The Art of Calling In

“Don’t read the comments.”

It’s a mantra that’s been around as long as the internet itself, but also one that Loretta Ross, associate professor of the study of women and gender, hadn’t been aware of until 2015.

“I’m a grandmother, and social media was not my thing,” she recalls, adding that she only really joined Facebook at her grandson’s request. “But around that time, I really started paying attention to it, and that’s when I noticed how unbelievably mean people were being [in the comments] on social media.”

That online animosity is what sparked her interest in the topic of call-out culture (publicly holding people accountable for their actions and mistakes, sometimes so critically that it leads to the unintended detriment of a cause or belief) and cancel culture (public shaming that aims to permanently damage one’s reputation and make redemption nearly impossible). The next year, while working on two books on reproductive justice, Ross held a symposium at Smith on the effects of cancel culture. The discussions she had during the event sealed the deal—she wanted to figure out a way to sidestep call-out culture in favor of challenging wrongdoing with productive conversations, or “call-in culture.”

Ross used her 2021 TED Talk as a jumping off point for her new book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel. Described as a “memoir-manifesto-handbook,” Calling In provides first-person accounts of how Ross held people accountable while simultaneously calling them into conversation rather than conflict—and offers insights on how readers can do the same.

“I’ve been through a lot, and I still manage to talk to people who were my nightmares,” she says. “I want people to be able to talk to a person who has a different political opinion than themselves.”

Over the course of decades of activism work, Ross has perfected the art of addressing power dynamics in a way that leads to having power with people rather than over them. Her favorite memory of shifting a room’s dynamics through calling in came about when she was tasked with training FBI agents on how to recognize hate crimes. When she entered the room, she could tell that the dynamics were off and that the agents were going to be resistant and uninterested in learning from a Black woman.

Her solution? Intentionally mispronouncing the word mischievous.

“One of the agents stood up and told me how to properly pronounce the word. Once they exerted that power, they relaxed and listened to the rest of my lecture,” she recalls. “At the time, I didn’t have the words ‘calling in’ or anything like that, but looking back, it was the most subtle calling in I’ve ever done. I just knew that these men didn’t want to hear from me. It was such an unlikely cast of characters in a situation where I was scared, and I had to figure out how to address my fears and theirs so we could learn together.”

Ross is clearly no stranger to activism and advocacy work, much of which was chronicled in this cover story for the Fall 2023 Smith Quarterly. A professor at Smith since 2019, Ross shares her firsthand experience of her life’s work in elective classes that are so popular that even Northampton High School students have found their way into them.

“I start off almost every class telling [my students], ‘I can do two things. I can protect you from the truth, or I can teach you about the truth, but I can’t do both at the same time. But I’m going to make you proud to be alive right now knowing you can make a difference,’” she says. “I tell them, I was too young to have participated in the sit-ins of the 50s and 60s, and I thought all the good, the chances to stand up for civil rights and equality and justice, had happened before I was born. And now I realize this is all of our Lunch Counter moments.”

Though the topic of Calling In may be timely, readers—many of whom have become accustomed to the political polarization of our current culture—might have a hard time fathoming the idea of calling others in rather than canceling or calling them out. Ross, however, thinks the opposite. “I’m convinced in my heart that most people don’t think this is okay,” she says. “They don’t think living a life of hate is okay. I think more people are repelled by it than attracted by it. What gives me hope is that I think most people are fundamentally good.”