Columnist Carrie N. Baker: Calling out and calling in CARRIE BAKER
Published: 2/24/2021 4:34:58 PM
Smith College Gender Studies Professor Loretta Ross teaches an online course on “Calling In the Calling Out Culture.” In this course, she shows a YouTube video of two gazelles fighting in the middle of a savanna. In the distance, you can see something running toward the gazelles. Other nearby gazelles run away, but the two gazelles locking horns remain in battle, oblivious to their surroundings. For 30 seconds the lion sprints across the grasslands toward the two gazelles, who are too busy fighting each other to see the oncoming peril. Only when the lion pounces on the gazelles, do they realize what’s happening too late for one of them. The video is titled, “As Long as We’re Fighting Our Own, We Won’t See the Real Enemy Coming.” Ross shows this video as a lesson about the dangers of the divisive practice of calling out in social movement spaces.