Not All Woke on the Left

[Some Schmo]

I think woke is a perfect term for right wingers: it allows them to whine about everyone they don't like without having to think about or define anything.

It's the intellectually lazy way for right wingers to sound to other right wingers like they're politically aware.

[Kishkumen]

I think woke is a perfect term for right wingers: it allows them to whine about everyone they don't like without having to think about or define anything.

It's the intellectually lazy way for right wingers to sound to other right wingers like they're politically aware.

This reminds me very much of the corporate media strategy that was repeatedly employed during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Talking heads on all of the major stations would go around and stick microphones in the faces of young kids and ask them for their soundbite list of demands. This strategy was adopted so quickly and universally that I think it is fair to suspect there was a virtually coordinated effort to accuse OWS, implicitly and explicitly, of having no point to it.

Which was absolutely false and completely absurd.

Now the new refrain in corporate left-leaning media is that there is no woke and woke doesn't mean anything except as a vague insult the ignoramuses on the Right have glommed onto. The reason why corporate media and Clinton Democrats love this move is that it allows them to sidestep the relevant issues while they continue to do the least amount of work possible to address the core problems of our time. After all, their billionaires won't let them address the issues too aggressively, just like the billionaires on the Right love their own cultural bogeymen as their go-to distractions from core economic issues.

I thought it was unfortunate that Neiman did not define woke, but that is the kind of thing a philosopher of her type is liable to do in this situation. She goes in for complexity, not succinct definitions.

So, I will define it, as I think it is the easiest thing in the world to do: woke refers to the Left's current brand of identity politics regarding gender and race.

There you go.

[Morley]

[Kishkumen]

Yeah. I laughed when I first saw it. But the other side of the coin, which is deceptive, is "nothing to see here, move along."

[Res Ipsa]

I think woke is a perfect term for right wingers: it allows them to whine about everyone they don't like without having to think about or define anything.

It's the intellectually lazy way for right wingers to sound to other right wingers like they're politically aware.

This reminds me very much of the corporate media strategy that was repeatedly employed during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Talking heads on all of the major stations would go around and stick microphones in the faces of young kids and ask them for their soundbite list of demands. This strategy was adopted so quickly and universally that I think it is fair to suspect there was a virtually coordinated effort to accuse OWS, implicitly and explicitly, of having no point to it.

Which was absolutely false and completely absurd.

Now the new refrain in corporate left-leaning media is that there is no woke and woke doesn't mean anything except as a vague insult the ignoramuses on the Right have glommed onto. The reason why corporate media and Clinton Democrats love this move is that it allows them to sidestep the relevant issues while they continue to do the least amount of work possible to address the core problems of our time. After all, their billionaires won't let them address the issues too aggressively, just like the billionaires on the Right love their own cultural bogeymen as their go-to distractions from core economic issues.

I thought it was unfortunate that Neiman did not define woke, but that is the kind of thing a philosopher of her type is liable to do in this situation. She goes in for complexity, not succinct definitions.

So, I will define it, as I think it is the easiest thing in the world to do: woke refers to the Left's current brand of identity politics regarding gender and race.

There you go.

The problem with the term "woke," in my opinion, is that the right has followed the Christopher Rufo strategy of replacing its prior definition with its current definition as a catch-all slur for everything the right doesn't like about the left. In doing so, it obscures what I think you and would would agree are legitimate criticisms of some ideas and practices within the left by burying them in a pile of other grievances by those on the right against those on the left.

I think your definition definitely moves the conversation forward by defining the term. Now, at least, there is something specific to talk about. It also introduces the ability to compare and contrast, as we can look at the current identity politics regarding gender and race of both left and right and see how they relate and interact.

[Kishkumen]

The problem with the term "woke," in my opinion, is that the right has followed the Christopher Rufo strategy of replacing its prior definition with its current definition as a catch-all slur for everything the right doesn't like about the left. In doing so, it obscures what I think you and would would agree are legitimate criticisms of some ideas and practices within the left by burying them in a pile of other grievances by those on the right against those on the left.

I think your definition definitely moves the conversation forward by defining the term. Now, at least, there is something specific to talk about. It also introduces the ability to compare and contrast, as we can look at the current identity politics regarding gender and race of both left and right and see how they relate and interact.

