[November 2020] https://nyti.ms/32UOqNN

Professor Ross embodies the wise woman symbol of why we need to have what I often like to call 'an elder culture' rather than be hypnotized by youth and celebrityhood...where individuals don't have the experience 'to educate'.

FULL TEXT Nyla Conaway, 19, remembers being “called out” for changing her profile picture on Instagram in solidarity for … something. She can’t quite remember what for, only that an older student she didn’t know told her it was a scam. “It just made me feel really embarrassed, like a ton of people had seen it and now I just looked really stupid,” she said.

Katie Wehrman, 18, still feels guilty for calling out a boy in her high school for something he said about a local politician and L.G.B.T.Q. rights — schooling him in an all-class Snapchat group.

Sophia Hanna, 18, has never been called out herself, but has spent more time than she’d like to admit during this pandemic watching two beauty bloggers call each other out.

“It just fires something emotionally,” she said, noting that she doesn’t even like makeup tutorials. “There’s like a dopamine trigger that makes me keep scrolling.”

The women are students in a class taught by Loretta J. Ross, a visiting professor at Smith College who is challenging them to identify the characteristics, and limits, of call-out culture: the act of publicly shaming another person for behavior deemed unacceptable. Calling out may be described as a sister to dragging, cousin to problematic, and one of the many things that can add up to cancellation.

“I am challenging the call-out culture,” Professor Ross said from her home in Atlanta, where she was lecturing on Zoom to students on a recent evening, in a blue muumuu from Ghana. “I think you can understand how calling out is toxic. It really does alienate people, and makes them fearful of speaking up.”

‘Uncomfortable Conversations’ That perspective has made Professor Ross, 67, an unlikely figure in the culture wars. A radical Black feminist who has been doing human rights work for four decades, she was one of the signatories of a widely denounced letter in Harper’s Magazine, for which she herself was called out. “There’s such an irony for being called out for calling out the calling-out culture,” she said. “It really was amusing.”

Professor Ross has been an activist for more than 40 years, and she helped organize a delegation of women of color at the March for Women’s Lives in 1989. Professor Ross has been an activist for more than 40 years, and she helped organize a delegation of women of color at the March for Women’s Lives in 1989.Credit...Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History, Smith College Special Collections At Smith College, Professor Ross teaches courses called White Supremacy in the Age of Trump, of which the “calling in” module is part, and Reproductive Justice. Yet she tells students when they enroll: “If you need a trigger warning or a safe space, I urge you to drop this class.”

“I think we overuse that word ‘trigger’ when really we mean discomfort,” she said. “And we should be able to have uncomfortable conversations.”

She doesn’t believe people should be publicly shamed for accidentally misgendering a classmate, which she once did, leading to a Title IX complaint that was later dismissed; for sending a stupid tweet they now regret; or for, say, admitting they once liked a piece of pop culture now viewed in a different light, such as “The Cosby Show.”