Calling In

 Calling In: How to Start Making Change With Those You'd Rather Cancel, by Loretta J. Ross

I really appreciated the theme of this book.  It's an argument against calling people out, which often comes with publicly humiliating them.  A callout triggers a person's fight-or-flight defenses and makes them defensive and angry -- it definitely doesn't change hearts and minds.  And often, the person doing the callout is not aware of all the circumstances or the intention of the called-out person.  It can cause a lot of damage and destroy relationships.

Why not try calling in instead?  It's more difficult!  It takes discipline and thought and empathy!  It's work, and you might not feel like you owe this jerk your work.  In which case maybe you don't want to do that right now, but it's better to stay quiet than to start spraying everyone with a firehose of anger.

Calling in is making an effort to draw nearer, to find out why that person made such an insensitive comment, or has that blind spot, or made those choices.  It is a practice of love in action, in trying to heal wounds rather than tear more open.  It allows people to -- sometimes -- become allies in a common cause rather than enemies.  In my church we call it being a peacemaker.

Ross is a good person to talk about how to do this.  She had a lot of anger to deal with, and has seen and experienced a lot of injustice.  And she has worked in a lot of places where she had to learn to understand others' perspectives and teach them about her own.  She has some excellent stories about how she learned these lessons (the hard way), finally culminating in helping a prominent neo-Nazi escape his group and even go on a speaking tour with her.

It's a fascinating read, and surprisingly fast because it's gripping.  Here are a couple of quotations: 

Whatever begins in anger, ends in shame. -- Benjamin Franklin

I've learned that, as Audre Lorde predicted, my anger doesn't protect me.  Anger clouds by thinking and stops me from processing what's going on.  It detours me toward visions of revenge and punishment, toward a cathartic call out, where I can release the built-up charge like a lightning bolt.  But it takes an obvious toll.  It leaves me ragged and on edge, and it turns call out-riven spaces into minefields, where one frustrated outburst sets off the next. 

 Definitely recommended!