ARCs are intended to be part of a larger shift in anti-racist approach and language from “calling out” to “calling in”. The goal of ARCs is to “call in” their members to help them unlearn the racist attitudes, behaviors, and ideas that saturate our culture.
Both “calling out” and “calling in” can support anti-racist goals, but their intentions are different. “Calling out” leverages shaming to put a stop to racist behavior, while “calling in” eschews shaming and focuses instead on teaching with compassion. Smith College professor Loretta J. Ross describes a “call in” as a “call out done with love” - a correction made privately and respectfully (1).
Dr Rebecca Eunmi Haslam of Seed the Way, an Essex-based non-profit that supports educators in developing anti-racist curricula, recommends “calling in” for situations in which it there is an opportunity to "find a mutual sense of understanding across difference" and for times when we want to understand or learn more so that we can "help imagine different perspectives, possibilities, or outcomes". While "calling in" is "focused on reflection, not reaction" in order to "encourage paradigm shifts", Haslam cautions that "calling in" cannot be simply "a suggestion with an uptick (Don’t you think you should…?)" (2)
For calling in to be effective, it requires sufficient emotional energy to offer compassionate criticism on the one side and the emotional resilience and the willingness to receive and learn from such criticism on the other. ARCs ask their members to bring both to the process.
Effective "calling in" is challenging for everyone. One concept that may be helpful in navigating this challenge is the idea of “unconditional positive regard”, a term coined by Carl Rogers, the founder of the humanistic psychology movement.
In On Becoming a Person, Rogers described unconditional positive regard as follows:
I have often used the term ‘acceptance’ to describe this aspect of the therapeutic climate. It involves as much feeling of acceptance for the client’s expression of negative, ‘bad,’ painful, fearful, and abnormal feelings as for his expression of ‘good,’ positive, mature, confident and social feelings. It involves an acceptance of and a caring for the client as a separate person, with permission for him to have his own feelings and experiences, and to find his own meanings in them. To the degree that the therapist can provide this safety-creating climate of unconditional positive regard, significant learning is likely to take place.
Translated into action, unconditional positive regard will lead you to be compassionately curious rather than harshly judgmental about others’ beliefs, feelings, and behaviors - as long as they don’t hurt or demean you. This doesn’t mean that you won’t react inwardly to something another person does or thinks, or that you won’t be annoyed or even shocked at times – but as long as a person’s thoughts, feelings, and actions are not harmful to you, you respond with as much caring acceptance as you can (even if that acceptance is initially forced).
The goal of the practice of unconditional positive regard in ARCs is not to condone racist attitudes, but to try to understand why another person thinks, feels, or acts the way they do so that you can help them grow on their terms (which is the only authentic way that anyone grows or develops). It may help to remember that anyone who has chosen to participate in an ARC is doing so with the goal of unlearning racist attitudes and is sharing their thoughts with others in the group in order to grow.
Ferguson, “Calling In: A Quick Guide on When and How”
Bennett, “What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In?”
Haslam, Rebecca, “Interrupting Bias: Calling Out vs. Calling In”
Rogers, Carl. On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961), pp. 183-184.
Rogers CR. The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. J Consult Psychol. 1957;21(2):95-103. doi:10.1037/h0045357
Wouters S, Thomaes S, Colpin H, Luyckx K, Verschueren K. How does Conditional Regard Impact Well-being and Eagerness to Learn? An Experimental Study. Psychol Belg. 2018;58(1):105–114. doi:10.5334/pb.401