What woke means and why it is so problematic
Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Over the last few weeks, there has been a debate online about how to define the word woke. I dragged my feet as much I could on writing about it, but I’ve given up. I have tried to write as little about culture war issues as possible to focus on things that I think are much more important. I will be back to regular programming soon enough.
The word woke has been overused so many times over the last few years that it can seem very abstract. I plead guilty to using it a lot. I have in mind a particular thing, but when I use that word that may not be clear.
Originally, woke simply meant being aware of racial prejudice and discrimination. The commonly used phrase was “stay woke.” While most of the people associated with that word today are white, it originated in the black community as far back as the 1930s. By that simple and specific definition, being woke is perfectly fine. However, the crowd that word is associated with today goes way beyond that, which is why it has become so controversial and why many people use that word pejoratively.
This piece by Nate Cohn in the New York Times does a great job of articulating what the crowd associated with the word woke today believes. It doesn’t define woke, but I think it gives an excellent description of the ideas that animate it. In discussing those ideas, Cohn refers to the group associated with them as the new left. I will do the same here. That is to distinguish them from Obama era liberals. While Obama himself and liberals during that era emphasized unity and what people shared in common, the new left/woke emphasizes the opposite.
In the eyes of the new left/woke, group identity is central. Whether that is race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or anything else, that is the single most important characteristic. Unlike the Obama era liberals, the new left/woke focuses heavily on personal lives and not policy. As Cohn explains, “Today’s new left consciously strives to include, protect and promote marginalized groups. In everyday life, this means prioritizing, trusting and affirming the voices and experiences of marginalized groups, encouraging people to share their pronouns, listing identities on social media profiles, and more. This extension of politics to everyday life is a difference from Obama-era liberalism in its own right. While the Obama-era liberals mostly focused on policy, the new left emphasizes the personal as political.”
Another major difference from Obama era liberals is their outlook on things. Obama famously ran on hope and change while emphasizing positive things and what he was for. Liberals of that era tended to do the same. The new left/woke sees things very differently. In their eyes, American society is broken beyond repair and must be fundamentally altered in nearly every way.
While Obama era liberals tended to have an optimistic view of things, the worldview of the new left/woke is very bleak. How they plan on fundamentally remaking things is unclear and I doubt they have any idea. Since they have little to offer on substance, the new left/woke focuses on language policing, which is much easier to do. That is most commonly seen in fights over gender identity. For example, many in the new left/woke will not say the word women when talking about pregnancy. Those who deviate from what that crowd considers to be the right language, especially people on the center-left, can find themselves on the receiving end of an online mob attack.
For the new left/woke, inclusivity is the number one priority. If it is seen to conflict with any other priorities, i.e., free speech, it will always take precedence. Being inclusive is certainly a good goal and something we should all strive for. The problem is that the way the new left/woke goes about it is completely disconnected from the people who are part of what they see as historically marginalized groups.[i] The new left/woke treats professional activists as if they speak for everyone in their group. For example, it was common in the summer of 2020 to treat black activists who supported defunding the police as if they spoke for every single black person. That was clearly false then and has only proven to be more false as time has gone by. It is not just policy where the new left/woke is disconnected from the people they claim to want to help, but in language, too. While the new left/woke uses words like BIPOC, the people those words are meant to describe almost never do.
Like all other goals, inclusivity is not free of tradeoffs, conflicts or costs. A good example is the debate over transgender issues. When it comes to the rights of transgender people, there are many areas where supporting them is a no-brainer. Allowing transgender people to serve in the military and applying civil rights laws to them is not hard at all and entails very few downsides, if any.
However, there are areas where the right answer is not so obvious. For example, when it comes to sports there are genuine tradeoffs and conflicts, which I have written about before. The tradeoff/conflict in that case is between being inclusive (allowing those who identify as women to take part in sports of their choice) and fairness (accounting for the physical differences between biological and transgender women). The new left/woke doesn’t acknowledge that tension. In their eyes, the issue is settled and there is no room for debate or nuance. Anyone who suggests otherwise is transphobic at best and is otherwise inciting violence against transgender people.
Gender affirming care for minors is another issue that is full of gray areas that the new left/woke refuses to acknowledge. It is a highly emotional and very new issue. I don’t know where I stand on it. I don’t support blanket laws banning it that some red states have passed, but it is dead wrong to say, as the new left/woke does, that there are no legitimate questions about its propriety. I don’t know what the solution is, but between how new it is and the fact that it involves minors, it doesn’t seem like something that should be rushed into full speed ahead.
When it comes to adults, I certainly have no problem with transitioning. If that is who someone is and that is going to make them happy, that is great and I’m all for it. Minors are a completely different story. I rarely believe in saving people from themselves, but minors are one such exception. That they are not old enough to consent to a whole host of things is not disputed, but somehow the new left/woke thinks that doesn’t apply to something that involves physically altering their bodies.
Almost all of the views held by the new left/woke are fringe and not held by many people. Just because a viewpoint is currently held by only a few people doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Favoring gay marriage was once a fringe view. How did that change? In a word, persuasion. Large numbers of people who opposed gay marriage now support it. That is how a viewpoint goes from fringe to overwhelmingly popular.
For the new left/woke, persuasion is anathema. In their eyes, their views are 100% morally right. If someone isn’t in perfect agreement with them, they are beyond saving. Because their views are 100% morally right, there is no persuasion to be done. Those who don’t agree with them completely must be “called out” and vilified. If they have a job or position, they should lose it. Such efforts have been made against many individuals over the last few years. Some of those efforts have been successful while others have not, but even when they are unsuccessful, the message is clear: agree with us or else.
