S12E6 – Calling In with Loretta Ross

S12E6 - Calling In with Loretta Ross

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Dr. Val: And I am Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is Calling In with Loretta Ross. Val, we got a genius.

Dr. Val: We have a certified genius. Like, there's no hyperbole in that.

Andrew: This is a fact.

Dr. Val: We're legit.

Andrew: Fact checkers will confirm that we do have a genius on the episode today. Dr. Loretta Ross won the MacArthur Genius Award in 2022, and we can confirm from the conversation that listeners are about to hear, she is in fact a genius.

Dr. Val: 100%. Because what she taught us wasn't even her major. Hello.

Andrew: Right. Yeah. She studied biology and chemistry and somehow found herself, starting out doing reproductive justice work, and human rights work, and racial justice work, and now at the tail end of her career has really focused on trying to disrupt the call out culture by shifting to what she calls calling in.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I am sure I have called people out in ways that have made them feel uncomfortable, especially when I was active on social media, but my hope is that more often than not, I'm calling people in.

Andrew: Yeah, and you know the distinction, and we’ll get into this in the interview, but the distinction she makes is really public vs private, and if you’re coming from a place of anger and frustration or starting from a place of love and respect. And, I think it’s really easy to look around at, particularly social media and see the toxic effects of the callout culture and how it is really everywhere. And, she's been really focused on this, uh, in this part of her career here for a number of years. And, trying to help people think of new ways to interact with people who maybe they disagree with deeply or vehemently. Maybe they come from very different backgrounds, but that, that, you know, her belief at least is that there's always something you can learn from somebody.

Dr. Val: And I think what is really powerful about her story is that she lived this out time and time and time and time again, even in the most difficult circumstances. And so with that, we do have a little warning for parts of the conversation that may be difficult to hear. Dr. Ross, uh, was a victim of rape and incest. And so she talks very openly about her experience, including conversations that she has had with convicted rapists.

Andrew: Dr. Ross takes us straight into the trauma that has sort of led to her feeling like this is an important piece of her work now. So, yeah. Fair warning. We go there quickly.

Dr. Val: Yeah, what is miraculous about Dr. Ross is that despite the hardship that she faced in her life, she has arrived to such a place of grace for everyone around her.

Andrew: Yeah. And peace. Yeah. And maybe one of our guests who smiled the most throughout the whole recording…

Dr. Val: Yes.

Andrew: …despite talking about these very difficult topics. And, um, I think it is that love and respect and peace and comfort that she has in this phase of her life, that certainly left me after the interview, feeling a deep sense of peace and gratitude for her.

Dr. Val: Same here. And she made me feel like not only can I do the big work of calling people in that, that I didn't also have to solve the whole world.

Andrew: Yes. A much needed conversation in this moment. Excited for everyone to take a listen. Uh, shall we do it?

Dr. Val: Let's do it.

Andrew: Alright. Here's Dr. Ross.

[THEME MUSIC]

Loretta Ross: Hello, my name is Loretta Ross. I'm an associate professor at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Andrew: Amazing.

Dr. Val: And a genius. A certified genius.

Andrew: A certified genius. That’s right.

Loretta Ross: No. They've got criteria that I find suspicious if they included me.

Dr. Val: Not at all. Not at all.

Andrew: Any club that would have you as a member or something?

Loretta Ross: Right.

Andrew: Yes. You've had a long career of racial justice work, social justice work, reproductive justice work. What poured that into you? Why did you find yourself concerned about things like human rights and justice?

Loretta Ross: Well, I call myself an accidental feminist 'cause I did not plan on having a career in women and human rights. I was that typical nerd kinda kid, and I actually went to college and majored in chemistry and physics, and trust me, you do not take those courses if you don't plan on using them in your life.

But a strange thing kept happening to me. It seems like I couldn't control if and when I had sex, through rape and incest when I was a child. The incest led to a pregnancy, then I couldn't control if and when I kept a pregnancy because it was before Roe v. Wade. So I ended up having that child produced through incest. And so my only choice was whether or not to give my son up for adoption.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: And because I chose to keep him in 1969, I became permanently tethered to my rapist, which is not quite how you wanna become a mother.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: So I constantly say that I had made different decisions for my life, but my plumbing made other decisions for me. And so I fight for women's human rights because every human being should have the right to control what happens to their body, whether or not they have sex, whether or not they have children, whether they can live a life of peace or pursue their education and their pleasures. And I was denied that as a child. And so even though I'm in my seventies now, I'm still pissed off.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Understandably, understandably. Um, but you haven't channeled that justifiable rage into hate or into toxicity. But rather it seems you've consistently, throughout your life channeled that into love and into connection and into bringing people closer to you to have conversations. How did you find that as a path to channel your justifiable anger?

Loretta Ross: It is a hard fought ongoing battle because in my teen years and my twenties, I was doing community work, political organizing, working in DC to pass rent control. Became the director of the first rape crisis center in this country. So while on the outside I was serving my community and doing the good work, on the inside I was chaos.

'Cause I had not gotten any therapy for my healing. I was self-medicating through drug abuse and just hoping nobody saw what a fraud I was inside. And it wasn't until I crashed and burned.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: Literally embezzled money from the rape crisis center, I was trying my hardest to serve, to support my drug habit, that a wise old Black woman who was on my board of directors took me under her wing and said, Loretta, you made a big mistake. You need to go get some therapy. And that woman, Ama Saran, called me in when she could have called me out.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: 'Cause they did fire me justifiably.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Loretta Ross: But she knew that there was more to me than my mistakes. And because she offered me grace, I never ever forgot that. And 10 years after that, she actually recommended me for another job in the women's movement.

I benefited from not only her, but other older Black women in the Washington area, the feminists of the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties who were still around when I was developing my Black feminist consciousness. And even though I was offensive to most of them, 'cause you know, you're young, you're mouthy, you know everything. And then I'm a child of the ghetto 'cause I can drop an MF faster than I can do a please and thank you. They didn't give up on despicable me, and they saw something in me worth nurturing, worth forgiving, worth offering grace for.

