I’m woke. I can say that because the word “woke,” like so many words these days, has no parameters, no definition. Those who believe in it believe there’s a definition, filled with fuzzy words of goodness and even fuzzier words of badness. After all, i’m against racism and sexism, even if those words, too, no longer have a cognizable meaning. But then, I’m for equality rather than equity, so maybe I’m not woke. Oh no, does that make me . . . anti-woke?
Anti-woke is the new characterization of people to be demonized. To the extent it means anything, it appears to be a play off Ibram Kendi’s anti-racist, which separates the world into two camps, those who adhere to critical race theory, believe everything is about race and that one either dedicates one’s life to fighting “systemic racism” or is a racist. You’re either with them or against them, and if you’re not with them, you’re racist.
It’s a trap, of course. If you believe in equality and hate racism, then you are likely to be subject to pressure when ten thousand random unduly passionate people attack you for any heretical expression that fails to conform to their ideology. So you are left with two choices, either say nothing to avoid the conflict or conform. There is no argument to be made that you’re not racist, but also not a believer in critical race theory and believe that if you try hard enough, racism answers everything. There is racism. Everything is not racism.
The problem is that by being anti-woke, meaning that you are unwilling to subjugate your beliefs, or at least say nothing to upset the angry children of all ages, you give comfort to the enemy.
I'm not anti woke.
I'm not anti-anti-racist.I'm an individualist. I'm a universalist. I believe in the principle of equality under the law. I don't believe vigorously defending these values is done at anyone's expense. Period.
If you don't get that, you do not *understand*. https://t.co/YcAWSS9lvi
— Kmele 🖐 (@kmele) February 3, 2021
Kmele Foster is a black guy. Like Thomas Chatterton Williams, John McWhorter and others, Foster is also smart, thoughtful and independent, unwilling to follow the orthodoxy. This, apparently, makes him an “anti-wokeness warrior,” which involves another trick of adding “warrior” to the back end of a word to trade off the social justice warrior meme. Is he? Of course and of course not, since the words are meaningless and thus subject to the millions of interpretations which every individual who uses it believes to be conclusively correct, even if every other usage means something different.
There are racists. There are white supremacists who believe that people of other races, ethnicities or religions are inferior human beings. Clearly, Foster is not such a person. Quite the opposite.
Make no mistake. The belief that students of a particular race, cannot or should not, be held to the same standard as their classmates is objectively racist.
Motives aren't irrelevant. Obviously some context omitted. But this is outrageous + toxic in nearly any imaginable frame. https://t.co/2cVWuL4AFZ
— Kmele 🖐 (@kmele) February 3, 2021
Allison Collins is a member of the San Francisco Board of Education, the one that removed the names of Washington and Lincoln, plus 42 others, from their schools because they were problematic. The Board that voted to ironically eliminate acronyms because they symbolize white supremacy. And here, she minces no words: merit is racist. Foster replies that presuming black students can’t success in a merit-based system is racist.
Who’s woke?
For quite a while now, I’ve drawn the distinction between liberalism, the support of equality, freedom and civil rights for all, from the ideology of progressives, identitarianism, cancellation, equity and prohibiting freedom when it’s “wrong,” when it allows words and ideas that fail to adhere to its dogma. I’ve been properly chastised for using labels, although they are often a necessary shorthand for broader concepts, since they tend to be as meaningless as the other words thrown about these days.
And it’s true that as one tribe comes up with a weapon, it’s fairly swiftly adopted by the other, effectively making any effort to criticize it appear tribal in itself. Yes, the left and right are doing everything possible to cancel each other, and accusing the other of cancellation when it serves their ends. Even for those who raise the argument, they will be castigated as a hypocrite by hypocrites if they fail to come out in strident support of every complaint of a tribe.
Whether this new smear of being “anti-woke” gains traction is unclear. The purpose may be to demonize non-believers as white supremacists, perhaps as defined by the Frisco BOE, which puts one in the pretty good company of George Washington and Abe Lincoln, not to mention acronyms like the ACLU and the NAACP, but if it means that you get to hang out with guys like Foster, I’m good with that. He seems like a pretty cool guy.
More seriously, I am anti-woke if that means that I reject the illiberalism of silencing speech because it expresses ideas that some complain hurts theirs or someone else’s feelings. I am anti-woke if it means that we don’t divvy up opportunity based on race, sex, victim points, to the exclusion of anyone based on irrelevant characteristics. And I am definitely anti-woke if it means I can disagree with the great many simplistic “reforms” being promoted that will be ineffective, doomed to fail and counterproductive.
And before anyone accuses me of being right wing, or worse, I am anti-woke because I am liberal and believe in equality, freedom and civil rights. People like me didn’t spend the last 50 years fighting for equality just so we could trade one racism for another, one sexism for another and invent a new laundry list of grievances to justify the delusion that we’re the good guys doing the same things as the bad guys, but with good intentions.
At the top, I declare “I’m woke,” because anyone can claim to be anything they want. And if woke means aware of and sensitive to the problems caused by racism and sexism, I am woke indeed. Just not your kind of woke, because, like Kmele Foster, I refuse to indulge in your racism and sexism and whatever phobias you want to heap on top when they’re nonsense. If someone calls you anti-woke, maybe they’re paying you a compliment by saying you’re not a blind adherent of the orthodoxy. If it makes you feel better, you will eventually end up being sacrificed to the woke gods no matter what.
