Loretta J. Ross: How to Start Making Real Change With Those You’d Rather Cancel

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Alka Arora: Welcome, Loretta. It is such a pleasure to meet you. I have to say when I saw the description of your book and the title Calling In: How to Make Change, How to Start Making Change with Those You'd Rather Cancel, something in me just like lit up. It's like I got goosebumps. I was like this is the kind of conversation I want to be having right now given all that I'm dealing with right now, given all that I'm dealing with as an educator and just what I see in the social landscape. So, I'm very honored to have this opportunity to speak with you today.

Loretta J. Ross: Well, thanks for having me.

Alka: And thank you for saying, you know being up quite late. I know it's much later in the East Coast than it is over at CIIS, so it's much appreciated. So, Loretta, your book weaves together your personal activist experience with a broader cultural analysis to explore the dynamics of call outs and call ins. Can you say a little bit about what motivated and inspired you to write this book?

Loretta: This is probably an accidental book. I've written three books, or co-written three books, on reproductive justice because that's what I'm most known for, having co-created that theory in 1994. But about a decade ago my grandson used to let all of my calls go to voicemail, and that didn't sit well with me, so I finally got hold of him and said listen you're my only heir and if you don't put a ring on that phone for grandma you might find yourself disappointed. He said well grandma get on Facebook I got on Facebook. He migrated off to Taktik or whatever the kids migrate to.

Alka: Tiktok.

Loretta: Right, right. But once I stayed on Facebook because he did say it was for old folks and he was right. I noticed how unbelievably mean people were to each other and I didn't quite understand it because I knew people were saying things online that they probably didn't have the courage to say to a person's face. And so, when I asked other young people what was going on they named it the call out culture. But when I asked what they were doing about it, they kind of shrugged and said oh well it's as inevitable as gravity or something. And that answer didn't sit well with me because I started processing my life and how I had a lot of unlikely conversations with improbable people. I said organizing is basically making change with people that you don't necessarily like but you need in order to build a power base, in order to change those human rights violations. And so, I started first by organizing a group of students at Smith College. Asked them how the call out cancel culture affected them, to a person. 100 students said that they were afraid to just speak their minds. That they were afraid to tweet something that might come back to haunt them. That they were walking around on verbal eggshells for fear of being canceled or called out. And so, I began my research. Started writing a book in 2015. In my research, I found that I was not original. That an 18 year old trans man named Loan Tran had actually invented the concept of calling in. And when I finally got hold of Loan and talked to them, they said that they were afraid of the push back that they had already received. And so, they had dropped the concept. Didn't want to do anymore writing on it or work on it. But still I didn't let that deter me, so I started doing more research, and after a period of time, I finally produced the book and Simon and Schuster picked it up and now we have techniques. The other thing I want to say is that I read a lot of books criticizing and analyzing the cancel culture, but none of the books said what to do about it. And so, I wanted to make sure my book devoted an equal amount of time to teaching techniques. That there are ways we could actually learn to call people in instead of just assuming that our only option is to call people out.

Alka: Thank you. I think that's one of the things I most appreciated was that you do provide those very specific strategies. And I have to say I must be getting old too because I'm still on Facebook. I'm not out there as much as I used to be, and I've had the experience I think a few years ago of having just a minor disagreement with another progressive on something over Facebook and getting sort of like just like slammed for it. And I thought, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. This is not a good use of my time and energy, and it has felt to me that, you know, something has kind of escalated in the last five to ten years around this sort of infighting. And I know you've been an activist for a long time, Loretta, and you do note in your book that it's not new, right? Infighting among progressives, some form of calling out and cancelling, has always existed, but it does seem to be that there's more walking on eggshells in the last few years. Would you agree that that's the case? If so, what do you think is causing that shift?

Loretta: Well, it's one thing when one person can say something bad about you. You might feel a way about that. You might feel a little shame, but it's another thing when they can get 10,000 people within a few hours to say that same bad thing about you. That virality of social media means that people's lives are forever changed when they've been publicly called out and shamed because there's a before the call out life and then the after the call out life. And you spend the rest of your time wondering, is that person looking at me this way because they saw what happened on the internet about me. And so, I think that our toys have gotten faster and probably more deadly, but our human emotions are basically the same. I mean the original definition of a call out was an invitation to a duel. That's what killed Alexander Hamilton.

Alka: I did not know that.

Loretta: Yeah, that was the original definition. When you call somebody out, you are inviting them to a duel at dawn, and you're going to shoot them or hope to shoot them. And so, we've always had beefs with each other, and we've always used the power of shaming and blaming to try to hold people accountable. But nowadays those tools are so inadequate, and I hope nobody calls me out at dawn and tries to shoot me because I can't shoot. But still, we still need accountability measures, but do they have to be so mean? And do they have to be so deadly? One of the things I say in my book is that you can say what you mean, and you can mean what you say, but you don't have to say it mean. That's always a choice. How you choose to pursue accountability is a testament to your values and your integrity versus your desire to hold somebody accountable.