So they set a template in my life, but in my twenties, I wasn't smart enough to figure out what that was. It wasn't until about 10 years ago in my sixties that I got on social media and I noticed how unbelievably cruel people were on social media.

Andrew: Right.

Loretta Ross: And when I asked the young people in my life what was going on, they said, oh, that's the call out culture. And I was surprised. I said, ‘you named it?’

Andrew: Right.

Loretta Ross: Like naming a baby or something. They said yes. I said, what are y'all doing about it? And they shrugged their shoulders and acted like it was as inevitable as gravity. And that's when I started processing what I had been through, how many times I had called people out, how many times people had called me out, but also those precious people who called me in…

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: … who didn't give up on me, who didn't think mistakes that I made were fatal, that I had more potential than I had been showing.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: And so in 2016, since I was now teaching, I asked the students, the young people I was teaching, how the callout culture was affecting them, and to a person they reported being extremely afraid of saying the wrong thing, texting the wrong thing, even wrong, wearing the wrong t-shirt for the wrong band that then got canceled.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: And I realized that they were in a much more toxic and fragile environment than even I grew up in. 'Cause we didn't have social media back then. Let me, do y'all remember how phones were when there was a party line? Like you had to make a phone call and anybody on that party line could pick it up and overhear your conversation. You had, you had to be careful what you said back then, 'cause all your neighbors could hear it.

Dr. Val: Yes. Yes.

Loretta Ross: Or even growing up with my princess phone, any person in my house could pick up the line.

Andrew: Yep.

Dr. Val: Anybody. And then they’d be quiet, listening to my conversation.

Loretta Ross: Exactly, so I know not wanting to say that thing that you couldn't walk back. But I think young people today, the digital babies have it even worse, because it's one thing when one person can say something bad about you, it's another thing when they can get 10,000 people to say that same bad thing and they can do it in an hour.

Dr. Val: Yeah. So you had Alma who called you in. Was that before or after you went to speak to William Fuller?

Loretta Ross: That was after.

Dr. Val: That was after. Alright. So you had already been practicing or you knew it was in there, your desire to build bridges.

Loretta Ross: Well, William Fuller was a Black man who was incarcerated at Lorton Reformatory, and while I was directing the Rape Crisis Center, he wrote us a letter saying that ‘outside I raped women inside un raping men. I'd like not to be a rapist anymore.’

And when I first got that letter, I wanted to cuss that man out from the bottom of my heart, 'cause I felt that everything he was enduring was just too dang bad. 'Cause he didn't… he earned his spot in jail after raping and murdering a Black woman like me. But I didn't throw it away. And eventually my curiosity won out and I think I actually visited him in jail for the first time to curse him out because I was never to hold the people who violated me accountable.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: But I, here I am with an opportunity to talk to a convicted rapist. When I got to the prison, instead of one man being there, William Fuller, there were six of them in that little room, in those concrete walls. And here I am, a rape survivor with no training at all.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: Walking in there to curse him out.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Loretta Ross: But I can only describe it now as they called me in.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: They started off by telling their stories, what they had been through, and what had led them to become violators. And what was consistent about this story is that they had become victims first because they'd been incarcerated as teenagers. And that explained why all these men sitting in this circle were all big and buff like wrestlers or MMA fighters. They had gone from victims to predators.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: As a way to protect themselves, but they entered as victims.

Dr. Val: Mm. That description, um it's giving me pause because I, I had imagined these buff muscular men that you describe in the book, and then just now I'm imagining the little boy inside of them for the first time. And what I, what I gathered just throughout all of the anecdotes in your story was that in your calling people in, you are able to see that humanity, in a way that might not be externally visible at the moment, but you see something that is worth connecting to.

Loretta Ross: Well, one of the ironies of my calling in practices and realization is that the first person you have to call in is yourself. So once I was in touch with my own humanity and my own integrity and stopped letting my trauma block me from healing, then I was able to see others. But if I could not forgive myself for not being perfect, for not knowing everything, for not doing the right thing, then I couldn't find the capacity to forgive others.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: And so calling in always starts with yourself, and the more you're in touch with your humanity and integrity, the more you can see others. If you are occluded from seeing your own humanity and integrity, then you're gonna be blind to others.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: I know you founded the Sister Song, Women of Color, Reproductive Justice Collective. You founded the National Center for Human Rights Education. All of these organizations seem to be focused around education , teaching people, helping people see, sort of the world in a different way. It seems like if, if your goal is to change the world through educating people, there has to be some sort of deep belief in the power of people to change and the ability of people to change and, and the power of like a message of love to, to lead people to change. Where, where did that come from?

Loretta Ross: I have been so fortunate to have great mentors in my life, 'cause you can learn from everybody if you dare to listen…

Andrew: Ooh, that’s good.

Loretta Ross: …and you have an open mind, even the most unlikely people. But my mentors were icons in their own right. When I monitored the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazi movement, my boss then was Reverend CT Vivian, who had been an aid to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And Reverend Vivian used to always say to us as we de-program White supremacists, that when you ask people to give up hate, then you need to be there for 'em when they do.

Dr. Val: Absolutely.

Loretta Ross: Yeah. Well, that sounds good, right? Except that I didn't buy it, you know? I'm like, oh my God, if the Klan hates a Black woman, I'm alright hating them back. I didn't want to hear that message.

But once I got into the work of listening to the pain of these White people, the same way I had to listen to the pain of those prisoners, and realize their pain was real, even if their solutions were wrong.

Andrew: Hmmmm.

Loretta Ross: Then I couldn't hate 'em anymore 'cause their pain echoed in me. These people that I was dealing with, they were like the song said, born on the backseat of America. They weren't necessarily people who had a lot of choices in life, who had privileges just gifted to 'em. Just 'cause they had White skin, didn't mean they didn't suffer . So Reverend Vivian was so important to me.

