Call out Culture is something very important to me - being able to talk to someone when they say or do potentially damaging or hurtful things is powerful. I'm definitely privileged that my friendship group are very good at this, from creating safe spaces for gigs, to training people about ending street harassment, to making zines about privilege and more. I'm also grateful that my friendship group and family are very diverse. Most importantly, we can 'call each other out' easily, without damaging the other person's ego.
However in the work place it is often a different matter... Maybe you don't know someone so well, so you can make snap judgements, including assuming that they are ______ist. Maybe the person saying something is 'more senior' that you, so you don't want to call them out, because of fear of retribution. Calling someone out can also reveal a lot about yourself, and often you don't want to show that vulnerability or openness in the work place. A good friend and colleague of mine once told me "Don't get mad, get curious". Where as when I was younger I would probably write someone off because of something they said or did, now I want to understand why they said something or if they understood the impact on their words or actions. We recently had a speaker at our school called Rosetta Lee. Rosetta Lee is a teacher, trainer, speaker, facilitator, educator and activist. She spoke to us about inclusivity and also about dealing with microaggressions in the work place. (This talk was a day after I attended the talk "The Rise of Islamophobia", so this was fresh in my mind during this sessions). One of the most useful tools she gave us was "Be A DEAR". I've put into a presentation, so that I may remember is more easily, and so that I can share it with my students.
This is particularly useful in international schools, where we have a diverse community of teachers and students from all over the world. Being internationally minded goes beyond food, flags and festivals - and this is a good tool to help students to develop this.
Also in the talk Rosette Lee gave the microaggression example of being non-white, and someone asking "Where are you from", and when hearing "America", they say "but where are you really from". This is perfectly illustrated in a video I shared a while back called "What Kind of Asian Are You?"
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4 Comments
Lorena
18/10/2017 02:31:18 pm
What a great summary! I was sick this day and HATED to miss her. I have lived and studied microaggressions, history, and social change and look forward to conversations in love and logic like this. onelove:)
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John
18/10/2017 03:44:40 pm
Great job Lenny. Thank you for taking the time to put this together.
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1/8/2018 10:03:50 am
Call out culture is one of the hot issues nowadays. I've browsed through different top rated resume writing services and most of the topics are about call out culture. Thank you sharing the concept of "Be A DEAR" to us. It is important for this generation to understand the consequence of calling out a person. Words have the power to hurt someone, it can even cut deeper than a knife. So next time, we must be mindful of the decisions that we will make.
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