Whenever we are making changes in the way we do things, especially structural disruptions like all of the methods mentioned in this paper, things do go wrong. We make mistakes. Our best of intentions can still cause harm. Therefore, accountability is a necessary part of ethically engaged creative processes. Those who are unwilling to participate in accountability are not actually prepared to follow through on the consent-forward, trauma-informed, and collaborative work they are instigating. A refusal to be accountable ensures that these methods of training and creating will fail.
Those of us creating and teaching with ethical engagement are confronted with our own training and personal experiences in systems of oppression. There are decades of unlearning to do. We are making these policy and procedural changes inside institutions and organizations based on systems of oppression. There are centuries of unlearning to do. We will make mistakes. We will cause harm. We will fall back into old habits because they are the ways of least resistance. Accountability measures are the only way to continue to move forward.
Accountability is different from justice, in that justice in the United States is often carceral. While movements encouraging Restorative and/or Transformative Justice have become more encouraged, carceral justice remains the most common way to address harm. Because of this mindset, many people perceive punishment as the only way to be held accountable. I believe we can engage in accountability practices with the purposes of addressing harm, centering the survivors, and creating change. Miriame Kaba and Shira Hassan (2019) offer
Three important questions guide CA [Community Accountability] processes for us(gleaned from restorative frameworks):
1. Who has been hurt/harmed? (Centering those who were harmed.)
2. What do they need? (Justice is defined as meeting the need of multiple parties...with the goal of more healing and maybe transformation)
3. Whose obligation is it to meet those needs? (Bringing a broader group into theprocess of accountability.) (32)
These goals also point to the difference of calling someone into accountability, and calling someone out to cause shame.
Recently, I was co-teaching a class in which we discussed the difference between calling in and calling out. To me calling in looks like:
● Pushing back on an idea or act, not a person
● Requires an acknowledgement of harm from the person who created it
● The goal is not shame, rather changed behavior. Punishment isn’t the end goal of accountability; change is. A lack of punishment does not mean a lack of consequences. However, the motivation of the consequences is to help promote healing and change, not to exact revenge or retribution.
Calling out on the other hand:
● Pushes back on a person
● The goal is punishment, revenge, or ostracization. No acknowledgement of harm can occur, nor any proof of changed behavior, because that person has been removed or has removed themselves from the community.
Accountability is not something someone can “inflict” on another person. Mia Mingus (2018) defines accountability as
...not only apologizing, understanding the impact your actions have caused on yourself and others, making amends or reparations to the harmed parties; but most importantly, true accountability is changing your behavior so that the harm, violence, abuse does not happen again.
In the same piece, Mingus reminds us that accountability is relational. It is not only a personal, reflective process, but it must be a communal and active one. Harm happens in relationships, we can be called to be accountable to ourselves and those we are in relationships with, we show our accountability by making changes in those relationships. Real relationships—and therefore accountability—require vulnerability.