But my other mentor was Shulamith Koernig. Shula was an Israeli American. Whose original language was Hebrew and Yiddish, and she encouraged me to found the National Center of Human Rights Education. Shula had been asked to leave Israel because of her support for the Palestinians, and she was too rich and too powerful for them to just kill or disappear. So she and her husband self deported from Israel.

But she taught me a saying from the Torah. She said, in my religion, my neighbor's material needs are my spiritual needs. I can't be right with God if I'm not right with my community. God would not want me by myself if I'm not serving my community.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: And that struck me like better than the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would do unto them. Because if you care about your relationship with God and God's saying, I only care about you because of your relationship and your compassion for others, that's better than anything my teaching in Christianity has ever taught me, this individual relationship with God, regardless of how others in my community are doing.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: And so those were the kinds of influences I was privileged to get, and like I said, I'm just thankful that I had the patience to listen.

Andrew: That's beautiful. And you've channeled all of that, into this culture of calling in that I know you've been doing online workshops about, and now have finally a book, so that anybody can pick up the book and learn about calling in. To sort of dig into the content of the book a little bit, I'm wondering if you can start just by explaining what a call out is, and then how that differs from calling in.

Loretta Ross: Well, I think most of us are familiar with the concept of calling people out because that's publicly shaming and humiliating somebody for something you think they've done wrong or some thought that they had that you thought was wrong.

And what it does is it seeks to hold people accountable through shame, anger, and blaming. But probably the most important word in that previous sentence was that you did it publicly.

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: Because if you really just wanted people to course correct, you could have said something to 'em privately.

Andrew: Right.

Loretta Ross: You could have slid into the DM’s and say, you know, we used to say homeless, but now we say unhoused. Or now it's really important to get people's pronouns right. You know, you could have done it privately and helped them grow without virtue signaling how woke you are.

Andrew: Mmmm. Yep.

Loretta Ross: Now calling in is actually a call out, but instead of using anger and blaming and shaming as your method, you're choosing to use love and respect. It's believing that you can say what you mean and mean what you say, but you don't have to say it mean. That's always a choice. So I can say, that's an interesting choice of words you used. Could you tell me more about why you choose to use that word, or what's going on with you that makes you come at me like that?

Or I think that you're a better person than those words you just said about strangers. Help me understand why you made that choice, and is that actually how you wanna show up?

Andrew: Hmm. Yeah. I love… You wrote being offended to justify being offensive is what calling out is.

Dr. Val: I highlighted that too.

Andrew: Yep. I also appreciate you don't, there's lots of nuance in the book. You don't take calling out entirely off the table. There are places and times where calling out actually is called for. Can you help us understand where, where a spot that it might actually be appropriate to call somebody out is?

Loretta Ross: I am most likely to use calling out when people have been offered a chance to change and they choose not to, and they have the power to cause harm to others. I wanna stop that harm immediately.

Andrew: Right.

Loretta Ross: And still, I'm not gonna call them out first. I'm gonna say, do you recognize the impact of what you're doing? Do you care about the people you're harming? Can I help you see the impacts of your action? Now, if they say, no, no, and no, I'm lighting their asses up, {everyone laughs} because for me, that's the totally appropriate use for a call out.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh. You mentioned about how social media has exacerbated the shame that people feel when they mess up a little bit and how it can feel like a pile-on and many people virtual signaling and that there's just an addition of noise. And you're saying like, refrain from that y'all, you don't have to jump in here, you do not have to add to this if it's actually about building a relationship and connecting to someone who you hope will change based on your efforts.

I think that is a, that is an epidemic, where people either because they, they think it's the right thing to do or say, it might be funny to them, they haven't experienced it themselves and so they don't feel it in the way that the person who's receiving that particular call out might feel it. Can you talk a little bit more about how it does not necessarily help in the change that people are seeking?

Loretta Ross: I firmly believe that babies don't come out the womb wanting to mess over people.

Andrew: Right.

Loretta Ross: I think that even people who choose to bully or harm people are made into bullies. I am always infinitely curious about everyone's lived experiences, particularly if I think they have something positive to contribute to the world.

And so, when I see someone being mean, being aggressive unnecessarily, I tend to ask them about how do they guard and protect their good opinion of themselves. We call that integrity intelligence. And so we should be about making sure we feel as good about ourselves as possible, 'cause without any effort on our part, life will make us feel bad.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Loretta Ross: So if you've got that energy, pay attention to those little things you do that make you feel good, the kindness you can spread, the forgiveness you can offer to somebody, the grace you can give to somebody. And believe it or not, you're not doing it for them. You're doing it for yourself.

Dr. Val: Yeah, no, I believe that.

Loretta Ross: And the more you do that, the better you feel. You won't hold grudges unnecessarily 'cause you know you're carrying that weight for nothing. It ain't bringing you no joy. So you get the joy of letting it go.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Loretta Ross: And you are attentive to how you show up. Now a lot of people mistakenly believe that calling in is changing other people. No. Calling in is showcasing your best self.

And it offers an example, a model to other people, how to show up with their best selves. It's just like how you smile when somebody else smiles. When you offer kindness, other people start reciprocating kindness. It's amazing how that works.

Dr. Val: That's so simple. And we do that so wrong in the world.

Andrew: All the time.

Loretta Ross: Yeah. Calling in is nothing that we can't do already. I mean, think about it. When a natural disaster happens, tornado, fire, earthquake, whatever it is, we run to help. That's our human instinct. We don't stop to ask, oh, is he a citizen? Is he the right color? Who is she sleeping with? Does she go to church? Ain't none of those questions occurring to us. We have two questions. Do you need help? And can I help?

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Loretta Ross: Because that's our humanity, taking over, our human instinct as social beings at play. All I'm saying with calling in is that since it's already inside us, why can't we have that rush to kindness happen for manmade disasters too?

Dr. Val: Yeah,

Loretta Ross: Like bigotry and ignorance. And so these are timeless lessons that we have been gifted by our ancestors. The thing that most concerns me is that we’re great at quoting people but not believing them.

Dr. Val: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: When we talk about Audrey Lord, talking about the power of anger and the appropriate uses of anger, I hear a lot of students quote that, but they don't talk about how Audrey talked about radical love, so that we use our passion with compassion and that we don't weaponize our knowledges against each other. We can talk about so many gifts that we've been handed in this chain of freedom.

Dr. Val: Talk about the

Andrew: Yeah, tell us about the chain of freedom. For sure.

Loretta Ross: Because I did my activism, part of my activism in Atlanta, I was gifted many things from the civil rights movement. 'Cause I wasn't a civil rights activist. I entered through women's rights. So it was in the nineties I started learning about the Civil rights Movement.

And an old civil rights saying, says that you've got to imagine the chain of freedom. The chain of freedom stretches back towards your ancestors and forward towards your descendants, and your only job is to make sure that chain doesn't break at your link.

Andrew: Hmm.

Dr. Val: That's your only job.

Loretta Ross: And it doesn't matter where your ancestors from, because your guardianship of your link, just your link means that you need to avoid apathy, hatred, despair, cynicism. Don't jeopardize the chain because you’re so full of yourself that you think you ain't got a job to do. Now you can choose not to guard the chain, but don't deny you got the responsibility and the privilege to do so.

Dr. Val: You, you just took a load off because I was over here trying to save the world. And all I gotta do is hold, keep my chain together. Am I linking the chain?

Loretta Ross: Keep your link together.

Dr. Val: Keep my link together. I don't have to save every, this feels, you just saved my whole life. You just saved my whole life. You did. Thank you.

Loretta Ross: I mean, but we're all privileged to be here right now, and a lot of people sacrificed to get us here, and we're making sacrifices now for our descendants. But that's why I became obsessed with the call out culture. Because it was the gravest risk to everybody breaking the chain at their link.

Dr. Val: Thatof,

Loretta Ross: Because they were going to self indulge in the call out culture so much that they were gonna push away the very people they need to make change with, were going to self implode the human rights movement through political cannibalism, claiming that everybody but you is doing the work wrong. And meanwhile, the fascists are marching all the way to power.

Dr. Val: Correct.

Loretta Ross: And they know how to strategically unite each other despite hating each other. Why can't we be at least as smart as them?

Dr. Val: No, I was always confused. I would feel like, Black folks, and folks fighting for racial justice would confuse White people on the internet, they would say, ‘don't ask me any questions.’ Right. Like, you're supposed to do your own research. And then they would say, don't Google, you need to talk to somebody who actually has lived and experienced. I'm like, White people not gonna know what to do. Like you really confusing them. Right?

And so I do think because there was such a surge of trying to get information that people went to social media, that it was hard to understand like what steps you were to take because so many people were giving you different directions and you didn't wanna mess up.

Loretta Ross: Well, that's the point of understanding how to deconstruct White supremacy, which is why I'm so glad that Smith College hired me to teach White supremacy in the age of Trump. That is my course.

Dr. Val: Okay.

Loretta Ross: I start foundationally with separating the ideology of White supremacy, biological determinism, from the identity of Whiteness. Because obviously all White people are not White supremacists. And sadly, not all White supremacists are White.

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: So we got a lot of people of color that believe in White supremacist ideology, and we got a joyfully increasing number of people with white identities who are fighting ideological White supremacy. And so you can choose not to participate in the education of the White people fighting White supremacy. And I understand that feeling because they've had 500 years to study for this test, and now they want you to cram it all in in one night. So I understand the feeling, totally, but I also say if White supremacy could have been defeated by Black people alone, it would've been long gone.

Dr. Val: Correct?

Loretta Ross: So it is logical to know we need the people who constructed this system, who best understand how to be socialized in supporting ideological White supremacy to participate in this deconstruction.

Dr. Val: Amen.

Loretta Ross: The same way when I'm working against rape, I wanna educate men to talk to other men, because men often best listen to other men.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: I'm convinced that some White people that socialize to best listen to other White people.

Andrew: 100%.

Loretta Ross: And so it's only logical I'm not doing it 'cause I'm trying to sing Kumbaya with everybody. I mean, it's probably a nice song, but I'm far more committed to being strategically effective with my life. I mean, activism is the art of making your life matter. I never have to wonder why I am put on this earth, what my purpose in life is.

Everything I've been through prepared me for this moment and I so enjoy sitting in the midst of the ambiguity and chaos that my enemies fear. I was designed for dealing with change. I mean, I'm a descendant of Mitochondrial Eve who created humanity, and I have the joy and the responsibility of participating and saving it. I just find that is such a precious heritage and I am not gonna squander it.

Dr. Val: Amen.

Loretta Ross: And everybody's a cousin, by the way. That's how you have to see it. Everybody's a cousin that just baked in the oven at different degrees.

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh.

Andrew: Um, that, that sitting in, in the discomfort, in the ambiguity. I love that you brought that up. I think that certainly a lot of what I took from the book and from your previous work is getting comfortable with discomfort.

You know, one of the things that draws us to hate, that draws us to simplistic reduction of people into categories is the discomfort of grappling with people's full humanity. Can you talk a little bit about being comfortable with discomfort?

Loretta Ross: Well, I find that the world of ambiguity is our natural playground when we are trying to humble ourselves to enjoy the fullness of what life and opportunity offers. But the people who are afraid of ambiguity thrive on predictability, control, and certainty. They really can't figure out how to have a meaningful life if they're not in control. If they're not sure of their certainties and if they can't control outcomes of everything.

