adrienne Marie brown: Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us?
Call-out culture sucks. So does cancel culture. Very rarely does it do anything other than perpetuate more harm.
One of my favorite thinkers and writers on transformative justice is adrienne marie brown (uncapitalised intentionally - this is how adrienne writes their name); closely followed by Disability rights activist Mia Mingus.
adrienne wrote an article in 2021 which feels relevant to share, so I will, below.
The ANPA was founded on the view that remaining in community with each other protects us all. That learning how to repair, restore, and be together, is important. It was also founded on the humble notion that since this was the first time an org of this kind had been founded, it was probably going to take time to figure out how to build and sustain the community we have been trying to nurture together.
As it so happens, that has been very, very true.
I do not always get doing transformative justice right. I often get it wrong. I acknowledge this. But I am trying very, very hard to live my values at a time when it is challenging to do so.
I do know that the online world urges us to go faster, to respond harder - and that is not conducive to care or to justice. Our neurodivergent sense of time, our propensity to hyper focus, our relative difficulty with making and maintaining boundaries as people with high levels of trauma - all of this complicates matters.
This is why a kinder framework helps. Something to hang our hats on. Something to look to, when the temptation to put each other in the stocks and walk away, rises.
Anyway, enough from me. Here is an excerpt from adrienne’s article - you can follow the link at the end to read the whole thing.
x Sarah
adrienne says:
“I’ve been thinking a lot about transformative justice lately.
In the past few months I’ve been to a couple of gatherings I was really excited about, and then found myself disappointed, not because drama kicked up, which is inevitable, but because of how we, as participants and organizers and people, handled those dramas.
Simultaneously I’ve watched several public takedowns, call outs, and other grievances take place on social and mainstream media. Some of those have been of strangers, but recently I’ve had the experience of seeing people I know and love targeted and taken down. In most cases, very complex realities get watered down into one flawed aspect of these people’s personalities, or one mistake or misunderstanding. A mob mentality takes over then, an evisceration of character that is punitive, traumatizing, and isolating.
This has happened with increasing frequency over the past year, such that I’m wondering if those of us with an intention of transforming the world have a common understanding of the kind of justice we want to practice, now and in the future.
What we do now is find out someone or some group has done (or may have done) something out of alignment with our values. Some of the transgressions are small—saying something fucked-up, being disrespectful in a group process. Some are massive—false identity, sexual assault.
We then tear that person or group to shreds in a way that affirms our values. We create memes, reducing someone to the laughing stock of the Internet that day. We write think-pieces on how we are not like that person, and obviously wouldn’t make the same mistakes they have made. We deconstruct them as thinkers, activists, groups, bodies, partners, parents, children—finding all of the contradictions and limitations and shining bright light on them. When we are satisfied that that person or group is destroyed, we move on. Or sometimes we just move on because the next scandal has arrived, the smell of fresh meat overwhelming our interest in finishing the takedown.
I say “we” and “our” intentionally here. I’m not above this behavior. I laugh at the memes, I like the apoplectic statuses, the rants with no named target that very clearly critique a specific person. I’ve been examining this—why I can get caught up in a mob on the Internet in a way I rarely do in life (the positive mob mentality I participate in for, say, Beyoncé or Björk feels quite different, though I know there is something in there about belonging…eh, next book). I have noticed that at the most basic level, I feel better about myself because I’m on the right side of history… or at least the news cycle.
In most cases, very complex realities get watered down into one flawed aspect of these people’s personalities, or one mistake or misunderstanding.
But lately, as the attacks grow faster and more vicious, I wonder: is this what we’re here for? To cultivate a fear-based adherence to reductive common values? What can this lead to in an imperfect world full of sloppy, complex humans? Is it possible we will call each other out until there’s no one left beside us?
I’ve had tons of conversations with people who, in these moments of public flaying, avoid stepping up on the side of complexity or curiosity because in the back of our minds is the shared unspoken question: when will y’all come for me?”
(continued here at Lit Hub. Enjoy!)
