Bethany Mandel, a conservative writer, had a bit of brain freeze on live TV yesterday and was unable to define woke for her interviewer. This gave us lefties a chance to laugh at her, and fair enough. That's life in the arena. I really don't understand why movement conservatives haven't yet figured out a simple, bumper-sticker definition of woke that they can haul out anytime they need it.
David Roberts tries to help them out:
At root, cons mean basically the same thing by "woke" as the black activists who originally coined the term: aware of & committed to addressing systemic injustice in the US. It's just, cons think it's a bad thing!
— David Roberts (@drvolts) March 15, 2023
This is true as far as it goes. Conservatives have a long history of actively opposing nearly everything that might improve the lives of non-white-male people.
That said, there's more to it than just that. What conservatives—and many other people—mean by woke is an obsessive commitment to the most extreme and trivial versions of the original definition. "On the political right," says Chris Drew, "it is a pejorative term used to criticize people for seeing injustice where it doesn’t exist." He goes on to offer a bunch of examples from a conservative perspective:
- Race-Based Silencing – Telling a white person they don’t have the right to speak because they’re an oppressor.
- Cancel Culture – Canceling a college speaker because they have controversial views on power and race.
- Digging up Old Tweets – A company digs up tweets and photos from 1995 to play “gotcha” and sink a political candidate’s campaign.
- Critical Race Theory – A school’s history curriculum teaches a ‘white oppressor’ narrative in their classrooms, which makes young white children feel like they’ve done something wrong.
- Day of Absence – A college asks white students to stay home for one day per year to discuss and think about their privilege.
- Taking a Knee (By Social Pressure) – A school or sports organization pressuring you to take a knee during the anthem to send a message about racial inequality.
- Pride Jerseys – Conservative Christian football players are asked to wear pink pride jerseys on the football field in support of LGBT values, against their religious views.
- Virtue Signalling – Brands use pro-LGBT, pro-BLM imagery to appear inclusive. But this marginalizes half of their potential user base.
- Gender Pluralism – People saying there are over 70 genders and that if you disagree, you’re a horrible person.
Chris Drew (and I) are neither approving or disapproving of any of these things. They're just examples of how the right thinks. You can add your own examples if you want: microaggressions, language policing, reparations, and so forth.
It is, obviously, a matter of opinion whether any particular thing qualifies as "going too far." But that's the battleground, and there's really no point in pretending that it doesn't exist. We all know perfectly well that it does.
The right wing use of "woke" is like their use of "socialism." Maybe they have a point if they stick to the extreme examples, but having identified some of the more problematical notions of social justice as "woke", they then proceed to apply it to everything that's merely characteristic of being a decent human being.
At this point, Republicans seem to be using "woke" as a synonym for "liberal", applying it even to things like environmentalism and tax policy that have nothing to do with race, gender, or LGBT+. Which is unfortunate, because wokeness *narrowly* defined - I would define it as the extreme-left viewpoint that historically marginalized groups should be given special privileges and that all disagreement should be shut down with bullying and social aggression tactics rather than with persuasion and debate - is worth discussing and interrogating, and it becomes harder to do that if the word is diluted.
The part where disagreement gets shut down and debate is not allowed is the part I object to. I'm a center-left type and I would be happy to debate their policy proposals, and even perhaps support them if not for that. But because they seek to shred the social norms that form the foundation of a functioning democracy, I feel I have no choice but to oppose them completely.
"why movement conservatives haven't yet figured out a simple, bumper-sticker definition of woke that they can haul out anytime they need it."
Because woke doesn't mean anything in right-wing circles except as a label for anything liberals support. According to desantis wokeness killed SVB.
imo, it's baser, similar to Let's Go Brandon. Woke to the conservative base is code for the most ugly of racial slurs.
Exactly.
Lee Atwater:
And by 2023, you say "woke."
"Florida is where woke goes to die." Can it be any clearer what he's talking about?
There is nothing so ludicrous about this blog as Kevin's undying belief in good-faith, high-minded conservatives and his desire to "explain" for them what they mean when they cannot do it themselves.
I don't think KD goes to bat for them, in fact the schadenfreude of the clip is why the post existed. But that's the quote I was thinking of in your comment and I just scrolled to see the Wendy's comment. KD is hipper than you might think, I think.