But what frightens them, embraces us. We welcome the chaos of evolution, and so it's a pleasure to stand as a Black woman as part of an African diaspora with a foot on multiple continents. And seeing what I can do to interrupt that system so that we can say, we've got enough food to feed the world. Let's just figure out how to arrange it better.

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: You know, we got enough knowledge to stop cop climate change. Let's just figure out how to do it better. I don't, I don't accept suffering as inevitable, though I can't say it's predictable.

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: Uh, I don't accept that we haven't been offered amazing gifts with which we can make the changes that can build the world we deserve. But it starts with connecting to each other's humanity.

Andrew: Yeah,

Loretta Ross: The way we would in that fire or that flood.

Andrew: I wanna go back to the, you know, this CT Vivian quote you said, when you ask someone to give up hate, you need to be there for them when they do. I definitely believe that hate is toxic. That movements built on hate, burn fast and bright and then burn themselves out because hate is not a sustaining emotion.

Hating other people with other people has a draw to it. But I think there is something inherently, toxic about that, that people probably want to get away from.

I also think what we see nowadays is movements that replicate hate, movements that sustain White supremacy that have gotten away a little bit from the language of hate. And I'm, I'm thinking specifically when it comes to, to schools. Think about the work of Elizabeth McRae, who wrote a book called The Mothers of Massive Resistance.

Loretta Ross: I've had a chance to work with Elizabeth. She's, and she's again, one of those accidental human rights activists that didn't start out wanting to write The Mothers of Massive Resistance, but her curiosity led her to the, what were the women. Who could be my grandmother doing in the fifties?

Andrew: Right, right. Yeah. And, and you know, she talks about, you know, tending the garden of White supremacy and, you know, we think about massive resistance and the, the men, the powerful men who are in charge, who are, you know, making declarative statements of, you know, segregation now segregation forever. But the real work that was going on behind the scenes was this tending the garden of White supremacy.

And I think one of the, the brilliant, and lastingly toxic decisions that those mothers made was to try to eliminate some of the hateful rhetoric from the movement while maintaining the White supremacy. And so, um, you know, instead of saying, I don't want my kid to go to school with Black kids, saying I want my kid to have a curriculum that, you know, I believe in, or I want my kid to go to their local neighborhood school while I'm living in a segregated neighborhood. These ways that the kind of toxicity has been removed.

And I'm wondering how you think about calling in those people who have bought into that ideology that feels more based in love, that feels more based in support of public institutions. I'm thinking particularly about, you know, parents choosing based on a support for public schools, but their public school is full of White and wealthy kids and is, you know, hoarding resources and opportunity. And so there isn't quite as much toxic hate at the surface of, of their choices. But it feels to me at least, certainly the work of Integrated Schools is about trying to call those people in to maybe see the toxicity in, in their actions in a different way.

Loretta Ross: I think first of all, I would stop using words like toxicity…

Andrew: Okay.

Loretta Ross: …if I wanted them to see things differently, because that's a form of name calling,

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: Right?

Andrew: Thank you for that. Yeah.

Loretta Ross: And so. If I were to provide an education in those schools, I would talk about the ideas of the far right and the White supremacist movement and how they get mainstreamed into our culture even today.

'Cause the White supremacist movement, they believe your race is your destiny. And we call that biological determinism. But by the same token, when those same ideas are transmitted into our society through Christian nationalism, instead of saying, ‘your race is your destiny’, the Christian nationalists will say, ‘the type of Christianity you practice is your destiny.’ And so they will divide people into the right Christians and everybody else. Then those same ideas move into the conservative movement. And for them, it's not race, it's not religion. It's the right behaviors.

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: Whether or not you are, you know, a maker of wealth or a taker of wealth. And so they're the ones to push the rhetoric of we the hardworking people who are being exploited and used by all these lazy immigrants, Black people, queer people, you know, the rhetoric, right? Same ideas but different guises.

And so by the time it comes to the mothers in that all White school, they don't believe in biological determinism. They don't believe in Christian nationalism. They may not even believe in the harsh, benefit the rich policies of the Heritage Foundation, but they do believe in tradition. And they've been socialized to think that the traditions they fight to uphold are all that's available to them, and it's the best that they can offer. And so they are fighting for what they think is best for their child.

Andrew: Right.

Loretta Ross: We have to help them explore the definition of what best means.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Loretta Ross: Because when they show up at my rich private school, whether it's from public schools, private school, or homeschooling. And a college that is as White as Smith College, it's their first experience of diversity. They shouldn't be 18 years old and being brutalized by the concept that everybody ain't like them.

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: Not only that, through that entire educational system before they got to us, there's a lot of hidden violence that our children experience.

That's why we got the raft. The school shootings, they're by those rich White kids in those schools, right? You don't, I'm sorry, our Black communities got problems, but they're killing each other in the hood, they ain't bringing all these guns to schools and committing school massacres. That's happening in these so-called good schools with ample resources.

So long before they even get to an environment that's racially diverse or class diverse, they're having to deal with a lot of normalized brutality in their so-called good school environments.

And so helping those mothers understand that it is not serving your children well to disguise or to ignore the fact that not everybody at this school comes from wealth. And the kid whose dad is a janitor is afraid to tell the rest of their classmates for fear that they're gonna get bullied because they can't take a trip to Europe during the summer. They gotta get a summer job. Or, you know, my daddy's beating my mama, but we are not supposed to talk about our business outside the house. Or you know when you see a child in a wheelchair and you say, mommy, what's wrong with that person? Hush, shush. You're not supposed to notice that.

Dr. Val: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: You’re not supposed to say anything about that. We're doing a lot of bad parenting, calling it good parenting. And so I would ask those mothers in those good schools, let us work on the definition of what we mean by good.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: What you just said about parenting, you mentioned, we identify, keeping our, our children uninformed, ignorant, as a method of good parenting.

