Barack Obama’s criticism of “call-out culture” this week drew predictable support from across the political spectrum, mostly from white people. By chance, in Australia it coincided with a Labor frontbencher chiding her own party.
“Not everyone with a concern about the immigration rate is a bigot. Not everyone with a hesitation about changing gender roles is sexist,” Clare O’Neil said. “And if Australians feel they can’t question assumptions and positions in conversation with us, they will find someone else to talk to about it … I don’t know anyone who ever changed their mind because they got made an example of, or yelled at, or shamed. All that creates is simmering resentment.”
Call-out culture is a complicated thing, though. When an Alan Jones-type figure — one with power and a platform — says something universally regarded as offensive, and is widely condemned from all points, is that calling out? Or when a heretofore-anonymous member of the public engages in racist abuse and is filmed doing so, earning themselves public notoriety? Is it callout out merely documenting of the kind of everyday racism that people of colour or Muslims are subjected to?
That’s different to what you might call the “sleeper cell call-out”, when an old comment resurfaces to haunt someone years later.
That was the fate recently of Iowan man Carson King, who was raising funds for a children’s hospital when a journalist, Aaron Calvin, reported King had made two racist tweets eight years before, leading to a major sponsor cutting ties with him.
As it turned out, Calvin then had his own problematic tweets dug up, leading to him losing his job. The sleeper cell call-out denies the possibility of change in an individual, particularly if they are young. Most of us have said something stupid, or offensive, or likely both, at some point; social media now enables the preservation of those moments as tiny bullets to be fired back at us later in life.
Then there’s the “white privilege call-out”, in which a well-intentioned white person is called out for behaving in a way deemed offensive by someone, somewhere: British comic Stacey Dooley attacked by an MP for being a “white saviour” when photographed raising money for Comic Relief; Greta Thunberg being attacked for her white privilege; an attack on Tracey Spicer for being “white, thin, blonde corporate”.
Or there’s what might be called the “Sam Armytage call-out”, which turns on the misinterpretation, wilful or otherwise, of a person’s comments to label them bigoted in some way. Any response that the comments were not intended to be racist is usually taken as an offensive attempt to dictate to people of colour how they should feel.
This can extend to people who, to use Obama’s example, “used the wrong verb”, or in O’Neil’s example, raise concerns about immigration. It’s particularly this case, where expression is perceived as being carefully policed for compliance with an ever-changing set of rules around wokeness and identity that disregard intention, that centrist politicians fret about.
They know how it can alienate blue-collar support for progressive projects, support that is crucial to progressive parties winning elections.
Calling out isn’t new. It’s simply tribalism and the tool of ostracism weaponised by the internet — like the internet has weaponised so many aspects of tribalism, turning the promise of the global village into an ever-more fragmented clutch of tribes at uneasy peace, or open war, with each other.
And while white people may be the biggest targets of (and complainers about) calling out, they perfected calling out like they perfected identity politics, centuries ago, through their exclusion, ostracism and persecution of those who differed from them by race, or gender, or sexual orientation.
There was no “calling” needed, nor an internet; it was built into white society and white thinking. At least the modern version is more honest and transparent, however little white people like it.
Calling out thus risks undermining any progressive project, which must rely on achieving some sort of critical electoral mass for change. This is the point centrist politicians like Obama and O’Neil — one, a uniquely successful modern leader with a deep background in community politics, the other a younger politician with most of her career ahead of her — are making.
You can’t bring people with you to achieve change while chiding and deriding them. Conservative politics, aimed at preventing and reversing change, benefits from fragmentation and the dissolution of consensus; progressives always have the burden of making the case for change to half the electorate plus one.
Obama made another point. “That’s not activism,” he said, pointing to the difference between keyboard warriors piling on transgressors and those who get out and try to organise and achieve change in the real world — between those on the streets willing to be arrested as part of Extinction Rebellion, for example, and those calling it out for not being woke enough.
Abuse won’t merely not bring people with you, you’re not even likely to change their views on the specific issue you’ve called them out on — they’re likely to respond with resentment and hostility. That’s why, for years now, some progressives have urged “calling in” — confining criticism and questioning to private conversations, thus avoiding public shaming.
But given that many on the left engage in calling out more to demonstrate their own woke credentials, to display their membership of their tribe, than to achieve any real change, that idea has failed to flourish.
These are depressing times for progressives: what should be the perfect era for them with the collapse of neoliberalism and persistent economic stagnation has proven instead a boon for right-wing populists who have thrived on division and white identity politics.
The political spirit of the age is centrifugal and fragmenting. Call-out culture exacerbates it. And it’s unlikely the seductive appeal of being a keyboard warrior will diminish compared to the messy, unglamorous task of building consensus and bringing disparate interests together to achieve change.
