voting Rights, and Housing Rights acts. Not post-Obama’s election as the first Black U.S. President. And certainly not during the Trump presidency. 

Two decades into the 21st century, with the Black Lives Matter movement and related efforts, the broad scale push for real and lasting change is once again finding the spotlight and creating momentum. Yet once again, the push for “a more perfect union” is also stirring up resistance from people who (a) continue to profit by racial inequity, (b) fear that achieving racial equity in the nation will somehow hurt their lives, (c) have convinced themselves that racism is a thing of the past and any problems BIPOC have in America are of their own making, or (d) want to think about other things.

Between the time I started thinking about writing this piece a few weeks ago and now, in fact, I’ve read a number of editorials and blog commentaries that have loudly proclaimed that racism is over in America — and that anyone who states otherwise is cynically trying to divide and damage the nation for their own (liberal-leaning) political gain. I’ve read others that have been condescendingly dismissive of the work of diversity experts, even blaming them for the “problem” of our racial divide.

It’s maddening. Truly. 

And most days it makes me want to scream. It makes me want to once again lay out the long litany of facts about American racism past and present — both the institutional matters and personal displays. Yet, at the same time, I’m aware that simply outlining the facts today tends to land on deaf ears among those who simply see such efforts as the manipulative work of the political left. I’m also aware of the futility of descending into a political shouting match that doesn’t actually change minds or practices or laws. 

I certainly believe there are powerful people who need to be called out about their racist behavior, their push for racist policies and practices for their political gain, and their mischaracterization of those who fight for justice. I find myself even wanting to scream at some otherwise respected editorial writers who use their podium to misrepresent the work of social justice advocates, ignore the research, and basically do little or nothing to help solve racial injustice. The worst of the writing feels like the work of those seeking profit or power. But even some well-intended editorials feel like hollow noise.

So, yes, I want to call people out. And I think that calling out, as a practice, matters. Think where we’d be without the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks or James Baldwin or the Black Lives Matter movement — and so many others engaged in frontline work. We need people to step up, identify and clarify the problem, create movement, speak out, drive change. 

But today we also need to be aware of the problem of getting stuck in the calling-out mindset. The documentary film The Social Dilemma makes it clear that AI-driven social media today is creating a social and political gulf like we’ve never seen. It’s nice to be able to connect with family and friends through social media, but the central point of social media, currently, is to generate revenue for the media companies and those who know how to manipulate the system for profit. As a result, we live with an online world in which AI steadily feeds us what it knows will keep us engaged. Too often this means that the social-media algorithms feed outrage. 

We must speak up. We need to challenge folks who deny the existence of systemic racial inequity. We need to contest governors who want to limit or control the conversation on race in schools. We need to resist state legislatures that want to suppress voters. On the other hand, I’m very aware that spending one’s time calling out people for their racism or their cynicism or their political manipulation doesn’t get us where we need to go. Or at least I don’t think it does. It feels like an incomplete act — one small step in a larger process that requires deeper cultural engagement and transformation. 

I’m not trying to discourage people from reading social media and responding with their truth. But a steady diet of this kind of reading and responding is not likely to have the impact that so many of us wish for. Rather, it seems to devolve into a kind of loud stalemate. I’m also not saying stay away from all social media, but I think we are better, more effective, when we make this action only part of our strategy for personal  and institutional growth and for leading change. 

When it comes to our own learning, I encourage reading outside the realm of social media — especially well-researched books and long-form journalism, as well as targeted, peer-reviewed academic work. To read, for instance, The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee or the updated edition of Beverly Daniel Tatum’s Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? or Eddie S. Glaude Jr.’s Begin Again or Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist or Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic’s Critical Race Theory: An Introduction or the old-school Poverty and Race Journal from the Poverty and Race Research Action Council can strengthen our knowledge of race — and all related politics, public policy, sociology, and psychology — in ways reading a yearful of postings on Medium or inhaling a steady diet of Twitter commentary cannot.

But the goal, of course, is not just reading. In order to  create strategies for lasting change, we need to continue to build our interpersonal antiracist and leadership skills. We need to develop the ability to engage in respectful, productive dialogue with colleagues, friends, and neighbors. We need to connect with local, state, and national representatives. The goal is to use our knowledge and skills to help shape the nation’s path to a better future. In a recent New Yorker article, staff writer Kathryn Schultz wrote about the world of animal “way-finding” — the remarkable ability of animals to know where they are and figure out where they are going at all times. In the end, Schultz shifts focus in a way that caught my attention: “But the chief insight to be gleaned from how other animals make their way around the world is not about their behavior but about our own: the way-finding we must learn to do now is not geographic but moral.”

We need to think of the social justice work we do as a kind of collective moral way-finding. 