Loretta Ross: Right. We believe in sexual and racial and disability and queer ignorance as a way of protecting their innocence, but the world is not going to keep those things from your child. It's just that you're preparing them for not seeing you as the person who they can most trust to tell about 'em.

Dr. Val: A conversation that Andrew and I have a lot of times is, you know, when people say, oh, we don't wanna talk about race in school. I'm like, my kids are very comfortable about talking about race because it's something that they've had to talk about and I've had to figure out as a parent how to talk about since they had language, right? And so when we try to protect kids from these various realities that other families are facing, it's not because young people aren't aware.

So I live in Charlotte right now. You know, we're in the news for the increased ICE and Border patrol presence here and the raids. And children have been told by their parents, here's what you should do if I don't come home. Right? And so if, if as parents we don't have the courage to have those same conversations, I think we are definitely doing a disservice to our young people.

Loretta Ross: I think it's bad parenting to not use the fact that your child trusts you and knows your commitment to keeping them safe, to not twin that with commitment to keeping them informed. If they don't get the information they need from the person who has their best interests at heart, they're gonna get it from somewhere else, and it may not be from someone who has their best interests at heart. I mean, I got a funny story to tell about that 'cause I'm a grandmother now so I can tell all these stories.

Dr. Val: I love it. I love it.

Loretta Ross: My son came of sexual age in the day of AIDS in the 1980s. And I had done everything I could to equip my son with, you know, age appropriate sex education and stuff, because failing to do so was bad parenting when your child having sex could kill him. I mean, this is, this is the immediacy we were dealing with.

So one day I'm in the kitchen preparing dinner. My son and two of his friends say, mama, we wanna talk to you. And every parent knows that when they introduce it, it is something serious. 'cause otherwise they blurt it out, you know?

Dr. Val: Correct.

Loretta Ross: And I said, what's up? Uh, we want you to go to the store and get us some condoms. I said, what you need condoms for? He was 14. He said, oh mom, you know, oh. I said, oh, I'm sorry. That was the wrong question. Why do you think I have to go to the store and get them? He said, well, everybody knows you have to be 18.

Andrew: Wow.

Loretta Ross: All the great information I had provided my child got trumped by one piece of bad information from the school.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: I had never even heard that.

Loretta Ross: And so you not only have to do it once, you have to do it over and over and over again, but I was the trusted confidant for my son and his friends. From that moment of that conversation, I kept a punch bowl full of condoms by my front door.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Loretta Ross: And every couple of months, those hundreds of condoms disappeared. And I know my son wasn't having that much sex. We were supplying the entire neighborhood. {everyone laughs}

Dr. Val: He's like, I got you. I got you, homie. I got you. Don't worry.

Loretta Ross: He might have been selling them at school. I don't know what was happening. But I'm saying that I like the fact that he trusted me enough to come to me with the question, and it allowed me to correct the misinformation he'd gotten from school. And by my response, I was able to not only increase his trust, that he could bring me most things 'cause he didn't bring me everything. He's a boy. So a lot of stuff I didn't find out till he got grown.

Dr. Val: Yeah,

Loretta Ross: But still that trust that your child offers you is the most precious thing in the world, and you need to do everything in your power to maintain that trust. And the thing that's most likely to break trust is the failure to tell the truth.

Andrew: And the failure to prepare them. There are people who are here that like, yeah, I want my kids to trust me and I'm gonna make them trust me by keeping them from discomfort, by keeping them from seeing the realities of the world. But you can't actually do that.

And it doesn't actually protect them because inevitably they will come up against the reality of the injustices of the world we live in. And, you know, kids have nothing, if not a sense of fairness, innate in them. I think there's like an innate desire to connect with people, an innate desire to help, and an innate sense of fairness. And that sense of fairness gets violated so often because we live in a world that isn't fair. And if we don't give them the tools to see that and to understand that, and to then be able to talk about it, then, then we're not actually protecting them. We're not actually giving them, you know, a cushion. We're not giving them a safe space. We're making them not trust us.

Loretta Ross: See a lot of the patterns that inform the call out culture are imprinted in our childhood,

Andrew: Hmm.

Loretta Ross: Like when you were a child and if you've made a mistake and you were severely punished and humiliated for making that mistake, then you're gonna think it's normal to punish and humiliate others for making mistakes. 'Cause that pattern has been said in you and you have not been taught self-forgiveness and recovery.

But at the same time, if you were a child and you made a mistake and your parents said, I still love you despite making that mistake, and I'm gonna teach you what you could learn from that mistake. And how to do better. Then you've been taught forgiveness. You've been taught that the love of your mom or your parent is durable, is not based on you being a perfect child.

Andrew: Right.

Loretta Ross: That you can grow and learn from making mistakes. And so you're gonna become an adult predisposed to help other people grow and help other people learn forgiveness.

So our choice as adults is, do we wanna continue those damaging patterns of our childhood or as adults do we wanna make different decisions about how we handle our mistakes and other people's mistakes? We have choices now.

Dr. Val: Yeah,

Andrew: Yeah, I heard you say that the only thing we risk when we call in is losing our own pain.

Loretta Ross: Yeah. And I'm not sure if I wanna cling to my pain so securely that it's a blanket that I can't let go of.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Um, the choice I want us to make is to only invite Black women of grandmother age on the show, Andrew, because they don't miss. Okay.

Loretta Ross: Oh no. I mean there's so much that I still mess up on honey, but you know what age has privileged me with, the joy of owning my mistakes and not let them damage my opinion of myself. But like I said, delight in that ambiguity. Delight in the fact that I'm still a work in progress. In my seventies, I have not stopped learning. I have not stopped boogieing, I have not stopped enjoying. And it is such a wonderful place to be at peace with who you really are, who you authentically are, then performing a role or a script that's been designed for you by somebody else.

Dr. Val: Amen. Thank you for sharing all of your joy with us today.