A good bit of too clever by half here Bernard. We know exactly what Obama is on about and it’s got nothing to do with complaints about the Alan Jones’ of the world.
Call out culture is just another version of Lowest Common Denominator stupidity. It attempts to lower debate to the level of the most vexatious and immature.
Wokeness is for those whiny try hards who want to be in on the action but lack the capacity for critical or original thought or nuance. So they jump on the bandwagon, weighing it down with dead weight.
Real feet on the ground protest, as we’re witnessing a welcome resurgence of, creates change. I’m well aware that my comments here and elsewhere will achieve much less if anything at all. I’ve done my fair share of real protest in years past and hope to do more again when more able.
While I agree with you on this let us go back to before social media became the weapon. We had a Media run by Murdoch which makes a point of publicly blaming and shaming anyone and anything that goes against Murdoch’s values. A man on Q&A talks about how hard it is and gets called out and hounded for some previous indiscretion. The people who have pointed out the bleedin’ obvious when it comes to ANZAC day and having themselves lose jobs or hounded out of the country by Murdoch. Social Media has given small people a platform to undertake something that up until now Murdoch was King of. Start there.
Great points you make, but Obama and O’Neill are largely right.
I drive great personal satisfaction from my efforts as a keyboard warrior, but deep down I know that I am not achieving much with them….
Real change will only come when enough people give their keyboards a break and take to the streets with GetUP, or ER, or Lock the Gate, or a Union – and open their wallets to help these type of protest organisations to organise.
derive ….fingers just not working properly, need a rest..!!
I conduct my battles both online & out in the field…..I consider neither effort to be less than the other!
Not everyone who calls out the call-out culture is a clean-skin themselves when it comes to their own calling out.
Politicians? “Do as I say …..”?
They aren’t “calling out” their political opponents/adversaries when they don’t agree with what they’re doing – and call them out on it? As if they’re there for the “bringing (along)”.
….. “Obama and Gitmo”?
As a wise internet commenter remarked about Obama’s speech “let he who has never bombed a hospital cast the first stone”.
Seriously though the problem with call out culture is that it alienates those who haven’t “educated” themselves and that it does capitalism’s work for it by casting social issues as problems with individual behaviour rather than systematic problems which oppress all of us (such as speaking wokely while conducting the largest drone bombing campaign in Pakistan in history a la obama).
Quote
“by casting social issues as problems with individual behaviour rather than systematic problems which oppress all of us .”
How important is it that this is widely grasped and understood as the lack of understanding bedevils the implementation and review of Social Welfare programmes. It’s their own fault is an easy mantra until it happens to you personally.
I was going to disagree with a couple of points in the article but I thought I might be lost in moderation or called out for doing so.
After all if even Ann Coulter agrees with Obama he must be right.
For me the weirdest thing in this is those elements of the conservative media climbing all over it, as if claiming it as some sort of “validation”, one-more-brick-in-the-wall of their anti-progressiveness – Baird was doing it last night – with no reflection of their own circumstances.
Just how do they earn their money – if not “calling out” the left?
God forbid that some progressives would point out the pit-falls of the manifestations of our political leaders in their political lemming pragmatism – coddling those that don’t want to know “where we’re going (according to scientists and other experts in other fields – including economics)” – in the hope that we can “bring them along”.
Best that we join the cascade. After all we have so much time to address what we’re facing and change direction?
Let’s spread/mute responsibility – for the direction in which we’re heading – to include those who spoke out against the direction we’re being dragged.
Don’t rain on those leader’s parade.
Yep well done. You’ve provided a perfect illustration of what Obama was talking about. No time for pragmatism compromise or realistic timing. Purist rhetoric from the GanGreens who sided with the LNP killed off the ETS ten years ago. A lost ten years. Blundering Bob wanders into the last election campaign and the hostility he generated drowned out Labor’s message to the coal based towns promoting their transition policy. Most anti coal people don’t understand there are two types of coal. Steaming coal used for power generation and coking coal used to produce steel. Steel is an alloy of pig iron and carbon derived from coal There are no alternatives at the moment to coking coal here or overseas. This is why you get the climate deniers banging on about closing down the steel industry.
And Thank You.
Well written article, with some sound arguments. I agree with Chomsky’s take on this issue: The issues themselves addressed by the left in identity politics are valid and important issues, but one individual issue should not be elevated in importance over any other, and in the current climate issues of class are being comparatively suppressed by the left. Both ethically and strategically this is a huge mistake
Calling out past a certain point IS productive. People like Trump revel in the vitriol they attract.