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“… and if you’re not with them, you’re racist.”
I liked the original misspelling (“your racist”). Until you changed it, I thought that it was an intentional poke at the level of intellectual rigor in these debates. My hat is off to you again, for continuing over the years to write reasoned pieces in support of this position. You damned NY liberal.
I remember when conservatives tried to turn liberalism into a dirty word, and I fought it then. It’s now the progressives doing the same, and I will still fight it. And for people who refuse to be subject to either side’s controlling orthodoxy, they will know they are not alone despite the competing mobs.
As for my typo, I’m not that cool.
It must be fun to endlessly castigate the tribes on the left and right while pretending you’re not in a tribe called the middle.
This is a concept that has been indoctrinated out of you, that being more liberal or conservative within rational parameters with a primary concern of what’s best for everyone is something you just can’t fathom. There’s no middle tribe. It’s just a big hole between bookends of outrage filled with people who don’t hate each other even though they disagree about everything.
Well, then it must be quite lonely.
You might want to try understanding rather than trying to be snarky. The former may broaden your understanding so you don’t always say such dumb stuff, and you’re not very good at the latter.
Since I know how much you care about what I have to say, the least I could do is add my two cents. Snark can sometimes be witty, and effective in that regard as a funny way of making a point. Other times, it’s just blunt and shallow, and comes off as childish and antagonistic.
Even though you often miss the point of Scott’s replies to you, or at least don’t appear to grasp what he’s trying to tell you, you might do well to try a little harder. Maybe this isn’t a battle between you and him, but you coming to his blawg to read what he says because he might know stuff that might make you think better.
Are mentally stunted tribalists capable only of viewing the world through a false, reductionist, binary lens happier than those with a coherent ideology and carefully thought-out world view? That’s a question only you can answer Jake.
Allison Collins helps us to understand that systemic racism exists by demonstrating what systemic racism can look like, and how it can overwhelm and displace a reasonable concern.
Weird how messages sent aren’t always the messages received.
But I don’t believe defending the right to speak of people like her who uphold systemic racism and white supremacy makes me a Nazi.
Unless you meant me in which case I will Do Better.
I remember being reliably informed by the cool kids at Appellate Twitter that it was sexist and misogynistic to call a woman crazy. Thankfully, that all changed with Marjorie Taylor Greene, so now we’re back to women can be crazy too again. At least it should work that way.
Principles < Identity < Ideology
You may call her crazy, but don’t even think of using the word hysterical.
SHG.
“I’m reliably informed that I’m unwoke, insensitive, stupid, wrong and likely to commit a vast array of disgusting crimes.”
What an excellent, cogent post, Scott!
I think every stupid SJW should be compelled ( at gunpoint if, necessary) to sit a chair with their eyelids stapled to their eyebrows, and read this over and over till they actually get it.
It’s like trying to persuade a Catholic to be Lutheran. You can’t reason with blind faith.
I would play Had to Cry Today by Blind Faith, but rules. And, tbf, it’s a good rule, completely unlike the irrational, ever changing crapola from the woke.
They just can’t find their way home.
There ya go, Buddy. PS; Did you miss the joke, Scott? I was ‘channeling’ someone..
Yeah, I missed it.
I count myself somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan and I agree with our host. We are far more liberal in the old sense of the word than most “liberals” are today.
Let everyone go as far or not so far as they can based on their innate abilities, learned skills, and the reality to be dealt with. If they can do the job, go for it. If not, do something else.
Our old school notion of liberal values doesn’t fit their paradigm, so they really have no grasp of what we’re talking about here, and will fight us to death to deny they don’t get it.
Let me take a stab at this: When you’re indoctrinated to seeing the world as a battle between good and evil, what choice do they have but to be on the side of good? The concept that we’re all trying to make it a better world, but disagree (often vehemently) about how to do so is completely foreign to their understanding.
One can’t compromise with evil. One can’t find common ground with evil. Evil is evil and must be destroyed.
That attitude is not limited to the left. The growing right fringe thinks democrats, liberals, and progressives all are literally baby eating pedophiles.
I think he’s talking about a generational distinction more than an ideological distinction.
A fellow traveler. Woohoo!
Refusing to bow to the hat on the pole does not give comfort to the enemy. When the asshole with the hat and pole decides to count all non-genuflectors with the enemy, the asshole may thereby give comfort to the enemy.
When discussing the current political situation, do the terms left and right have any meaning anymore? I am not a political scientist any more than I am a lawyer, but from this layman’s perspective, the “woke left”, from a functional perspective, seems to have drifted so far left that they are on the right on a number of issues. Ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity and rights seem to be antithetical to their beliefs while concepts such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and to a certain extent nationalism seem to be core beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
A link? Really?
Therefore, to be possess’d with double pomp,
To say what Wikipedia hath said,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
[…]
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.
-Earl of Salisbury, probably
I miss FUBAR too.
I loved Fubar. What happened to him? Is he busy with [redacted] again?
Not entirely sure, but I think I pissed him off when I challenged his assertion that hydroxychloroquine was the fix for COVID, but the deep state was keeping it a secret from the people. He’s never been heard from since. He could have fallen into ditch, too.