Why do we need to help out filth, shit and corruption?
Why do we talk about this at all?
Why do we not talk about the international crime syndicate the Catholic Church, and how religious psychotics have so many special rights enshrined by law that religion is the first refuge of every irresponsible act and person?
It is only about protecting the corrupt, the autocratic and the abusive in a guise of supernatural sanction and 'concern'.
Allowing this miasma of re-barfed dog food to have an argument over 'wokeness' is missing the whole point, what this is is a cover story.
I'm sorry sir, this is a Wendy's.
Oh, I meant the conservatives' miasma not our miasma!
Our miasma is great, friendly and attractive.
Deepest apologies to all.
If this is a Wendy’s I have one question for you. Where’s the beef?
I'm not sure I get what you're so upset about. Every single thing Kevin lists is something that (1) right-wingers have turned into a caricatured stereotype of liberalism, however, (2) is at base something worth supporting but not in an unbalanced or unquestioning way. In other words, things that liberals should be willing to discuss among themselves. Why not here? They aren't secrets. Why let wingnuts run riot with them and avoid them ourselves?
My objection is that this a trivial annoyance that happens virtually nowhere but in the ivory tower and taking it too seriously supports the conservative program that it's a real thing and a significant issue when it is in fact, most of the time, little more than cocktail party feng shuei.
Taking it seriously let's them think they're serious people and let's them get away with it.
It's as if I rationalized that a guy who randomly punched me on the street probably had a point because I wore my blue jacket and not the grey one, and then if he gets arrested he's happy to agree that's totally the issue and it's a really big deal so now I'm the problem.
This is yet another case where you have to distinguish factions a bit, if you care about what they mean. But I personally don't care about that.
What's more interesting to me is how incoherent this linguistic engineering effort has been. The authoritarian right has played this appropriation game for a long time - they're all trained for how it works.
What's interesting here is that they're too fractured to do it well. There's no Gingrich or Limbaugh or other leader effectively shaping the official rightwing meaning, so the factional differences I mentioned are happening. If you're more racist than grifty, you use something like the actual meaning; if you're a Republican backbencher/Twitter influencer type, you just use it as a synonym for "Democratic", and so on.
They've got Rufo, but he's more the visionary type than an enforcer, and certainly not a leader. Plus, he nominally has a day job now.
Republicans are too broken to actually coherently appropriate the term, and so you get brave Sir Ronald of Florida, doing things that are going to destroy him nationally and calling it 'woke'.
Good times, and also a bit interesting to watch.
Race-Based Silencing – Maybe this happens in academic settings. It *never* happens in corporate settings, because (almost always) there are white people somewhere at the top of the org chart who nobody can tell not to speak. It also *never* happens in real-life settings, since so much of America is commercialized, e.g. the person with the money gets to speak the most, and white people still have more of the money.
Cancel Culture – Again, maybe this happens in academic settings. It sure seems hit-or-miss in the corporate world though... plenty of assholes have been allegedly "cancelled" and yet I still see them on my TV or Twitter feed. And the cancelling certainly isn't as thorough as what the corporate world can do to working and middle class people. Your boss tells you point-blank to remove a bumper sticker from your car or post on your Facebook or whatever, and what are you going to do? In most states, you can be fired for expressing viewpoints at work that your boss doesn't want expressed or just fired for no reason whatsoever... and firing someone is the ultimate cancellation for anyone not independently wealthy. (Try living your same lifestyle without a job.)
Digging up Old Tweets – Companies aren't the only ones doing this. I seem to recall conservatives destroying the careers of several people by bringing up old tweets, speeches, etc... even when they take what was written or said out of context and totally conflicts with what the person was actually saying. (For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firing_of_Shirley_Sherrod.) You argue in bad faith, eventually your opponents are going to argue in bad faith too.
Critical Race Theory – Many people have already addressed this on Kevin's other CRT posts... but normal white kids don't feel personally bad/guilty/ashamed when they learn of slavery, racism, etc. They feel disgusted or mad that previous generations didn't do anything about this, similar to how they feel about the impending climate change disaster awaiting us. (I guess worrying about climate change is also "woke" though...)
