By Chris Satullo

I got to meet one of my new heroes last week.

She’s a 70-year-old Black woman of fierce intellect and infectious laugh, gap-toothed and given to colorful garb. She’s a renowned feminist and activist who was on the ground floor of the fights for reproductive rights and against rape and domestic violence.

She is Loretta Ross, now a professor at Smith College, whose new mission is to help her progressive friends, particularly young ones, grasp just how damaging their penchant for being judgmental and punitive can be. She is touring the nation giving talks on how to move from being “performatively woke” to being productively progressive.

We are living in a “dangerous moment for our democracy” that requires Americans to recalibrate how they respond to ideas and actions that displease them, Ross told a captivated Zoom audience recently at a program I moderated for a University of Pennsylvania program called the Red and Blue Exchange.

“In a way I’m excited and joyful about it, because I’m too young to have dealt with segregation,” she said. “This is our lunch counter moment. This is our time to stand up against bigotry, injustice and hatred in relation to these tumultuous times. We may not get beaten up and spat upon, but it is our time to speak up for free speech, pluralism and a just society.”

You can watch her full talk and Q-and-A here.

And Ross made it clear that she doesn’t believe all the bigotry and hatred comes from just one side.

She said she’s pained by progressives who “use their status, identity or knowledge to abuse someone else – because they believe in purity, that’s there’s only one way to think or behave, and they are the ones who are perfect. The way they walk through the world is looking for a fight, while trying to silence other people.”

The tactics of a movement should align with its supposed values, she said: “We have to recognize the importance of non-violence, because that will put the different tactics of those we oppose into high relief.”

It does little good to gain power or status, then use it in the same damaging ways that those who oppressed you did, Ross advised: “You cannot defeat oppression by using the master’s tools.”

She laid out what she called the “5 C’s continuum” for how people can respond to words or deeds that upset or offend them. You can, she said:

• Call on someone to do better.
• Call them out for being wrong, or unjust.
• Cancel them.
• Call the conversation off.
• Or, her favorite move, call them in.

All five ways have their proper moments and uses, she said. In her view, though, toxic uses of calling out and cancelling are endemic, while too few people have the inner calm and courage to use her favorite tactic: calling people in “with respect and love.”

To call in, she explained, is to “invite people into a conversation rather than a fight…You are more likely to have an influence if you are listening carefully, respecting their humanity even as you disagree with them. The person who uttered those words will start walking them back because they did not get the reaction they were counting on.”

Calling out someone, with the intent to shame and humiliate, “can be a paradox, because it’s not likely to get you the results you desire. It’s more likely to lock someone into their position.”

As part of the program, Ross chatted with three students who are taking SNF Paideia’s civil dialogue seminar this semester: Hadriana Lowenkron, Lindsey Perlman and Will Cooke. She advised them that, whenever you speak out, whether it’s against injustice or hypocritical “performative wokeness,” criticism is inevitable.

“You always have a choice. Guard your integrity, not your reputation,” she told them. “Whatever pain you get from speaking your truth will never be as hard as the pain from realizing that when the moment came, you failed to do so.”

Some other memorable quotes:

• “Performative wokeness doesn’t bother me as much as it does some other people. If someone, say, puts out a Black Lives Matter flag, even if they do nothing to back it up, at least I know they are not on the other side. It’s not worth putting my energy into criticizing them.”

• “We should not be a group-think cult…That’s not how movements behave. Our diversity of thought is our strength.”

• “White supremacy is a particular ideology. Not everyone who is white is a white supremacist.”

• “Your trauma is not a prep school. Some of the most damaging things I hear are phrases like: I’m hurt, I’m afraid, that person is toxic, I don’t feel safe.  People use these words to shut down their own opportunities for growth.”

• “Remember: The other people you’re talking to are as complicated as you are. They are not just the one thing you’re mad about. Also remember: All of us have done something stupid sometime on a cell phone or a laptop or somewhere. Why do we think we get to weaponize someone else’s gotcha moment?”

• “A lot of calling out is driven by a lack of self-forgiveness; if you can’t forgive yourself for the mistakes you’ve made, chances are you can’t forgive others who make a mistake.”

Loretta Ross, to me, is an impeccable messenger with an urgent message for the people who want to be on the right side of history but keep wondering why history seems reluctant to go their way. They need to see that, while others may be a far bigger part of the problem, their own self-righteous, ungenerous ways play a meaningful role in making things worse.

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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia