Dear woke white liberals, you are the problem

I cannot recommend the below article highly enough. It is a discussion of the use of new words to describe different groups of people and the tensions it is creating. Namely, the introduction of these new words such as BIPOC and latinx are top-down and are not accepted by the groups they are meant to describe. That is to say that no group asked to be called those names. Instead, elites in academic and activist circles decided that for them, which sounds eerily colonial.

Prior to the beginning of this year, I had never heard the word BIPOC. What is funny to me is that I have never heard anyone use it who is not white. I had no idea what it even stood for at first. As the article mentions, it is often unclear to many what the BI refers to, i.e., black and indigenous or bisexual? The same is true for latinx. In my own experience, I have never heard someone use it who is not white or a professional activist of some sort. Say what you will about the representativeness of my own experiences, but the fact is almost nobody identifies as latinx and yet that word is used in some elite circles as if everyone does. Pro-tip, if you want to help out a group, you have to be able to communicate with them. You can have the best ideas in the world, but if you cannot even communicate, forget about making any progress. Calling a group a name they do not identify as is a great way to ensure your communication efforts go nowhere.

The article quotes a person wondering where the word BIPOC even came from. Nobody had ever used it until a year or so ago and then all of a sudden, a small group of elites decided that is what people will be called. I can imagine that puzzled reaction is what any normal person would have when hearing such a word come out of nowhere. As the article notes, few people who are black or Native American identify as BIPOC. That is no surprise given that it is an elite-driven phenomenon and is confined almost entirely to those circles. 

The first paragraph of the article really is a sight to behold. It talks about a student at a university in California, who is black and from the south, talking to his white (almost certainly liberal) classmates about Hispanic friends he had back home, only to be interrupted by one of them saying “we say latinx here.” Yes, indeed. That is exactly who says latinx. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I am going to go out on a limb and speculate that the classmates who use that word grew up very well off, went to very expensive private schools K-12 and only have ever known people just like them. In other words, the perfect candidates for using woke jargon.

In a later paragraph, the article quotes the same person who was uneasy about the word BIPOC saying that she is uneasy about the use of the new language in general. Her reason for it is because of how quickly it changes and how puritanical it can be. One day you have a group of friends. The next day you do not use the latest word and you are an outcast. Funny enough, the person quoted says she feels the most uneasy about the use of new words around white liberals. Once again, it is not non-white people who are pushing this new language. It is woke white liberals.

One of my many problems with wokeness in general and this new language in particular is that it appeals to nobody outside of woke white liberals and a few professional activists. I understand the desire to want to improve people’s lives and deal with the stains we are still experiencing because of past injustices. I share that sentiment 100%. What I do not want to do is waste time focusing on language policing, which ranges from pointless at best to awful and dangerous at worst. I want to take substantive actions to improve people’s lives and those focused on language policing are not doing that.

All talk

Someone reading this might think all this new language is no big deal. It is just words, after all. What is the harm? Therein lies my biggest problem with wokeness. There are many reasons why I oppose it. It is authoritarian, hostile to free inquiry, intolerant and punitive. But most of all, it is 100% performance, 0% substance. For all the talk from white liberals (yes, that is who leads the woke brigade) about wanting to fight against injustices, wokeness does nothing of the sort. The best thing that can be said about it is that it is just words.

The last section of the article deals with this problem. It quotes an immigration lawyer, who is Hispanic, in Marin County, one of the most liberal places in the country, as noting that white liberals in that area love to use words like latinx in the name of being “inclusive.” But when it comes to doing the thing that would improve the lives of Hispanics and others in the area the most, allowing more housing to be built, they are nowhere to be found.

Therein lies the real problem. By far the most important thing that could be done in a place like Marin County is to allow more housing to be built so more people could live there and enjoy the prosperity it has to offer. Where are the woke white liberals? Surely, they must be in favor of it. After all, allowing more people to live there would certainly be inclusive and would improve their lives. How naïve of you.

I have written before about the massive failings of liberal places like California when it comes to housing so feel free to check them out for more detail. The reality is it is blatantly obvious what needs to be done to help people in places like California, New York, DC and other liberal bastions: build more housing. Yet time again, it is woke white liberals who stand in the way. But it’s all good, right? After all, they use “inclusive” words like BIPOC and latinx so everything is fine, right? 

This picture encapsulates the all-talk-no-walk mindset perfectly. The house is outside of DC. It has a yard sign saying Black Lives Matter and another yard sign supporting single-family zoning, by far the biggest obstacle to making housing affordable. That right there is why so many woke white liberals are the problem. They are interested in performative acts only. They are indifferent or hostile to substance because that would actually require real work and maybe even a drop of sacrifice on their part. Putting up a yard sign saying Black Lives Matter requires no work or sacrifice at all.