Alka: Beautifully said. I also really love that you say in your book, “Kindness is political.” But what I wanted to really appreciate is that you are so authentic and honest about your own experiences in your text, and I think that's one of the things that makes it so relatable and such a joy to read. And early on in your book, you refer to yourself as a reformed call-out queen. So, can you say more about younger Loretta who was the call-out queen and what was driving you at those times?

Loretta: It's not even the younger Loretta. I have a fiery temper and I don't have a real good filter on my tongue. So, I still get the impulse to call people out when I've encountered meanness or unkindness or when people have just gotten on my nerves because I don't like a whole lot of people who go around triggering people into arguments and discomfort and stuff like that. But I learned that when I indulged in the calling people out, it didn't quite achieve what I wanted it to achieve. I was instead blowing up relationships, presenting the worst part of myself, because one of the things that I talk about is the difference between being trauma-driven and trauma-informed. When I was driven by my trauma, I would let loose with my tongue, and I could slice and dice anybody up and didn't care about it because I felt that they deserved it. And I'm really good at playing what we used to call the dozens because I grew up with five brothers, and we used to talk about each other's mama. And we all had the same mama. So, that's my default. But I've learned over the years that I wanted to be more strategic. I wanted to be more effective. And I had to put my ego and my trauma on pause in order to create the change that I wanted to see and present the Loretta that I could look in the mirror without shame. So I wouldn't be ashamed of what I've done and the fact that I inappropriately used my innate power to humiliate and shame others simply because they weren't doing what I wanted them to do.

Alka: That's a profound reflection. And I can say there is a lot of what you said that I can relate to. I mean, I don't know what sign you are, but I'm an Aries.

Loretta: I'm a Leo. Fire signs.

Alka: We have that fire, right? And I remember when I was in my 20s and first coming into a deeper feminist consciousness, just that anger that would boil, you know? And it's not that I don't ever get angry at sexism or racism or things, but it definitely has shifted. But there was that very raw energy there, and in your book, you talk quite a bit about anger, and one of the things that you say is, “Anger will always have a purpose in fighting injustice,” but you also say you became exhausted from rage. So I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit more.

Loretta: I tend to distinguish between anger and outrage. I generally was angry at people, and I really would turn that anger into hatred of those people. But outrage is something that I feel good at expressing against injustice. And so, anger is my fuel, was eating me up inside, and it wasn't actually addressing the external challenges that I was facing. And one of my bosses, Reverend C.T. Vivian, who had been an aide to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., used to tell us all the time when I was monitoring hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, that when you ask people to give up hate, then you have to be there for them when they do. And I didn't like that. When Reverend Vivian said it, I wanted to curse, but he was a preacher, so I couldn't say what I really felt about that sentiment. Because I'm a Black woman. If the Klan hates me, I'm alright hating them back. I mean no skin off my teeth. But he was right. When I saw that my anger was not achieving what I wanted it to do, and that it was incinerating me from inside because I couldn't find inner peace, I had to resolve. It was fuel for my activism, but I was burning myself up. And so, when I learned that I needed to transmute that anger into love, into radical love, use my radical politics but handle them responsibly with radical love, then I found a clear purpose for my activism. I achieved an inner peace that I didn't think was possible when I was a human rights activist. I'm constantly looking at the worst things people do to each other, but I found that even that didn't have to steal my joy, didn't have to make me less resilient, didn't have to make me become something that I didn't want to become. Let me tell you a little story. I was doing a calling in training for the conflict resolution and negotiation unit at Harvard University, and I think it's 12 or 13 attorneys, one Black woman. And she was saying that she heard my presentation about calling in, and to her it sounded very close to respectability politics. And she said, “I'm going to really, you're telling me to give a pass to all these white people? They keep committing these microaggressions against me. Like after 13 years they're still asking, do I belong here? Am I qualified? And when that happens to me,” she said, “I become the angry Black woman, a stereotype I don't want to lean into, but how can you not? Because these microaggressions feel like endless paper cuts that you just can't heal. And so, what am I supposed to do with that?” she asked. And so instead of answering her question, I asked her another one. I said, “Oh, who are you inside?” And she thought a moment. She said, “Well, inside I'm filled with love.” So, I asked her, “Well, why aren't you pursuing accountability with love instead of anger? Because maybe part of your anguish is that you're not being authentic to your true self, that white supremacy and these microaggressions are forcing you into a role that you don't want to play, and it's not authentically you.” And then, we started to teach her techniques for calling people in with love instead of anger and hatred. And I hope, I haven't checked in with her, but I hope that that has been a better, more authentic strategy for her that brings her more peace. The other thing about microaggressions and when people get on your nerves, because like I said, there's a lot of people I want to cancel, you also have to separate their stuff from your stuff. Just because somebody comes at you from their own trauma, from their own inability to reconcile with trying to be positive and all of that, that doesn't mean you have to accept that invitation into a fight. You can just separate, use boundaries and say, “I'm so sorry that you're having a day that would make you come at me like that. I want you to have a better day, I respect you, and I hope that you do better.” I mean, there's all kinds of things you can say once you learn calling in techniques, so that you don't absorb someone else's projection of their discomfort or their rage or their insecurities onto you.