Day of Absence – I literally have never heard of this.
Taking a Knee (By Social Pressure) – I've never heard of a school doing this, and certainly never heard of an employer doing this. I'm willing to let the courts hear any cases raised from athletes forced to take a knee. I'm not going to hold my breath though, since this sounds totally made up. (I don't see many scared white people on TV taking knees and looking around to make sure coach gives them credit for doing so. And in a world in which the coach can "voluntarily" kneel on the midfield and hold prayer meetings, introducing social pressure for all the players to join him, it seems funny that a different coach can't socially pressure his players to kneel for whatever his religion says about racial justice. What's good for the goose and all...)
Pride Jerseys – This is about the only one that I think is wrong. Players shouldn't have to wear Pride Jerseys involuntarily, because Pride means nothing if it's forced. But WTF. How many teams are actually doing this?
Virtue Signalling – Brands use whatever imagery they think will maximize sales. Fixed that for you. It's not their fault that pro-LGBT and pro-BLM imagery generates more sales than explicit anti-LGBT and anti-BLM imagery does. And in a free country that allegedly loves FREEDOM so much, entities can choose whatever imagery they want to associate themselves with... and everyone else can choose whether to associate with them or not based on that. There are anti-LGBT and anti-BLM brands out there that are also "virtue signalling" (or perhaps it's "vice signalling?") for bigots to buy their stuff... do all your shopping there if you hate LGBTs or Black people. (It's not liberals' or centrists' fault though if their anti-woke products and services are sub-par...)
Gender Pluralism – People saying there are over 70 genders (there may be thousands of people nationwide literally saying this, out of a country of 330M, which means it's pretty insignificant - on par with the number of people saying UFOs visit them) and "that if you disagree, you’re a horrible person." Nobody is saying this outside of Twitter, which allows people to anonymously accuse everyone of horrible things for sport. Since about 329M people in this country think there are really only 2-5 genders - male, female, MTF, FTM, and (for the really educated among us) intersex or both - handling 2-5 different sets of pronouns seems doable. Like literally, we all already have to memorize whether everyone we meet prefers Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss or Mx, as well as whatever nickname they like. How hard is it really - assuming you're not trying to be an asshole of course - to also memorize He, She, They or It? (I do realize there are others, like xe and ze. I think though that if society made a good faith effort to use pronouns that people prefer, most transgender and intersex people would eventually settle on 1-2 pronouns to simplify things amongst themselves, in a similar way to how any other legally-established minority group has mostly agreed to go by 1-2 descriptors. For example, the vast majority of "people of African descent" today go by "Black" or "African American" even though I'm sure somebody out there can find somebody claiming to be "Ebony" or "Chocolate" or whatever. It's only because most people resist using other people's preferred pronouns that every single nonbinary person feels the need to metaphorically give us a middle finger back in coming up with their own unique pronoun.)
i've never heard of Pride Jerseys but i imagine it's voluntary, as even in the original list he says "players are asked" to wear them. i'm guessing if it was mandatory he would have been very clear to say "forced". so apparently even the request is wokeism run amok.
ETA: for example: On Jan. 27, instead of the Pride Night warmup jerseys the New York Rangers organization said would be worn prior to a game against the Vegas Golden Knights, players instead wore the “Liberty Head” reverse retro jerseys in warmups.
Before that, Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov, citing his religious beliefs, sat out warmups instead of wearing a Pride-themed jersey before a Jan. 17 game against the Anaheim Ducks.
“I respect everybody’s choices,” Provorov said later. “My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion. That’s all I’m going to say.”
The next day, the NHL released a statement that in part said “Clubs decide whom to celebrate, when and how — with League counsel and support. Players are free to decide which initiatives to support, and we continue to encourage their voices and perspectives on social and cultural issues.”
https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/03/14/sharks-plan-to-wear-pride-themed-warmup-jerseys-saturday-other-nhl-teams-though-have-backed-out/
The Day of Absence kerfuffle occurred in 2017 when Bret Weinstein refused to participate in the "inverted" day of absence (a DoA is where minority students and personnel stay off campus to highlight their contribution) which eventually simmered into a boil at Evergreen State and then into national news.