Anyone can put up a yard sign, but not anyone can put in the work required to make things better. Opposing new housing is easy. Supporting efforts to let more people live in prosperous neighborhoods is a much harder task.

When it comes to making expensive places more affordable, the only thing that will make a major difference is building more housing. It is that simple. That the most expensive places tend to be the most liberal gives the woke white liberal crowd a golden opportunity to show that they really care about addressing racism and being inclusive. So far, it does not look like many have taken up that chance. Talk about being “inclusive” all you want, I do not care. If you will not walk the walk, I do not want to hear a peep from you about racism or being inclusive.

To be sure, it is not just building more housing that would help more people. Plenty of other substantive things are needed that would do a lot of good for a lot of people. Police reforms and other criminal justice reform measures would help. So would improving schools in all kinds of ways, not the least of which is getting everyone back in school in-person, mask-free and without obscene quarantine rules. The list of substantive things that can be done goes on and on. There are many, many things that can be done to improve people’s lives, but those take time and effort and are not always easy to get done. Language policing is easy and requires no effort and that is where woke white liberals have largely chosen to go. It is a real shame.

A ridiculous criticism I sometimes get

In conversations I have had on subjects involving race and other related matters, an occasional criticism I have received is that my being a white male gives me no standing to criticize anything or even speak on race-related matters. Funny enough, most of the times I have heard that have been from someone who is also white. It is true, I am a white male. You caught me on that one.

Truth be told, whenever I hear someone say that about me or white men in general, I just laugh. I laugh because that is an indictment of them, not me. They are the ones living in the bubble. If you think that only white men object to wokeness, you really need to get out more. I can never emphasize this enough: the audience for the stuff the woke crowd does (language policing and other performative acts) is white liberals, not non-white people.

While I do not gloat about being a white male, I do not apologize for it either nor do I feel white guilt. Are there people who are disadvantaged in ways I am not? Yes. Is racism a problem? Yes. Are there massive racial disparities in areas such as health, education and income? Yes. Are they problems that should be addressed? Yes. Guess what? None of that is solved by language policing and performative acts nor is it solved by putting up yard signs. It is solved by tackling substantive issues like policing, education, housing, healthcare, etc.

I am unrelenting and scathing in my criticism of the woke crowd for prioritizing performance over substance and I will never stop doing that so long as that remains the case. For those out there claiming to care about fighting for justice, I expect their actions to match their words. I expect those who claim to be for things to be for them consistently. When they do not do that, I will call them out on it and I will not hold back.

What is a white liberal to do?

Before even going into substantive matters, you have to have some understanding as to what the groups you are trying to help are thinking. That is not always easy to do and finding people who are representative of their respective groups can be difficult. It is tempting to think that those who are the most vocal are also the most representative, but that is almost never the case.

For a white liberal who wants to help out people in the black community, who are some people worth listening to? For starters, you could look at what some elected officials are saying. In particular, Eric Adams would be someone to listen to, as would Jim Clyburn. Both will give you a much more representative view of the black community than any professional activist or cable news talking head will.

As far as writers go, John McWhorter is a good resource. He has a regular column with the New York Times, which I recommend reading. He has long written for The Atlantic as well. He also has a new book out called Woke Racism, which is a must-read for any white liberal who thinks wokeness is helpful to the black community. His views overall are left-of-center, but he has been very critical of wokeness and the fixation on race that many on the left have and is especially critical of the new movement calling itself “anti-racist.” As a bonus, if anyone reading this is feeling white guilt, I hope this column by McWhorter helps you get past that.

Although I think Adams, Clyburn and McWhorter are good people to listen to, they are hardly the only ones. But for white liberals just getting started who genuinely want to get some understanding of the black community, those three are a great place to start. To be sure, they do not agree on every last thing, but they defy many caricatures of black voters that many white liberals seem to believe about them, i.e., they favor defunding the police and are far-left socialists.

I also highly recommend reading this op-ed by a civil rights lawyer from Minneapolis discussing the failed ballot initiative there to replace the police department. Guess which group was most opposed to it? Black voters. You would never know that from listening to activists screaming about defunding the police, but a vast majority of black voters oppose it. What they want is better policing, not less of it, let alone none of it. Police reforms that hold accountable bad police officers are popular. Defunding the police is not. White liberals need to drill that into their heads.