Alka: You know, and that's again what I really appreciate is the practicality of what you're sharing. This is not just a pie in the sky, kumbaya sort of philosophy or text. It's very practical, and that reframing you did of that respectability politics, right? Which is this idea that we have to sort of put on a false self just to be accepted by the mainstream or the dominant group. But saying, no, that's actually more your authentic self, right? And lead from that. And so, that's just such a beautiful reframe. And the other thing that I'm really, I was really struck by as I read your book is particularly as someone at CIIS, which has a very big psychology, you know, focus, is that your book is political, but it's not just political. It also delves into the psychology behind call outs, and, you know, I hear you using words like ego and projection and trauma and all of these sort of like psychological terms, right? So, which I think is really useful, right? So, I was wondering if you could unpack some of the psychology of call outs. Like, how do you see them functioning, particularly in terms of power and interpersonal dynamics?

Loretta: Yeah, well, first of all, to respond to a call out culture, I did an analysis of five options that you have when you're trying to deal with accountability. And so, I'm going to discuss those first, then I'm going to talk about where I tiptoed into the psychological realm. I think we're all familiar with call outs because that's publicly shaming somebody for something you think they've done wrong or said wrong, that you think they need to be held accountable for. But the most important word in that sentence is that you did it publicly because you wanted others to see you holding somebody else accountable, and we call that virtue signaling. Now, when you want to go beyond the call out, you go into canceling somebody. That's when you want to get them really, really good because you think what they've done is so egregious that they need to be punished by either losing their job or their reputation or at least their platform, and that's what summons our inner Karen, when we want to talk to the manager and get them fired. But there's a problem with the cancellation impulse as a human rights activist, because it mimics the prison industrial complex. I mean, what does the carceral state do? It silences people, it exiles them, and it disposes of them like a used tissue because nobody ever wants to hear what has happened to people who are incarcerated. They only want to hear what they've done, and punish them for it. And so, I think that an alternative to calling out or canceling is calling in. Also an accountability process, but instead of using anger, blaming, and shaming, you're choosing to use love and respect. So, instead of reacting with anger to someone saying something that you think is problematic, you might say, “You know, that's an interesting perspective. Do you have time for us to, for you to tell me more about how you arrived at that? Because I used to use that word, and I don't use it anymore. Can I share with you what I've learned about not using that word?” There's all kinds of invitation to conversations we can make using calling in technique. You're still pointing out what was wrong, you're not just giving a pass to it, but you're choosing to call the person that engaged them in conversation instead of disposability. Now a friend of mine, Sonia Renee Taylor, created the concept of calling on because there's this article about calling in in the New York Times, and Sonia put out a video and said, “Wait a moment, Loretta. Sometimes you don't want to invest your time and attention into someone else's growth. Sometimes, you just want to say, talk to the hand. So we're supposed to do that.” And so she invented the concept of calling on, and that's when you expect people to do better. You want them to reconcile their inner good opinion of themselves with their outer behavior or words. Don't have this cognitive dissonance going on where you think you're better than your actions portray. And I would say we're probably in one of those moments now with Trump voters and stuff like that. They think they're good people, but they did something wrong. And I love the way that young people use calling on, even though they don't know that's what they're doing. Because a young person, when they hear something that doesn't land well with, on them, they look you dead in the eye and they say, “Are you OK?” And they're not asking about your health. They're basically saying, “You're not OK. You need to back up, protect yourself, and get out of my face.” They're saying all of that with three words, right? But they're calling on you to be better, but they're not going to give you their time and attention. And then the fifth C of my five C continuum is calling it off. We have no obligation to engage in unproductive conversations with people when people are lying, are trolling us, are gaslighting us, just wasting our time. And whether this is in person or online, we can choose to call it off. Now, having set up a taxonomy that analyzes what a range of options we have, the things that are required to use those options are what I call the four intelligences. And this gets to the psychological part. I think we're mostly familiar with the concept of emotional intelligence, self-regulation so that your trauma is not the lead, that you have a chance to actually develop the ability to maybe swallow the first thing that comes to your mind. And by the way, we self-regulate all the time. Think about it. I find that as a parent and as a grandparent, even if I'm a great grandmother, I learned when I was parenting my son that I couldn't give voice to the first thing that popped into my head when he said something stupid or problematic. And if I had, he'd been in therapy for life. So, we self-regulate. We know to swallow that first thought and then think about what we need to say to our child because we don't want to harm them. When our boss says something stupid, we don't want to give out the first thing that we want to say to our boss because we don't want to get fired, right? Right. That's emotional intelligence. When you know that you need to self-regulate. But the other intelligences that I think we need to use to build this calling in culture shift I want. The second one is cultural intelligence, which we used to call cultural competence or cultural honesty. Understand that every human being has a different lived experience that tells them and informs their worldviews and their opinions. And so, sometimes that's dictated by what culture they're embedded in, what they experience being part of that culture, their identity, you know, whether they're queer, whether they're straight, whether they're black, whether they're Asian, Native American, you know, Latina, whatever. And so, we have to develop cultural intelligence. The two other intelligences that I think are vital to calling in. The first one is called relational intelligence, and Adrienne Marie Brown writes a lot about being in right relationship, not only with other people but with Mother Earth and the universe, all of this, so that we don't do things that set us in bad relationship with each other. And so relational intelligence, so that you intentionally create the relationships that are sustainable for you. And for me, that's the relationship, the relationship that most matters starts with yourself. And that brings us to the fourth intelligence and that's integrity intelligence, where you're constantly practicing, making decisions that you can be proud of, that show up, how you have honesty and compassion and caring for other people. And that is something that people don't think about, but when people don't do the right thing, they're self-inflicted moral injuries to themselves. It's almost like cutting when somebody is in some kind of mental distress. But we should avoid those moral injuries, avoid taking advantage of the cashier who gave you too much change. You should give that back. You know, avoid going off at the person at the DMV when you're trying to get your driver's license just because she's had a bad day. You should give that back to her because you should be proud of how you react under these difficult situations. And so, to create this calling in culture, you need emotional, cultural, relational, and integrity intelligence. And I'll close by saying an example of integrity intelligence is not only caring about the people you know and the people who know you. This is a combination of relational and integrity because as a human being with compassion, believing in human rights, you should care about bombs being dropped in Yemen if you never meet a Yemeni in your life.