1. Companies or organizations have policies that get conservatives in trouble when they make racist or gay-hating remarks.
2. Companies or organizations try to adjust their hiring practices so that jobs held entirely or mostly by straight white men get more diverse.
3. Conservatives making racist or gay-hating remarks get criticized by their peers, or worse by their social inferiors.
4. Positions of prestige, power, or visibility--on TV, holding political office or corporate leadership, writing in the papers held by people not straight white men or particularly respectful of the opinions of white men.
5. Woke policies are things that disturb the conservative's bubble--changing housing laws and other local laws that keep the others out, or criticizing police for doing their job of beating down the others.
There's a generalized principle that you need to distinguish between _____ and stupid, in this case between woke and stupid. A lot of the examples cited are cases where, at least in my opinion, someone has crossed the line; they've left "woke" behind and moved over to "stupid".
The same thing happens the other way; progressives tend to fixate on the really stupid things some "conservatives" say or do that the great majority of other conservatives disagree with and classify as stupid. This tendency to focus on the most stupid examples from the other side really is a "both sides" thing.
A short, clear definition of "woke" as used by the wingnuts? Won't ever happen. By leaving it up to every man to reflect his own hatreds, fears, and prejudices upon the word, it's much more useful than something with an actual definition.
All you need to know is, it's BAD!!!
Some folks in rural areas, small towns, and flyover states complain that their issues are ignored and their situations are misunderstood.
Maybe they are okay with wokism, it just has to be about them.
Personally, I'm done with those arguments. Fuck 'em, I have no sympathy left.
I should note this includes some of my family.
I'm not saying there aren't real problems - there are, and they're getting worse. Brain drain, de-industrialization (still happening!), monopsony employers, drugs and more are serious issues for the rural US.
I am saying demanding endless welfare (while denying it to deserving others), failure to recognize fixes - effectively demanding that nothing change except they somehow get more money, and deciding that the only politicians that actually gives a damn about helping poor people is satan, well, they made their bed. Get back to me when they stop acting like the entitled little assholes they accuse everyone else of being.
(I know, I would never make it in politics.)
The closest we get here to an attempt at a clear definition is "an obsessive commitment to the most extreme and trivial versions of the original definition." But no, that's not how conservatives actually use the term; they use it more like David Roberts's definition to encompass everything liberal. If you pay attention to the way actual conservatives use the term, it applies to any serious effort to address injustice, not just a handful of silly extreme actions. You can listen to anything from Josh Hawley or Ron DeSantis to confirm.
So no, this strawman ain't it.
If you push at all on this you'll get an old-fashioned slippery-slope argument. "It may be OK now but we know what they really want."
In the briefest of nutshells: the word “woke” strongly implies an ideological extremism.
That’s mostly it; but, to elaborate a bit on that basic idea: the ideological extremism in question is generally understood to be of the Far Left variety. And it typically seems to involve belligerent and reductive attacks against anyone who dares to dissent.
This much, I would say, is fairly obvious, and it strikes me as odd that anyone (conservatives or liberals) would have a hard time coming up with at least a few of these points when pressed for a definition of woke.
So, for example, the recent story that Texas Tech University was not just demanding DEI statements from applicants but also rejecting prospective hires if their statements failed to display enough ideological fealty: that’s woke.
And, from Kevin’s post, this strikes me as another potentially good example:
“Gender Pluralism – People saying there are over 70 genders and that if you disagree, you’re a horrible person.”
Sure, a lot of people will disagree with the assertions of trans activists, but it’s the second part of that statement that strikes me as genuinely problematic: the denunciation of unbelievers (or modern day heretics).
Emma Watson, for example, asserts that trans women are women and trans men are men. And I am perfectly happy to simply agree to disagree with her. She does not seem so willing, however, to in any way accommodate dissenting opinions. And so she has recently declared (in response to news that the original Harry Potter cast may be brought back for future films) that she won’t continue participating in that franchise unless the studio completely bars JK Rowling from any and all involvement. Rowling, as it so happens, is one of the most progressive women on the planet and a huge benefactor for numerous charities. But she is also outspoken in her belief that biological sex actually exists, and therefore the Emma Watsons of the world demand that she must be destroyed (or at least completely shunned). And that’s woke.