Loretta Ross: Well, I don't always have fun, but I work on it because like I said, I'm a lot of still, people still piss me off and I have to take that deep breath.

And by the way, we're used to putting ourselves on pause. I just want us to universalize that pause, that practice, so instead of speaking that first thought from your trauma, how about giving yourself time to speak the second thought from your intelligence and your integrity.

Dr. Val: Mm mm.

Andrew: Absolutely. Thank you for this. Thank you for all of your work.

I was looking back, getting ready for this, so. In, I guess, 21 or 22, you were doing some of your online workshops. A number of people from Integrated Schools, the organization participated in them, and we started a little Slack thread. I wasn't able to do them at that time, but, I was just going back through all these Slack messages of the people who were just like in the midst of taking the workshop and sort of sharing, you know, they're all on Zoom in different parts of the country and were so moved by the workshops and, and touched by it.

And one of our chapter leaders, this woman Bridget, who when I think about what she's contributed so much of, what grounded her in recent years was this idea of getting comfortable with discomfort. And I hadn't realized just how much of that came from you and from your workshop.And so going back to, you know, early 2021 and seeing her just like sitting and grappling with this idea of being comfortable with discomfort, really like rippled out. So, you know, from your workshop there to the rest of this organization, now we've got, you know, 40 some odd chapters around the country and, um, this work rippling out.

So I do think there is real power in the love and the joy and the ask that you make for us to see each other's humanity is powerful and it is spreading and I'm just so grateful for, for you sharing it and coming on and sharing with us today. So thank you.

Loretta Ross: Well, thank you. I'm glad to hear that butterfly effect from my work. We've reached thousands and thousands of people over the last five years. So I like to think that the calling in culture is there. It's in the zeitgeist, it's proliferating, and stories like yours tell me it was all worth it.

Andrew: Absolutely. Thank you again. Thanks for this. This was a beautiful conversation.

Dr. Val: Thank you. This was.

[THEME MUSIC]

Andrew: So Val, what'd you think?

Dr. Val: I am leaving wanting a deep exhale after that conversation. Not only because of the heaviness of some of the topics, but truly because the lessons that she has learned through all of the things that have happened in her life, some outside of her control and some within her control, really illustrates to me the strength of the human spirit.

There were too many examples where I would've been like, you know what? I'm good. I am good. I'm not trying to do any more good. I am done. And she found a way to not only be that person, but to share so much of what she has learned with anyone who will listen.

Andrew: Yeah, very inspiring story, to turn tragedy and trauma into such a force for good. And thinking about kind of the ripples of her work, uh, certainly at Integrated Schools, the idea of comfort with discomfort, of leaning in when things feel awkward or feel uncomfortable, and really connecting to other people's humanity. Like I, I can't think of anything we need more right now than that. You know, the way the world is, the way that people are struggling to get along, the way that social media is accentuating callouts.

Dr. Val: And rewarding them,

Andrew: And rewarding it, exactly. That what we need right now is this mindset that Dr. Ross somehow has been able to cultivate, despite, you know, having, having so many things to overcome.

Dr. Val: Yeah. I wanna make this clear like, we believe in calling in, and Dr. Ross has said sometimes the call out is necessary because we need folks who have the power to harm, to stop that harm as quickly as possible. Right?

Andrew: Yeah. The nuance and the subtlety, you know, it is not all kumbaya. She said it is not just about everybody gets as many chances as they need, that there is a time and place where calling out is, is necessary, and can we pause and reflect before we decide whether we're calling out or calling in?

Can we stop and ask, is there some humanity here that is worth tapping into? Is there a way to ask this person, Hey, I believe that you could show up better. Would you like to show up better? And that work feels really important and powerful and sometimes overwhelming. And I really appreciated the chain of freedom.

Dr. Val: Oh, I did too.

Andrew: You know, the idea that it can all feel overwhelming, but our job is to keep our link in the chain unbroken. Definitely gave me some peace.

Dr. Val: Yeah, it, it did make me feel like what I'm doing is enough. When, you know, in times like this we're like, are we doing enough? Should we be doing more? But I believe that just the way you and I operate, our chains, our link in the chain will stay. And we are passing that on to, to the young people in our life.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Val: Something else that just really stood out to me is when she talks about the need to be strategic, right? And how when we have like internal conflicts, we can waste time trying to have perfectly aligned ideology instead of figuring out what we agree upon and moving forward.

One thing that she writes is, “I don't see perfect ideological unity as a goal that's either achievable or desirable.”

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: “Our pursuit of a perfect ideology, sacrificing a good outcome for perfect results is a futile tactic that's characteristic of a narrow imagination.”

Andrew: Hmm. She says in the book basically that, a bunch of people with the exact same ideology moving in the same direction as a cult, that a movement is a bunch of people with differing ideas, but moving in the same direction.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And you know, when I think about us applying this idea to the work that we are trying to do in schools and in school communities, it seems so much easier than trying to have it with a Ku Klux Klan member. So we can figure this out. Y'all

[laughter]

Andrew: Right, yeah.

Dr. Val: Like there 'cause we do agree that we want the best for for our children, right? We want safety. And so can we start with something like gun control, where our kids can be safe in schools? Right. We want them nourished. So can we start with something like food programs that are healthy, right?

Andrew: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, school schools really do provide this opportunity, to create environments of calling in. And again, there is certainly power in a school environment to say, here's the culture that we are gonna model here. I feel like the potential to kind of build that skillset of calling in is really there, if we can encourage schools to focus on that.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Andrew: I mean, she talks about, she's a professor at Smith, a highly coveted, prized university, that there are students who are showing up there and it, and Smith, which is not a like particularly diverse school, but even in that environment, she has students who are showing up and that is their first real exposure to diversity. That is their first real encounter with people who have different backgrounds and different ideas.

And I feel like that is the way that our current education system is, is not setting our kids up for success, is by not giving them any of those skills and any of that practice early on.