Alka: Absolutely.

Loretta: Whether they know you or not, your integrity demands that you have that global compassion for humanity, and not that very European, individualistic caring for only the people who know you or who you know.

Alka: Thank you. Mic drop right there. Thank you. You know, I want to come back to this piece about cultural and relational intelligence because one of the things that I've noticed, and I will call myself out here because I've been just as guilty of this as anybody, is, you know, those of us who've had the privilege of getting college degrees and taking classes and women's studies and gender studies and ethnic studies, you know, we've developed certain ways of speaking. And you talk about it in the book sometimes as elitist or half-Martian, the language. And we forget, right, that not everyone has gone through that. And then there can be this sort of like, lack of cultural awareness of different generations, different classes, different educational statuses, different language barriers to understanding kind of the latest social justice jargon. And I see that as a real sort of weakness of, sometimes, of the progressive politics, is this calling out of people for not using the right terms. That they may never have ever heard of that. Like you said, it could sound Martian to them. Like, what is that word?

Loretta: Well, for me, I never thought not graduating college till I was 55 to be an advantage until I entered the language of postmodernism. And I was like, these people deconstruct everything. And when I was working on my PhD at Emory University, which I dropped out, which is why I don't have one, I told one of my professors, after we deconstruct women, how am I supposed to organize them? Reconcile a 40 year feminist career with, “Well, we're not even sure who is a woman.” I'm like, what are we talking about?

Alka: Right.

Loretta: And so, I never wanted to use a register that my grandmother couldn't understand. And actually, that's a quote from Bell Hooks. Because I asked her when she wrote Ain't I A Woman, why it was so accessible. And she said, “I wanted my first book to be one my grandmother could understand.” And then right after this, she wrote Feminism: From Margin to Center, that I needed a dictionary to understand, just to prove that she has the chops to write in postmodernist speak. But when we use those words that we are taught in our institutions, it's hard to avoid the sound, sounding condescending. You know, when people, when we say, “Oh, that's hetero patriarchy,” we’re intelligible to each other. But when I was working at the rape crisis center, we would say, “You know, it's that little something extra that women have to put up with.”

Alka: They got that, right?

Loretta: The same concept, but explained in accessible ways. And so, we cannot build the power in the human rights movement if we insist on using those kinds of words. Now, in my book, did you encounter the spheres of influence concept that I presented? Yeah, what I recommend, recognize is that those of us who are in the human rights movement, because we're intensely political, we tend to have a lexicon, a language, a register that is unique to us because we are, when we say neoliberal capitalism, we know what we're talking about. We say racism or anti-semitism, we know what we're talking about. And I call us 90 Percenters because we share such a high level of unity or worldview with each other. It's not that we're 90 percent of the population, though I wish we were, but that high level of unity. Now, part of the chaos that's happening in the social justice world is that we're busy trying to turn 90 Percenters into 100 Percenters under the mistaken belief that if we're not 100 percent perfectly aligned, that we will not be able to work together. And so, we put a lot of pressure on each other to think alike, use the same word, try to keep up with the latest thing TikTok says we should say. I mean, I did, I was homeless and did anti-gentrification work for decades and then got chided one time because I said homeless instead of unhoused. And I'm like, really?