There does seem to be some movement on the Left to reclaim this term as something positive (or to pretend that the whole issue doesn’t even exist), but I think that ship has sailed. It’s better, in my view, to admit and correct our own mistakes. Doing so makes our side stronger, not weaker. The Republicans have shown themselves incapable of acknowledging their problems and course correcting. We should not follow their example
This, so very much. The woke people want their views to be recognized as simple morality, but everyone not in their bubble who sees them in action knows that they are not moral, they are sanctimonious and self-righteous. We used to condemn and mock this kind of behavior when conservative Christians did it, and it is no better when it comes from the left.
What MAGA voters understand by "wokeness" is above all "the end of White Christian Supremacy". This is what draws the powerful, instinctive reaction that leads MAGAs on to deny reality and vote against their own material interests. Support of the tribe, party, nation is often stronger than self-preservation. Race and religion both contribute to tribal solidarity. But the racism part can't be said out loud, so "wokeness" is another dog-whistle. Yes, many people, not just MAGAs, are annoyed by cancel culture and other things that leftist extremists do, but those things don't come close to motivating people to vote for the likes of Trump and to believe him and all the other conspiracy pushers among Republicans and the wing-nut media. The list of things that Kevin quotes is not wokeness - those are mostly excuses. Politicians are not going to say "we must preserve the superiority of the White Race" so they say "we must put down wokeness".
Damn, I thought is was a Day of Absinthe....
A mantra of "woke" that I have heard at DEI seminars is that intentions don't matter, only actions do. If someone is harmed, your intentions are irrelevant. One example that's been brought up in such seminars is that whether I step backwards and accidentally step on someone's foot, or intentionally turn around and stomp on it, either way their foot feels the same, so I owe the same apology and requirement to make amends.
Which is of course not how society works in practice. We have a whole legal system that takes intent into account. Negligent homicide isn't manslaughter isn't murder, and each is punished differently.
The right fears that the left is going even further. Not only doesn't intent matter, but actions themselves don't matter; only perceptions of action matter. I "feel" like you've harmed me and therefore that's the same as if you've actually harmed me, intentionally or not.
And to be fair, living in the academic world, I have seen some of this latter attitude and its annoying. But on the flip side, I've never been followed around a store just because of my skin color, denied services because of my skin color, or pulled over by a cop because of my skin color, whereas there's no PoC I know my age who hasn't had all of those experiences.
I'd rather live in a world without either annoying or harassment, but if I had to pick one, I'd live with annoying.
I guess my question is, even if those examples were widespread (which they are not) is the power of the state required to address them? Is this supposed to be "conservative"?
The much shorter definition of "woke": Respect for others.
You mean we're actually supposed to live by "The Golden Rule"?
Seems to me it's the exact opposite: wokeness brazenly disrespects anyone who disagrees, even mildly.
Moscow sets $15 million bounty for Italian Defence Minister’s head,
https://decode39.com/6139/russia-bounty-italy-minister-defence-crosetto/
After reading this I'm with the minority who think Woke is actually a secular religion.
https://compactmag.com/article/a-black-professor-trapped-in-anti-racist-hell
@nikos redux:
Thanks for that link: I skimmed through it.
And that professor offers what I believe to be some fairly accurate tenets of woke "anti-racism":
*Experiencing hardship conveys authority.
*There is no hierarchy of oppressions—except for anti-black oppression, which is in a class of its own.
*Trust black women.
*Prison is never the answer.
*Black people need black space.
*Allyship is usually performative.
*All non-black people, and many black people, are guilty of anti-blackness.
*There is no way out of anti-blackness.
And there are numerous faults with this ideology. It is discriminatory, reductive, belligerent, unforgiving, psychologically unsound, and, in a word, extreme. Yet it also wields tremendous influence. And that, in my opinion, is one of the great mysteries of our time. Another great mystery is why so many on the Left seem defensive about this topic (to the extent of denying the extent of the problem or even denying the very existence of any problem at all).
Nevertheless, I do not think that you are, as you say, in a minority. I think you and I are both a part of the not-so-silent majority that is increasingly fed up with the woke nonsense.