Not only is “calling out” incompatible with free inquiry, tolerance and open debate, but it is also a guaranteed way to lose. If you have a viewpoint that is held by just a small percentage of people, you can’t “call out” your way to victory. 10% is not going to “call out” and vilify 90% into submission. Thank god advocates for gay marriage didn’t use those tactics because if they had it would still be illegal today. It is persuasion or bust.
What is not woke
Just as it is important to identify things that fall under the woke umbrella, it is also important to identify things that do not. For the latter, the lowest hanging fruit is the Republican definition of woke. That is simply anything they don’t like. According to Republicans in Congress and others on the right, there is a large part of the federal budget that is woke. Exactly which part that is, I don’t know and neither do they. As I mentioned in my last piece, there are Republicans in Congress and elsewhere who have said SVB failed because it was woke. Literally every problem is because something or someone was woke. When it comes to identifying what is not woke, congressional Republicans and right-wingers are usually a good resource.
I don’t consider anything economic to fall under the woke umbrella. Ideas like national rent control and abolishing private health insurance are terrible, but they are not woke. Things that do fall under that umbrella are strictly cultural and deal with some form of identity. Woke is also a term that refers exclusively to things on the left. Things on the right can be many other labels such as MAGA, conservative and reactionary, but not woke.
The widespread use of the word woke is very recent. The first time I ever heard it used was after Trump was elected. Needless to say, there are many problems we have today that have been around for much longer. Almost all of the problems that have emerged since 2016 such as the pandemic and inflation were not caused by someone being woke. While the new left/woke is not a force for good, its adherents didn’t create any of the major problems of today.
Of all the issues I write about the most, the new left/woke is a cause of none of them. Zoning laws that make housing unaffordable for almost everyone have existed for decades. Red tape was getting in the way of improvements in energy and healthcare long before the word woke entered the public lexicon. The new left/woke is not good for Democrats to be associated with, but it’s not like they won every election before 2016 either.
The new left/woke worldview is dead wrong
According to the new left/woke, those who are part of a historically marginalized group are hopelessly oppressed. Because of that they are fragile and must be kept from seeing or hearing anything that is not 100% perfect. Anyone who violates that must be “called out” and vilified.
Anyone who is part of a historically marginalized group is a victim and is faced with insurmountable barriers to success. Racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia are woven into the very fabric of American society. Every institution from the political to the cultural is contaminated by that. Free speech is a tool for the oppressors to keep down the oppressed.
Policies that try to help out everyone, i.e., the Affordable Care Act, only serve to advance disparities. That is why any policy enacted must be explicitly based on identity, i.e., prioritizing beneficiaries based on that. The only way to reduce disparities is to explicitly promote historically marginalized groups and that can only be done at the expense of other groups.
If all that sounds dystopian, that is because it is. It is also completely wrong on so many levels. The success of the movement for gay rights alone is proof of that. When I first began high school in 2001, it was illegal for gay people to have sex in many states, including Texas. Gay marriage was illegal everywhere and very unpopular. Gay people could not serve openly in the military and could be fired from their jobs because of it. If the worldview of the new left/woke was right, all of that would still be true today, but none of it is.
The idea that the only way to help out groups who have struggled in the past is to make policies explicitly based on race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., is wrong. Inequality has been decreasing for some time now. Policies enacted by Biden and Obama are having much greater success than many realize. For example, health insurance has been expanded to tens of millions who previously did not have it. None of the policies enacted under Biden or Obama were given to people based on any kind of identity and everyone stands to gain from them. Because groups who have struggled historically tend to be overrepresented among lower income people, they will be helped disproportionately, which will help reduce disparities of all kinds.
While climate change is generally not something that falls under the woke umbrella, many environmental groups have decided to throw their lot in with that crowd. In their telling, climate change is hopeless. It is going to wipe us all out and there is nothing we can do about it. That, too, is wrong. Not only are we not doomed, but we can and have acted to address it.
Last year, the biggest piece of climate change legislation ever passed was signed into law. The march towards electric cars is undeniable as is the progress of clean energy. There is plenty of work left to do, but we are 100% capable of it. Telling people things are hopeless is not just wrong, but horrible for their mental health. It is probably a reason why liberals, especially young liberals, tend to be more depressed than moderates and conservatives.
Like the obsession with “calling out,” the tendency to say everything is awful and hopeless is a guaranteed way to lose. If everything really is hopeless, then pushing for any kind of change is pointless and shouldn’t be bothered with. People need something to look forward to and to fight for. Telling them that they have no hope is great way to not motivate them to act.
Lastly, the zero sum mindset that dominates among the new left/woke is wrong. Not everything is zero sum. In fact, few things are. One group doing better doesn’t mean another has to do worse. One of the areas where the new left/woke zero sum mindset has been especially pernicious is in education. In particular, the new left/woke has pushed for things like eliminating honors programs, not measuring learning loss during the pandemic and changing admissions standards to top high schools. A frequent justification for that is that those things are racist.
As much as the new left/woke claims to be inclusive, it is in practice anything but. Treating education as a zero sum game means that since black and Hispanic students tend to struggle more than white and Asian students, the only way for the former to do better is for the latter to do worse. It never occurs to that crowd that education is not a fixed thing that only some people can get at the expense of others. For example, test prep access can be expanded as can enrollment at top schools. Efforts can be made to reach out to groups who have struggled in the past and improve their standing. None of that requires bringing down anyone.
[i] The phrase historically marginalized groups refers to basically everyone other than straight, white men although Asians and Jews are usually excluded as well.