Alka: Right. And that language, it changes all the time, right? Who can keep up?

Loretta: Who would want to keep up? So outside of that 90 Percent bubble that we're too busy trying to turn into 100 Percenters, are what I call the 75 Percenters. These are people who share enough worldview with me that I'm intelligible to them as long as I don't use that 90 Percent language. So, the 75 Percent are for me as a feminist who believes in reproductive justice might be the Girl Scout. They believe in girls and women's empowerment. We're going to share that goal, but they're probably going to be less political than me. Their main political activity may be voting and working in social services or community kitchens or something like that. But they're not going to attend all the rallies and the marches and the strategic planning sessions that we who are 90 Percent are going to do. And so, our job is not to talk down to them because when you talk down to people, you make them feel stupid, and people don't need any help feeling bad about themselves. They do pretty well on that on their own. And so, that's why, how you say it has to be kind and not condescending. And outside of the 75 Percenters, of the 50 Percenters, these are the people who I call 50 Percenters because they go left or right, depending on who last influenced them. And so, my parents were 50 Percenters. My father was an immigrant, military veteran, 26 years in the Army, hyper patriotic, member of the National Rifle Association. And so, he was very conservative for a Black Jamaican immigrant. Basically, Mom, southern, evangelical Christian who believed in faith healers and going to church every Sunday. You go to church two or three times a week. When I talked to my parents, I had to always go underneath their top level words and speak to their values. So, as a human rights activist, I would say, “Mom, you know, you feed the hungry at your church. And as a human rights activist, I just ask why they're hungry in the first place. I'm living out your values, Mom, in a different way.”

Alka: What a great way of explaining it. That's, that's fabulous. I love that.

Loretta: Or to Dad, I can talk to him about. Patriotism means Uncle Sam doesn't renege on the deal around your health care. I'm not talking about deconstruction of neoliberal capitalism and privatization of social services.

Alka: And hetero patriarchy.

Loretta: And I am talking about someone breaking a promise that they made to you. And so, I'm just saying in that kind of analysis of who we can have the most influence with and how we can seek to build trust with them because people only accept information from people that they trust. And when we talk back to people or assume that they have to use the words or think just like us, we're proving that we're not trustworthy.

Alka: And we're also doing what we are purportedly against, which is creating hierarchies based on privilege, right?

Loretta: Educational privilege, right. Social location privilege. All of those things we’re weaponizing against others. Now, I find it quite interesting that the young students that I teach in gender and women's studies always can quote Bell Hooks and Audrey Lord and June Jordan and Tony K. Bambara Barbara Smith to me. And every time they quote it to me and they're indulging in the call out culture, I remind them, quoting Bell is not good enough. You got to believe her. And I think that Bell wrote copious text on how you match radical politics with radical love. So, you just can't take the radical politics and leave the love aside.

Alka: Right. Right. Absolutely. And you know, one of the most radical ways I read you enacting that is to actually working with someone we might consider a Zero Percenter, a white supremacist, Klansman, or former Klansman to be fair. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that experience. And also, what would you say to someone who is like, “Loretta? Okay, I'm with you with the 90 Percent with the 75 with the 50 Percent. Why are you spending precious time and emotional labor on a white supremacist? Even if they say they want to leave it, like, why is that your job to help them?”

Loretta: I would argue that it’s strategic. It ain't because I go around loving Nazis and Klansmen. I got better things to do with my time. Right. But at the same time, most people are driven into hate movements because they're actually in pain. You know, people aren’t living great lives. Generally speaking, I'm talking about the people being manipulated, not the ones doing the manipulating.

Alka: Right.

Loretta: I have a call out strategy for the manipulators, the puppet masters. But for the people who are being manipulated through their unannounced or unbelief, you know, they don't even believe that they're racist as they are, sexist as they are, transphobic. They don't want to believe that about themselves. So, I really want to emphasize the good side that they have because they're already getting enough criticism on the bad stuff. And so, I think it's strategic to say, “I'm coming from a different political position than you are. But I also want to appreciate your humanity. I want to take your pain seriously. And I want to offer you an opportunity to work together with other people who can help you give real solutions to your pain, than the false solutions offered by those who want to take advantage of you and manipulate you.” But for me, the reason it’s strategic is that there is no reason for us to indulge in FAFO right now. And that's what the young people are called the F around and found out. You're effed around and you find out what happened. That doesn't work for us, even though it may feel like a good I told you so. The reality is that the forces of fascism are harming people so much. There is no reason for us to leave those people who are being actively harmed, and who got that alarm clock wake up call a little late, out there to strengthen our opponents. We need to peel off that South underbelly of people who don't want to be seen as racist, who don't want to be seen as hateful and stuff. We don't want to be cruel. And pull them into the human rights movement. As long as we don't get judgmental about how late they were in coming, the words they don’t know, the fact that they still may say something, that “I don't want to be woke.” I mean, they are going to say a lot of things that we don't really agree with as 90 Percenters, but they strengthen our power base in order to really affect and disempower the fascists. And so, that's why I work with deprogramming white supremacists and our MAGA people, simply because I want to. Maurice Mitchell talks about the block and build strategy that we need to do. And I believe that first of all we got to block the growth of the fascist movement, which is very important. And build the strength of the human rights movement at the same time. And we do that by stopping the cannibalistic practices of those in the 90 Percentile. And, you know, pay attention seriously to the 75s in the 50s and pull in what I call the 25s. And to, the way it's going to work is that the 90s are going to affect the 75 to 75 so going to affect the 50 and the 50s are going to affect the 25. That they're intelligible to each other.