John McWhorter, of course, wrote a well-known book against woke extremists: Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. I read that book, and I think it makes a lot of good points. I suspect that lots of people agree with McWhorter. But, in certain impactful institutions of our society, I'm relatively sure he's seen as a modern-day villain.
That article sent chills down my spine. What should have been an educational program was transformed into child abuse. "Keisha" should be prosecuted.
A lot of people who aren't college educated or extremely online don't know about wokeness, because their daily lives don't involve discussion of political issues, leaving no opportunity for them to personally observe appalling woke behavior. But among those who do know about it, I am quite sure that the silent majority is against it. Even in Democratic primaries, woke candidates usually lose, because the ballot box is the one place where the silent majority cannot be shouted down.
"Chris Drew (and I) are neither approving or disapproving of any of these things."
It's pretty clear that you ARE disapproving of some of these things, from the way you worded them. That's fine, but as you say, "what's the point of pretending?"
FWIW, I do too, particularly "Race-Based Silencing". That will get us nowhere.
In real life virtually none of the annoyances associated with 'woke' ever happen, but they can happen in academia.
What they're really objecting to is the ivory tower and that whole mass of conversation that goes on without them.
There can be no bridging this gap.
"... I really don't understand why movement conservatives haven't yet figured out a simple, bumper-sticker definition of woke that they can haul out anytime they need it. ..."
Here is a shot at it.
Woke is the belief that all of the problems of black people are due to white racism and nothing can be done about any of them until all white racism (no matter how trivial) is eradicated.
According to some like https://www.liberalpatriot.com/ democrats are losing working class, Hispanics, Asians, and just about everyone over this woke thing… whatever it is. It seem like an effective wedge… whatever it is.
We know republicans are acting in bad faith in nearly everything they do and say, but we can’t seem to make it stick for some reason. What’s up with that?
But there is a point here behind all the wrongness and it gets back to my favorite theme, social conservative leftists are a real thing though a small fraction of social conservatives in general, and the most likely place to find them is in academia and they are 100% of the population who have created wokeness in exactly the same interest of abuse that social conservatives do anything everywhere.
Social conservatives only pay serious attention to other social conservatives and that's how they've latched onto this and promoted it.
Mandel subsequently offered a definition on Twitter. I suggest journalists make careful note of it, because it is MUCH more limited than the wide-ranging generic label thrown around by right-wingers. Every time a DeSantis or a Greene sneers that something or someone is "woke", ask them to explain how it meets Mandels definition.
According to her, "Woke" means "a radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of a group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob." I'd be fascinated to hear an argument that this described things such as support for renewable energy or LGBTQ rights.
Mandel's definition strikes me as generally accurate. But one word is way off: "equality." One of the most prominent assertions of the Woke is that equality must be replaced by equity.
Equality aspires to create equal opportunities for all: but that's an aspiration that the woke reject. The whole point of "anti-racism" is to insist on equal outcomes, or "equity," rather than equality of opportunity.
Hence, DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion. Impactful institutions throughout our land (from NPR, to Universities, and even to actual legislation in some cases) have abandoned "equality" for "equity."
And if average citizens ever do really begin to catch on to what this pernicious ideology is espousing, the Democrats will likely face a serious reckoning. That's why we should be the ones calling out the excesses of this extremist ideology: we should not be leaving that job largely to obnoxious conservatives.
We're talking about different things. The ideology you find pernicious only exists in any practical sense as a theoretical framework for policy discussions in a few think tanks and academic schools. It's not what right-wingers mean by "woke", which is the question Kevin posed.
Here, for example, is SVB's 'Diversity, Equity and Inclusion' policy:
That's what right-wingers mean by "woke"; nothing to do with " a radical redefinition of society in which equality of a group result is the endpoint".
From Ibram Kendi's book on "How to be an AntiRacist":
"The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
This is the theory behind the abandonment of equality (equal opportunity) and the embrace of equity (mandating equal outcomes). Kendi and the antiracists, most of whom easily qualify as "woke," are explicit in their embrace of discrimination. There isn't any question about it. They even use the word discrimination.
And that is the woke movement that Mandel is defining. It is a movement which believes that fire must be fought with fire. Rather than end discrimination, "anti-racists" insist rather on their own preferred form of discrimination. Again, they are unambiguous on these points.