I suppose the strategy I’m asking for is one in which we tell the truth as best and as respectfully as we can. We call out those who make public stands against racial equity. We denounce the manipulative practices and lies coming from political leaders who want to divide whites and BIPOC for their own political gain. We speak out for change to our institutions, our places of work. But we also balance this out with the practice of calling people in, engaging in dialogue with colleagues, friends, and neighbors in a positive spirit. In schools, this means we have our point of view, our speaking points, but we also listen, ask questions, try hard to understand other perspectives, build a pathway forward.

I honestly don’t know where the line between calling out and calling in lies. It’s clearly necessary to call out acts of police brutality against people of color. It’s clearly necessary to call out politicians who respond to peaceful protests for racial justice by calling these citizens rioters and looters. It’s clearly necessary to call out all acts to suppress voters of color as a way to maintain white power and privilege.

In the field of education, it’s clearly necessary to call out the longstanding system that designates more resources and funding  — $23 billion, or more than $2,200 per student per year — toward predominantly white public schools. It necessary to call out schools that treat students inequitably based on their race — so that many students of color feel traumatized, pushed aside, tracked to low-level courses, or otherwise ill-served by their schools. But if we are to transform our schools and communities, we need to find a way to call people in, too. This is not a sign of weakness. It’s not about being “soft.” It’s born of desire to actually get where we need to go. It’s part of our way-finding.

While thinking about the tension between calling out and calling in, I happened to pick up a book of 20th-century essays curated by Joyce Carol Oates. The book, The Best American Essays of the Century, was given to me as a gift in 2000, and I’m embarrassed to say that I put it on my shelf and never got around to opening it. For some reason — probably because it feels dangerous to get stuck in a cycle of reading daily news and commentary — I opened it recently to see what the 20th century had to say about our lives now. 

The first essay I read was Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The essay, as one would expect, is full of remarkable observations. For me, the most telling is this: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. We must come to see that human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.”

While the letter is clearly a call to action, King thought long and hard on how best to respond to the racial injustice he saw all around — and he found fertile ground between complacency and advocating violence. He was not above calling out. “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in fact, is one long calling out of Christian leaders “who have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.” He says the Christian church is “so often an arch-supporter of the status quo.” Echoing the challenges of our times, he also calls out church leaders for praising the Birmingham police for keeping “order” when, in fact, they were brutalizing a population of people legally and peacefully protesting injustice.

But King also ends by directly encouraging these very same clergy to meet with him, to engage in conversation about the role of the church in matters of social justice. He calls them in.

It’s this latter action that I think we need to keep in mind today — King’s focus on strategy, leveraging nonviolent protest with core Christian, moral tenets to make the case for change. 

I keep coming back to another fact in my mind (from McGhee’s The Sum or Us): “By age three or four, white children and children of color have absorbed the message that white is better.” Education is essential for the individual and society. But if we are not focusing on antiracist education, we are only supporting a broken society. So maybe the “calling in” I’m talking about is one focused on collective change within schools — with a complete examination of every aspect of school life. 

One school I read about recently responded to the painful evidence of its racism — that the school had not lived up to its mission to support and educate all students equally well across race. It didn’t just acknowledge its shortcomings. It didn’t just offer a vague apology. It did the essential work of examining its history and interviewing alumni, students, teachers, parents, and others. Then it created a strategic plan designed to ensure a racially just future. 

The result is heartening. The school has created an Antiracism and Social Justice Course, required for all high school students, focused on four main goals: deeper understanding of the historical roots of racism; deeper understanding of the current racial landscape; development of an antiracist mindset; and application of practical antiracist skills. Simultaneously, every social studies class will begin the year with a focus on issues related to Black Lives Matter, and every American history course will strengthen the presence of the African-American experience. The school is also undertaking a full curriculum audit to assess the current presence of diversity in the program and determine any necessary adjustments. 

Simultaneously, the entire faculty will engage in developing their antiracist teaching practices — not through a one-time event, but continually, year to year. The school is also examining the intersection of race and school policy; race and hiring, onboarding, and retention; race and matters of accountability and discipline; and more.

The goal is clear: the school aims to be a truly antiracist community on all fronts — and it plans to achieve this through a system of transparency, clear accountability, constant attention to the racial composition of the community, explicit professional and cultural expectations, and a commitment to an antiracist curriculum and teaching practices. Time will tell how well the school does, but the thoroughness of this response is impressive.

One more example. A few years back, a group of 176 national experts, with the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, created the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation (TRHT) process to “bring about transformational and sustainable change, and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism.” The key is to understand how the belief in racial hierarchies undermines institutional and societal progress in myriad ways. This TRHT process is now being embraced by numerous communities nationwide, as well as by colleges and universities.

Of course, there are other examples out there of schools and educators and other related organizations taking on this transformative work. Maybe I’m simply asking all educators and schools to join them. Call out as you need to, as you feel is right. But remember to call in, too — work to create strategies for lasting transformation. In the end, our aim should be for racial enlightenment, not entrenchment. We want to change hearts and minds, and help more people understand why it’s in the best interest of everyone to build a truly just society.

Michael Brosnan is the senior editor at Teaching While White.