Alka: Right.

Loretta: The 90 is not going to immediately affect the 25, because we don't use the same language. We don't even watch the same news for them. Mom and Dad would watch Fox News, they can speak that language to them, conveying my values to them.

Alka: Yeah, we're kinda like spreading new ways of thinking and being in disseminating it through different kind of circles of influence. That's, that's such a helpful way of thinking about it, and I want to underscore a phrase that you use, which is taking people's pain seriously. And as an educator, one of the things that I've seen kind of prevent students of different identities, you know, some who have more privilege, say they're white students or students of color or straight students or queer students, from really understanding how oppression and privilege operates is because I think everyone wants to feel that their pain is real. And they'll be like, “Well, I don't how can you say I have privilege when I'm suffering and I'm struggling.” Right. And we can just say, “Well but, but look at the statistics and look at the facts and all of that.” But I feel like we have to say, “Yes, your pain is real,” and not but.

Loretta: But that's one of the reasons that with this attack on DEI, I actually do believe that the DEI brand has become so toxic that we need to wonder what if the best strategy is to be in constant defense of it, kind of like the term affirmative action has played out. Even though we believe in its values, that doesn't mean we have to continue to use a brand that has played out. And so, that's one of the reasons I'm suggesting that people pivot to the human rights framework, because it's an all inclusive framework. Everybody has the same human rights, but also every human being has some mixture of advantages and disadvantages. You know, because even a rich person may have careless parents who didn't parent them well because the money got in way of establishing authentic relationships with their parents. I know as a poor kid, my parents didn't love me because of my money. Different mixtures of advantages and disadvantages we have, and we can stop stereotyping people because they have certain identities and stuff and we can see people for the individual human beings that they are. And so, when you use the human rights framework, you use the concept of intersectionality to explore which vulnerabilities need to be attended to so that people without those vulnerabilities have the same human rights. I mean, people with those vulnerabilities have the same human rights as those without. So, the way I explain it most successively is that every child has a human right to an education, but a blind child might need her books in braille. You pay attention to her special vulnerabilities so that she can enjoy the same human rights as sighted children. And so, it may be a white child in rural California who doesn't have internet access, or the way they're shutting down hospitals in rural America. It may be that white woman who has to drive two hours to get to deliver a baby. Use the human rights framework, you're paying attention to everybody's pain, and it matters. And I think that not only does it promote an inclusive framework that still contains our values of diversity, equity and inclusion, but it widens the perception, the optics of who's included in that. And even at the same time, it puts the opponents to human rights on the defensive, because instead of saying they're against critical race theory, or they're against black privilege, or whatever they want to talk about, tell me why you're exposed, you're opposed to human rights.

Alka: Right, right. That’s brilliant. I think that's brilliant, you know, because I think that there's, there's a contingent of people who are truly against, you know, true equality. But I think for most people, what they're reacting to is this feeling of constantly feeling like their language is being policed, and feeling like they're being talked down to, are made to feel like they're bad for just being who they are.

Loretta: Exactly.

Alka: Yeah, so I really appreciate that reframing.

Loretta: I think it's going to work beautifully for us because it not only brings us together, but it also kinda cautions us not to create contradictions in our own movement. So, I can't do work against anti-black racism in a homophobic way without violating human rights. I can't do work against transphobia in a misogynistic way without violating human rights. I can't do work, you know, for immigrants in a way that is racist, without violating human rights and on and on. And so, it compels us to do the work that creates the vision of the world we want to create so that we're not just replicating like Paulo Freire cautions out at the oppressors becoming the oppressor. Yeah, that we actually do model the world that we want by how we treat the people that we'd rather cancel.

Alka: You're creating a bigger umbrella.

Loretta: Exactly. But an umbrella of joy, abundance, and love. Not an umbrella, I'm going to organize people so that I can tell them that you can safely hate those people.

Alka: Right, right. And they're out, you know. Yeah, they're not pure. Right.

Loretta: Exactly.

