This post is in partial response to James O’Malley’s interesting discussion of “Woke” as a distinct ideology.
In his post, James identifies a number of ways to differentiate “wokeness” from classic liberalism. He points to:
deference to the lived experience of others, particularly where they have experienced discrimination or disadvantage;
prioritisation of reducing harm over permitting unrestricted free speech;
something he calls “totalising” - an unwillingness to form coalitions with those we have important disagreements with;
rules that may be contingent on group membership, rather than individual rights;
skepticism of the idea of historical “progress”; and
prioritisation of “right side” norms over accuracy.
I don’t fully agree with this list. In particular, I see 3, 4, 5, and 6 as features of the woke movement, but only insofar as they are features of ingroup / outgroup political discourse. There’s an argument to be had whether ingroup / outgroup politics is particularly strong at the current point in history, and I think a lot of woke discourse happens through platforms that encourage ingroup / outgroup features, but I suggest the clincher is that 3, 4, 5, and 6 apply equally to anti-woke politics. Classic liberalism may like to think it is too rational to fall prey to these tendencies, but they certainly aren’t distinctly “woke” tendencies.
However, I do subscribe to James’ overall argument, and I see the first two points as a distinct and interesting ideological shift. What I want to do here is add another item to the list, which is the prioritisation of structural rather than individual explanations for outcomes. I see this feature of “wokeness” as important, desirable, and fundamental to the “being awake” part of wokeness. It is also something that critics of wokeness frequently miss in their focus on the trappings of identity rather than the substance of the ideology.
I coach high school debating. I coach at an elite private boys school, which I have somewhat mixed feelings about. My students have diverse family and racial backgrounds, as well as diverse personal identities, but they share the privilege of expensive and selective schooling. This in turn significantly limits their wealth and class diversity.
One of the drills I run with my teams I privately call “Don’t be a misogynistic elitist bastard”. To the boys it’s just the “take the moral high ground” drill. The premise of the exercise is simple:
I ask about a social outcome. Why is someone not buying fresh food? Why are female sports stars paid less than men in the same sport? Why is someone unemployed? Why did someone not do their homework? Why does someone not do volunteer work? Why are nurses paid less than doctors?
Each student, in turn, has to think of a structural explanation, rather than blaming the individuals.
I’m dealing here with students who are smart, kind, socially minded, and skilled at finding and analysing arguments. None of them think of themselves as misogynistic, racist, elitist, or any of the other pejoratives that the woke movement would apply to their attitudes. But they find this exercise hard. They get the point. They will correct each other. They will often self-correct what they have just said. But they will over and over give responses that would get them “cancelled” if they espoused those positions from a public platform.
I agree that “we just want to be kind” is too vague a description of wokeness. It is this specific kind of kindness - seeking structural explanations rather than individual blame - that I think is the core of the ideology. And it isn’t a remotely new idea - it’s been a central part of academic and social discourse about gender, class and race for a long time. But these are hard, challenging academic ideas, that we’re trying to express and live by in a society where fewer and people have the opportunity to study the humanities in either breadth or depth.
So we have young adults trying to surface complex ideas such as “privilige” and “intersectionality”. Ideas that have captured and labelled something that they have been struggling to understand and express, but that suddenly make sense when explained well. They want to share and promote their new understanding, and then get frustrated and impatient when people misunderstand.
I strongly suspect that we have a large body of people in positions of power with a vested interest in promoting and capitalising on that misunderstanding.
But I also have faith that even those people were once smart, kind, and socially minded schoolboys at elite private schools.