Dr. Val: That's something that I think we, we have the ability to, as parents lean into. And so I was really, the part when she talked about good parenting versus bad parenting and trust, like that was huge for me because our children do trust us to have these conversations with them.

And so the ways in which we can continue to practice the work that she talks about is having these conversations with our children, is being open to them saying, Hey, I have questions about this, or Can you get me some condoms? Right?

[CHUCKLES]

I understand, I understand the thought of like, I wanna keep my kids sheltered.I do understand that. Right. And that doesn't seem like the safest, smartest way to go about preparing your children. If my kids have a question, I wanna be the one…

Andrew: Because you have their best interest at heart, right? They're gonna get the information somewhere. You can't actually protect them from the struggles of the world. You can't actually keep them from coming face to face with the inequities that exist in our society.

And if you don't give them any understanding of it, they can take the wrong messages from it. If you don't give them a safe space to have the conversations, then they're gonna go find the information elsewhere. And we've certainly seen what happens when, particularly I'm thinking about like, White boys, go and try to find the answers to those things. They find it online and it's an incredibly toxic space. And so, yeah, the work of, of creating that safe space where you're constantly calling your kids in where your kids can call you in feels like really important parenting work.

And just a shout out, uh, Meredith, one of our chapter leaders in New York City has a great blog post on our website right now about this idea of kind of how to be a good parent. So, encourage everyone to go check that out. There'll be a link in the show notes.

Dr. Val: Awesome. I was pausing and I'm thinking if they're, if my kids are asking about something that I'm not sure of or I haven't interrogated my own ideas, it's also an opportunity for you to learn with your kids. They have so much grace for you. Right?

So say they see police brutality or ICE brutality on TV and they're like, What is going on? I think it's okay for you to say, I don't know, let's find out like what is actually happening together and not just change the channel because it does not make the pain go away. And it will not make the reality go away.

Andrew: Yeah. And I think that the act of like, how do you, how do you figure out what's real information? How do you figure out what's valid information? How do you figure out whose opinion you should listen to and who you shouldn't? Is all skills that I don't think our kids are necessarily getting in their education system, but are so crucial to being, you know, active participants in society today.

And so yeah, I think there's, there's real potential in kind of modeling the process for sorting through some of these tricky things as well. And if what our kids get from us is, that's tricky, I'm shutting it down, or I'm moving away, then, then that's gonna be the message they take rather than like, yeah, I don't know, let's lean in and, and see - this is uncomfortable and let's figure out what we can figure out together.

Dr. Val: That's right, that's right. So despite how heavy the conversation was, I left feeling like, alright, there are things that we can do. There are things that we have been doing, there's things that we can get better at. Um, there's conversations that I even felt more willing to have after the conversation with her.

Right. And I don't believe that everyone is the connector, right? Like, there might be some people that I just, I need them like, mmm, I need them to move a little bit further before they meet me on the bridge, you know? Yeah. Um, but there's certainly conversations that I can have that don't have to feel contentious, angry, mad. And we can still get to the point where I'm staying true to my own values. Right. I'm not giving those up. But we can, we can have a conversation.

Andrew: Yeah, I really appreciated when, when she said that calling in is not about changing the other person. It's about showing up as your best self. Because then the pressure is off. You know, if, if, if your goal is to call in to change somebody's heart and they don't change, then you failed.

But if the goal is for you to show up as the best version of yourself, and to use that as an example that somebody may or may not follow, then all you can do is show up as the best version of yourself. And I mean, that's not easy. It still takes work. There's still plenty of things pushing us to not show up as the best version of ourselves.

But if that's the ultimate goal, you come out ahead, whether the person's mind is changed in that moment or not. And so often people's minds are not changed in that moment. But, you know, little seeds get planted that slowly grow and, you know, maybe get harvested, six months or two years, or 10 years down the road and you just never know about it.

Dr. Val: Literally that. And so, you know, I wanna encourage folks to read it. I wanna encourage folks to go into 2026, like with some of these things in mind. I want it to show up with us grounded in our communities, in our humanity, in wanting to connect with others and wanting to build a better world and really lean into caring for one another. That's, that's, that's the 2026 I'm working toward.

Andrew: Yeah. Like, who knows what 2026 will hold , what will be out of our control that comes along in 2026. But what we do know is that we have control over how we show up. And I think showing up with a mindset towards calling in and towards, love and respect and building community can never be a bad approach.

Dr. Val: That's right. This is lovely.

Andrew: Listeners, what did you think? How are you thinking about calling in? Let us know.

Send us a voice memo speakpipe.com/integratedschools, S-P-E-A-K-P-I-P-E.com/integratedschools. We would love to hear about your calling in or your calling out examples. Have you been called out? Have you been called in? How is that showing up for you? We wanna know!

Dr. Val: That's right. We also love gifts and it's the time to give. It's time to give. So if you have the ability to give, we'd appreciate if you, uh, hit the donate button on integratedschools.org. All of your donations go directly to the work of Integrated Schools.

Andrew: Yes. Help support the podcast. You can also do that on patreon, patreon.com/integratedschools. We've got transcripts and show notes and, facilitation questions over there, which we would be grateful for your support that way as well.

Dr. Val: Also like, absolutely listen to this episode, use the study guide and the conversation guide and go have conversations with people about this book. I left feeling like I need to make sure that this is in the rotation that I am telling everyone about this text because I do think it is what is needed right now in this moment.

Andrew: And tell everybody about this episode. Share it with your parent groups, share it in your PTAs, share it with your school leaders. It's an important conversation and an important skill that we need to foster both in our kids and in each other - calling in.

Dr. Val: That's right.

Andrew: Well, Val, so grateful for Dr. Ross for coming on, for sharing her sense of peace and, uh, comfort and left that conversation feeling so much hope.And I always feel that when we get to be in conversation as well, I am grateful to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.