Alka: You know, Loretta, if I may, I want to pivot just a little bit. And I want to talk about the concept of spirituality. And then maybe, you know, that's. I teach in a program on women's spirituality. It's something very dear to my heart. And I felt, and let me know if I'm projecting, you, that even though you didn't use the word spirituality in your book. I read this as a deeply spiritual text.

Loretta: Thank you.

Alka: You know, I mean, when I hear about radical love and hope and joy. I just want to know, is that accurate and what role has faith or spirituality played in your journey?

Loretta: Well, I was raised a Christian, as my mother would have insisted on. But she was very ecumenical. She didn't care which church you went to as long as you went to church. So, I had the chance to sample a lot of different churches based on who my friends were. And they took me to, I went through a Catholic church or Baptist church or an AME church. I think my final church was church, I know my final church was Church of Christ. So, I don't see myself as a religious person in particular, and only others describe me as spiritual because I'm very much a scientist. I majored in chemistry and physics. And so I tend to see things in very linear ways.

Alka: Got it.

Loretta: And so, people describe me as spiritual, but I would not describe myself that way. I use logic because I believe that we deserve a better world. I do believe in karma if there's, that spirituality.

Alka: That's a spiritual concept.

Loretta: Right. Well, I do believe in karma. And karma is a bitch, but she got real good aim. I got to put out there what I want to receive. And I've lived that all my life because whenever I've done good in the world, it comes back multiplied. But I'm telling you, the opposite is true, too. I have to be careful not to tell a lie because then that'll come back. If I lie about being sick and going to work, guess what? I get sick the next week. I mean, I just can't.

Alka: You manifest the sickness, right?

Loretta: Yeah, I manifest stuff that I want and don't want. And so I wouldn't consider myself a spiritual being at all. But I'm not a, people call me humanist, but I don't think I'm a humanist because I kind of like a live-and-let-live philosophy. Choose whatever brings you comfort in this very chaotic, dangerous world. And whatever brings you inner peace, I'm with that for you. And I choose my inner peace by how I treat other human beings, and I treat other human, human beings based on how my integrity compels it because I always want to be the best Loretta I can be.

Alka: I'm so glad that you actually named that, you know, that you're, you don't identify as spiritual, but you don't get, rather than taking offense that someone would put that label on you. And you're like, thank you. And it's a way of being like, “Hey, we can be different in that way.” Right. We all have our different paradigms that we come in our different belief systems. And we can still work together, right? We don't have to create exclusions on who does identify that way or doesn't.

Loretta: You know, like I said, I think my mom's ecumenical upbringing created in me a tolerance from childhood that she didn't insist on one particular belief system, but she did insist that you have some relationship with a higher power. And it worked for me until it didn't work for me. But at the same time, it taught me a tolerance and an embracing of everybody's spiritual tradition, so I can just as easily go to a church as I can go to a synagogue, or as I can go to some pagan ceremony. And for me, I love the fact that people get their comfort in their own ways. And the spiritual quote that I find resonates most with me is actually a Jewish quote, even though I know very little about Judaism. But one of my mentors was an Israeli American. She's passed now. And she taught me this quote she says, “The Talmud says that my neighbors material needs are my spiritual needs. I cannot be right with God if I'm not right with my neighbors and my community. God will not accept me if I ignore the needs of my neighbors and community.” I thought that was the most beautifully expressed feeling of interdependence and interconnectedness I've ever heard any organized religion offer.

Alka: I have not heard that one before. Thank you. Thank you. I think that's, that's really profound. And you know, the other thing that I wanted to kind of circle back to is earlier, and you talk about this in your book, talking to students who say, “You know, I'm so afraid of saying the wrong thing, right? Whether it's about religion or race or, you know, sexuality that I walk around on eggshells.” Now you've given great strategies that if we've been harmed, if we hear someone say something offensive, how do we call people in? But what do we do for, and you know, I'll say as a professor or just as a human being, I've had those fears too, right? Of being called out, of being canceled. I haven't had a young person look me in the eye yet and ask me if I'm okay, but I'm sure it will happen. What strategies can those of us who have that fear, what can we use to walk in the world without being afraid all the time of being canceled?

Loretta: I like teaching in numbers like one, two, three systems. So, if you've been called out, it's a one, two, three process. Actually, the first thing you do is thank the person. And that sounds counterintuitive, but that person just gifted you with something that social media companies are paying billions to get. They gifted you with time and attention. You can sincerely say thank you for noticing me. Thank you for appreciating that I'm significant. That I matter. Because if you thought I didn't matter, you wouldn't even bother to call me out. Right? So you don't have to say all of that, but have that in your head as you say thank you. Step one. Step two is that when people call you out, the thing they want most is to be heard. They don't want you to brush them off, deny that you've done harm or anything like that. And so you can assure them, thank you for calling me out. I'm going to consider seriously what you just said. You have assured them that they've been heard, but what you have not done is agree with them, right? So, you can assure people of their significance and that they've been heard and that you're going to think about this in your own good time, right? So, it doesn't cost you anything to say, “Thank you and I've heard you.” And then the third step is to turn the calling out into a calling in. And you can say, “Thank you. I'm going to consider what you said, but I want to ask about you because I care as much about you as I do myself. Are you okay? Because you chose to get my attention this way, but I'm pretty sure you could have DMed me. You could have done a whole lot of things. So, I want to know what's going on with you. Do you mind if we have a conversation to talk about what's going on with you, and I can tell you what's going on with me? And then we can figure out how to work this out.” One, two, three. Thank them, tell them you heard them, call them in. You can handle almost every call out that way.