When DeSantis, as much as I dislike him, says that Florida is where woke goes to die, I think he knows exactly what he means, and I think he means that Leftist identity politics regarding race and gender. He is talking about critical race theory and gender ed in K-12 education. I don't agree that it is *just* what people don't like. I mean, maybe there are a number of meatheads for whom that is the case, but I think there are a lot of people on the Right who would agree with that definition. It seems to me that it is the Left, which currently has the default position that people on the Right are hateful rubes or message under the assumption that their audience is comprised of hateful rubes, that gets a lot of mileage out of handwaving over this failure to define woke. That's a wonderful way not to own the wokeness that has surely been operating for the past several years, unless Jen Psaki is just making this up.

That said, blaming wokeness for the collapse of SVB and the indictment of Trump, that abuse of the term seems to be exactly the worst case scenario you are talking about.

[Some Schmo]

So, I will define it, as I think it is the easiest thing in the world to do: woke refers to the Left's current brand of identity politics regarding gender and race.

So "woke" is to the right what "racist" is to the left.

[Kishkumen]

So "woke" is to the right what "racist" is to the left.

Not exactly, but there is some overlap, yes.

[Alphus and Omegus]

"Woke" was originally a term used almost exclusively among black Americans to refer to someone who was aware of racism by particular people in their lives.

The tendency has since been taken by corporate neoliberals who try to frame all social unfairness or inequality as the product of racism so that they don't have to give up their libertarian-inflected love of unrestricted capitalism. Blaming everything on racism lets exploitative universities and businesses avoid scrutiny for their immoral conduct.

The far right has seized upon this inherent conservative hypocrisy (Kyrsten Sinema is a conservative whereas people like Ron DeSantis are reactionaries) and tried to flip the script and attempt to gain some moral high ground after decades of shamelessly arguing for plutocratic Christofascism. The current hysteria over "woke" is literally the exact same verbiage they used for many decades about other contrived controversies, eg "political correctness," "secular humanism," "cultural Marxism," and "communism."

In reality, there never has been a strong far left in the United States. There are no Democrats pushing communism. And while there are a few upper-middle-class bureaucrats who are loud and annoying, they don't have anywhere near the power of the actual censors in American politics, people like DeSantis who are literally trying to criminalize teaching and reading. There are no left wing book bans.

Don't get tricked by this flagrantly cynical projection effort to distract from the actual censorship that is happening because of powerful Republicans.

DeSantis hired a guy named Christopher Rufo who had publicly talked about his desire to fire professors who don't conform to his theocratic viewpoints and to reject students who don't either.

[Res Ipsa]

The problem with the term "woke," in my opinion, is that the right has followed the Christopher Rufo strategy of replacing its prior definition with its current definition as a catch-all slur for everything the right doesn't like about the left. In doing so, it obscures what I think you and would would agree are legitimate criticisms of some ideas and practices within the left by burying them in a pile of other grievances by those on the right against those on the left.

I think your definition definitely moves the conversation forward by defining the term. Now, at least, there is something specific to talk about. It also introduces the ability to compare and contrast, as we can look at the current identity politics regarding gender and race of both left and right and see how they relate and interact.

When DeSantis, as much as I dislike him, says that Florida is woke goes to die, I think he knows exactly what he means, and I think he means that Leftist identity politics regarding race and gender. He is talking about critical race theory and gender ed in K-12 education. I don't agree that it is *just* what people don't like. I mean, maybe there are a number of meatheads for whom that is the case, but I think there are a lot of people on the Right who would agree with that definition. It seems to me that it is the Left, which currently has the default position that people on the Right are hateful rubes or message under the assumption that their audience is comprised of hateful rubes, that gets a lot of mileage out of handwaving over this failure to define woke. That's a wonderful way not to own the wokeness that has surely been operating for the past several years, unless Jen Psaki is just making this up.

That said, blaming wokeness for the collapse of SVB and the indictment of Trump, that abuse of the term seems to be exactly the worst case scenario you are talking about.

This will probably sound familiar. I don't view what the right has done with the term "woke" to be a basis for political point scoring. It's a political tactic that has the unfortunate effect of taking perfectly good English terms and rendering them nearly useless when it comes to serious discussion. For that reason, I've been mostly ignoring discussions of the word "woke." DeSantis may very well use the term as you have defined it: critical race theory and race/gender education in schools. But, like "woke," critical race theory has been rendered pretty much a useless term for discussion, as it also received the Christopher Rufo treatment.

None of that changes the fact that there are serious issues under the topic of "identity politics" that merit attention. So, in my opinion, it would be a positive step to discard the word "woke" and focus on what those issues are and how they should be addressed. I think that puts us at pretty much the same destination, although perhaps by different routes. Fair?