And I personally believe that it will potentially be cataclysmic for the Democrats to be deeply identified with the woke anti-racists. The Republicans seem to accurately sense that possibility. We should be aware to the same problem, and we should call out the problems and the excesses on our own side. Those excesses are real. The extremists are within our own house. And we should be the ones acknowledging and dealing with them.
Again, you and Kendi and Mandel are not talking about anything that affects the general pubic. Republican attempts to scaremonger about "CRT" blew up in their faces last year. The same will happen with their "wokeness" bullshit, which I confidently expect will be ancient history by the time Trump faces off against Biden.
"[Y]ou and Kendi and Mandel are not talking about anything that affects the general pubic."
This is an odd statement, and I'm not sure what it's based on. Everyone who is forced to undergo modern diversity training is likely encountering some of the reductive ideas promoted by antiracists like Kendi. Applicants at colleges and universities across the country are required to submit DEI statements in which they must assert their belief in the justice of "antiracist" discrimination if they want to get a job. Major corporations throughout the land have adopted racial/ethnic hiring quotas that may ultimately turn out to be flatly illegal.
And all of these (and many similar) stories receive huge amounts of media attention. It is, in fact, precisely the wide reach of this "woke" discrimination that makes it such a pernicious facet of our society at this current time. I can barely think of an aspect of the general public that is NOT impacted. So I have no idea what you're talking about; however,
I would assert that the kind of denial you seem to exemplify is exactly the sort of approach that democrats must avoid like the plague. Perhaps you are indeed managing to delude yourself, but I do not believe the public can be so easily misled. And the truth is that Democrats have exposed themselves to a potentially fatal weakness in their association with "woke" policies. Republicans are smart to try and take advantage of that situation. We should clean our own house before they can gain any further mileage from the extremists on our own side.
Given that my quiet suburban community is tonight hosting a public forum -- last month's library meeting was cancelled after it was flooded with attendees and protestors -- for citizens to air support and/or grievances about our local library's decision to stock Maia Kobabe's autobiographical graphic novel 'Gender Queer,' I'm in agreement that not only is Woke not going anywhere, it will be a central animating issue of the 2024 election cycle.
Your claim that corporate DEI programs seek "a radical redefinition of society in which equality of a group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob" is so patently idiotic it doesn't deserve any further response.
Sure, there are some out-there examples of wokeness-gone-too-far, but there are a lot of cries of "wokeness" for things that are pretty basic courtesy (calling someone by their preferred name) or simply made-up nonsense (equating the existence of a copy of Jacob's New Dress in the school library with showing graphic pornography).
Late to the party, I know.
As a good though not necessarily particularly "woke" liberal, this list is rather frustrating for a few reasons:
1) A number of these items are things conservatives do, too.
They've been trying to use public pressure to boycott or get people fired for years. Michelle Malkin was famous for unleashing her hordes back in the aughts. Fox personalities like Glenn Beck and O'Reilly have been directing their outrage spotlight for years, knowing their viewers would make calls and send letters. Free speech "defender" Bari Weiss made a name for herself trying to get a professor fired for his views on Israel. Her former colleague Bret Stephens actually emailed the employer of some rando academic with a trivial amount of followers for making a joke calling him a "bedbug" on his personal Twitter account. He was absolutely doing it to get the poor schmuck punished or fired in some way. A NYT columnist going after a nobody.
It's funny that "social pressure to kneel" came up considering how much social pressure conservatives have put against kneeling. It basically ended Kaepernick's career. I don't necessarily think athletes should have to promote the views of their employers or their teammates, but to the extent that it happens, they're facing a lot more conservative pressure than liberal.
I'm not saying it's necessarily OK when liberals do these things, and I'm not trying to make this into a "both sides" issue, but COME ON. It's BS that this is being portrayed, not just by conservatives but by the straight press, as just a liberal thing.
Also, a lot of the sillier items on the list fall under "virtue signaling", which is really just "tribal signaling", and yes, conservatives do plenty of that, too. They have their own language! "Let's go Brandon, tee hee!" Yes, each side rolls it's eyes at the tribal conventions of the other side, and most of it is silly. But it's not really "woke".