Alka: Beautiful. And so if we know we have those sort of tools in our toolbox, maybe we don't have to be as afraid to say what we think.

Loretta: Right. The other thing I talk about in my book is how to make an apology right away when someone has accused you of doing harm and how to make an apology the right way, after you've had chance to think about what they've said. And then you can make a plan if you caused harm to make amends, to apologize, to make a plan for not doing it again. And so again, the book is full of techniques for different scenarios and situations you may find yourself in when you're encountering the call out culture, when you feel compelled to call somebody else out, see somebody else getting mobbed and you want to know whether you should intervene or not, can you intervene, all those kinds of things.

Alka: I hear what you're saying. Right. And, but in my experience, there may be times where you feel like, yeah, you know what, I did say the wrong thing. Right. And I'm willing to apologize. But what about if it's an incident where you're like, you know, I'm pretty sure they're projecting here because I didn't or we just disagree. You know, I'm not. Why would I apologize if I just have a disagreement with this person? That's not.

Loretta: You may still disagree on substance, but it may be how you disagreed still made them feel some kind of way. That's the right away apology moment.

Alka: Right. That's the seeing them and seeing their pain. Right. Yeah.

Loretta: You don't want to go around causing harm, even if you disagree, right? So you can say, well, I'm so sorry. What I said made you feel that way. But still, can we talk more so that we can arrive at some kind of mutual understanding of each other, if not agreement.

Alka: Keeping that conversation open.

Loretta: Absolutely. Very few people resist the invitation to tell you more about their life.

Alka: Yeah. Yeah. People like to talk about themselves. It's very true. So, Loretta, I imagine there's lots of folks who are listening to this or who have read your book who are like, you know what, this is what I've been hungry for. How do I learn more? How do I get more involved in this movement of human rights and calling in? What can some next steps be that people can take?

Loretta: Well, I teach these courses online. And so you can go to my website, LorettaJRoss.com. And I have an ongoing course going on right now. It's on Tuesday night, 7 p.m. Eastern Time. Each lecture is only $5. The whole series is $20.

Alka: That's amazing.

Loretta: So I call myself the Walmart of consciousness. And if you paid the $20 for the lecture series, then you can access all the videotapes for the ones you missed.

Alka: That's amazing.

Loretta: And so we keep these on a rolling basis. I have a staff, a team that and actually one of my teams [name] is from Oakland. But anyway, we make this accessible to as wide an audience as possible because we have to create this culture shift. I want a lot of different people thinking many different thoughts about social justice to learn how to move in the same direction. I don't want a lot of different people thinking one thought about social justice and moving in the same direction. Cause that's a cult. It's not a human rights movement. And so anybody wanting more can go to LorettaJRoss.com and join our classes. We get hundreds of people every lesson because, and people often take it repetitively. They take each session. I mean, you can afford $20. Right. Right.

Alka: Well, you know, thank you. Thank you. And that's great. Right. Like, that's so accessible to students, working people, you know, that's really amazing. And the thing you said about a cult, that just really struck me. I know you write about that in your book, too. Right. Like what it means to be a coalition, which means people who think differently but are working toward a shared goal versus a cult. So, yeah.

Loretta: I think that's a good example of that in the women's movement. Everybody in the women's movement opposes the patriarchy. But we work on it in different organizations in different ways and different disciplines and in different settings. We're a women's movement and not a women’s cult.

Alka: Right. Right. Because that would be quite dangerous. Right. And it seems like there's some, you know, activists out there who kind of want, almost wanted to be like a cult where you have to have the exact same language and the exact same analysis. But again, what I really hear you saying about movement building is building that wider umbrella.

Loretta: Yeah. If you need the security of certainty, you may want to examine how much you've ingested white supremacist thinking. Because people who are dealing with oppression are what Gloria Anzaldua calls borderlands people. We live and delight in the land of ambiguity. We are not searching for a certitude, black and whites, and binaries. We like the fact that we have all of these continuums and all of these ways, multifaceted ways of being, looking, experiencing. Well, that's our joy. And so we borderlands people instead of absolutists.

Alka: I love that. Wonderful. Thank you again, Loretta. And I know you're stayed up quite, you know, you've been up quite late with this out there in the East Coast. Thank you. Thank you to our audience. Thank you to the CIIS public program staff for putting this together. It's been such a pleasure.

Loretta: Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.