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Calling People Out Is Not a Good Way to Cause Change
On January 14, 2019, columnist David Brooks published an article in the New York Times on the role of call-out culture in stifling social change. He references an NPR podcast, Invisibilia, which looks at callout culture in the context of a case of sexual harassment in the hardcore punk rock community in Richmond, Virginia.
Emily and her best friend were in a van, heading to a performance in Florida. On their way, they received a call from the venue: their performance was canceled. A woman had publicly accused Emily’s friend of sending her a sexually explicit photograph and she had told the promoter of the show. While the band-mate's friends mostly defended his character and dismissed the allegations, Emily was extremely conflicted. “In her head, there was no easy way, no middle ground. She felt she had to choose between her very best friend in the world and the cause she was becoming passionate about.”
But there was a voice in her that felt “betrayed…because what he was accused of doing had happened to me.”
She wrote a Facebook post in which she outed and denounced her friend as an abuser, “I disown everything he has done. I do not think it’s O.K. These are horrible things. These are not OK. I am not OK with…