2) Most of this stuff isn't really new. It's just the internet and social media make it worse.
People have been digging for dirt on politicians and public figures for years, looking for a way to take them down. In the 90s, it was all about finding out which cabinet nominee had an undocumented maid or gardener. But it's been going on for centuries.
As you've said, the internet is an intensifier, and this is one of those things. It makes it really easy to dig for dirt, and it makes it really easy to whip up a furor over it. (Btw, conservatives used this tactic to get James Gunn fired from the MCU.) Sometimes that's great -- having police abuses captured on smartphones is good, having people digging through old tweets for any bad joke is ridiculous.
3) A lot of these items are pretty trivial
Are pride jerseys that common? Are they that big of a problem? How many schools really do a "day of absense", and also, who really cares? Find me someone who isn't totally fringe who insists that everyone recognize 70 genders. Some of this amounts to nutpicking. Sure, you can find some school doing something stupid or some online activist overreacting, but are these real problems? Does anyone who isn't either always online or living on a steady diet of Fox outrage even aware of these things?
4) I was particularly annoyed by the framing for Virtue Signaling:
"Brands use pro-LGBT, pro-BLM imagery to appear inclusive. But this marginalizes half of their potential user base."
Whether you think it's worthwhile or not, how does pro-LGBT or pro-BLM imagery actually marginalize anybody? To me this carries the assumption that it's OK to marginalize people as long as they're not white, male, or conservative.
I'm not a big fan of Disney throwing in gay minor characters in scenes that can easily be excised in foreign markets and trying to milk it for inclusivity points. When you start having undeniably gay leads, then come back to me. But even if I think it's silly and manipulative, they still have a bajillion straight, white characters. Straight whites are not getting shut out by these minor nods to inclusivity. They still dominate the media landscape. So I do bothered by (white) conservatives kicking and screaming any time they aren't directly catered to, or anyone else is. It's not a zero sum game, and promoting one group doesn't actually marginalize you.
"aware of & committed to addressing systemic injustice in the US."
No, that's not it. It's also an insistence on a VERY SPECIFIC set of solutions to this issue.
You can bring up strawman conservatives if you like (and that is what 90% of commenters will do) but among smart conservatives (think eg Sowell or McWhorter) the issues are
(a) Is there STILL a real problem. Yes we all know that 100 years ago women weren't allowed to vote or go to Harvard or drive or read. The issue is nowadays. The tools that are used to claim systematic discrimination are no longer "look the law says xyz", they are "only 30%, or whatever of students in Physics/CS/EE or whatever are women and that PROVES systemic injustice". Of course that same sort of logic proves systemic injustice in basket ball teams and prisons, so ...
So complaint one is that most of what is served up as evidence for injustice today looks like BS. Disparate outcomes per se are NOT evidence of any sort of discrimination; to insist that they are is "woke" and it is this article of faith that is in contention.
(b) How to solve problems. Woke insists that quota's and related features (like reducing standards) are the most important way to move forward. Non-woke insists that this is a terrible idea that will, that has already backfired. If you insist that black Americans are just as capable as white Americans of being, say, doctors, you do so by having them show it, by becoming doctors. But by reducing standards what you are doing is sending the message that "white doctors are real doctors, and black doctors are the PC paper doctors". Same thing is now happening with women in the sciences.
This is an argument that has plenty of scope for allowing entry quotas INTO programs, just not allowing the final standards to slip. And yet those final standards are slipping because, even with the quotas, outcomes are not as they are "supposed" to be.
Some, like Gladwell, would go further and say that even while entry quotas seem fine, they are in fact incredibly destructive because they basically ensure that the quota'd minority are obviously and visibly the weakest students in extremely tough classes, leading those students to conclude the field is just too hard for them and dropping out. A minority student in the top 10% of their high school could have gone on to be an engineer at, say Cal State Pomona, continued to be a 10% student there, and gone on to be an engineer with a full life. But by artificially stacking the deck, that student is instead routed to Stanford where said student is clearly at the very bottom of the class, is traumatized by the discovery that everyone else is so much smarter and the class pace is so rapid, and drops out after a year, to both their and society's disadvantage.
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