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How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

• swayvil 5y ago
  Elite schools could be called meme-labs. The modern hypermediated networked society (social media, texting, video, youtube...) could be called the fertile medium. And those kids are notorious for failing to wash their hands.
• 908B64B197 5y ago
  I still don't get the term latinx. Have they considered... Latin. As in, Latin America, for instance?
  • azth 5y ago
    It's incredibly offensive. They're projecting how English works on gendered nouns onto other language (Spanish) and then getting worked up over it. It's astounding that the people pushing the term don't see the irony.
    • wumpus 5y ago
      Also nicely ironic that the language Latin is gendered. So "Latin America" in English is "America latina" in standard Spanish, and Google wants to translate it to "Americae" in Latin ("Americas", plural, feminine gender, nominative case.)
    • rcoveson 5y ago
      I have seen some concern about this issue in El Salvador. But "latinx"? Not once. It's unpronounceable in Spanish. You only see the letter X in indigenous place-names like Mexico or Oaxaca, and there it's pronounced kind of like a fricative version of our H, which can't work at the end of the word. I've heard native English speakers say it's pronounced "lah-TINKS", which is so obviously foreign it's painful. Two solutions I've seen native speakers employ: Sometimes in written language, the @ symbol will be used because it's like an A and an O overlayed ("latin@s"). When speaking, the only thing that could work would be E, "latines", which at least would be pronounceable and would rhyme. Did the idiot who thought of "latinx" think about rhyming? Spanish speakers write poetry and music too.
      • tablespoon 5y ago
        > But "latinx"? Not once. It's unpronounceable in Spanish. You only see the letter X in indigenous place-names like Mexico or Oaxaca, and there it's pronounced kind of like a fricative version of our H, which can't work at the end of the word. I've heard native English speakers say it's pronounced "lah-TINKS", which is so obviously foreign it's painful. That's pretty ironic. I never made that connection, though I only have a basic familiarity with Spanish phonetics. My understanding is that "latinx" is pretty much exclusively a performative English-speaking white liberal thing. It's not very pronounceable in English, either. I've never actually heard it spoken, but mentally I read it as "latin-ex." Personally, I don't think I'd ever even try to use "lah-TINKS," since I'd be afraid it'd be interpreted as an ethnic slur.
        • mshroyer 5y ago
          > I've never actually heard it spoken Tune into NPR for an hour and you're sure to hear it.
        • umanwizard 5y ago
          I’ve heard it spoken (never, of course, by someone actually from Latin America), and it’s indeed pronounced latin-ex.
        • robocat 5y ago
          This video gives some background to the term, and pronounces it latin-ex: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bs339gW_xqU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bs339gW_xqU (I tried to pick a short video without any adverts.)
      • umanwizard 5y ago
        > You only see the letter X in indigenous place-names like Mexico or Oaxaca, and there it's pronounced kind of like a fricative version of our H Interestingly, in both of those cases it was originally pronounced like our “sh”, which is a sound that doesn’t exist in Spanish.
  • bluedino 5y ago
    Hispanics don't get it either.
    • bitwize 5y ago
      One of my favorite responses to this came from a Mexican on Twitter and was something to the effect of "Fuck off, pendejx."
      • busterarm 5y ago
        I laughed _so hard_ at this and am going to steal it.
    • busterarm 5y ago
      Indeed. The only ones I've ever seen push it in the workplace are the ones that never learned how to speak Spanish. Telling.
      • bushbaba 5y ago
        With them shoving their privilege into others. The exact thing they preach not to do.
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  • Ekaros 5y ago
    Also why is it limited just to latin, why not whitx, blackx, asix, arabx, jewx and so on? Why aren't they inclusive towards all other groups?
    • postsantum 5y ago
      Ironically, some groups use the -x for chinese people
  • umanwizard 5y ago
    Or latine which was invented by people who actually speak the language.
• foolinaround 5y ago
  https://archive.ph/jVOl3 https://archive.ph/jVOl3
• deleted 5y ago
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• chmod775 5y ago
  Fundamentally languages have been evolving in a reductive manner, which is why adding syllables to terms like in "Latino/Latina -> Latin-x -> Latinx+" won't last. People will quickly eschew these terms for things that are easier to pronounce. There's no malice in this - just a natural evolution of language towards efficiency. As such its an endless cycle: new stuff is introduced to everyday language then reduced to something simpler - often using words that fell out of use, shadowing them with new meaning. It's quite possible the new word for "Latinx+", whatever it is, will simply be considered genderless - if societal pressure manages to displace the old terms.
  • nyolfen 5y ago
    the point is not the specific words you use, the point is that you do not have a choice in using them
  • dragontamer 5y ago
    People have been trying to change gender terms forever. It's nothing recent. I recall discussions about the use of the non gendered pronoun 'e' years ago. To replace she vs he.
    • buu700 5y ago
      I remember learning about Spivak pronouns from (I believe) reddit some time in the late 00s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun As far as I'm aware, the motivation behind this had nothing to do with social justice for trans people, but more as a potential alternative to the awkward/ambiguous singular they. (Or at least that's how I would've interpreted it back then, having been a teenager with no real concept of or experience with LGBT issues.)
      • jefftk 5y ago
        > a potential alternative to the awkward/ambiguous singular they Spivak pronouns go back a very long way, though they were most popularized in the early '80s by Spivak using them in technical documentation. The popularity of singular they as a general purpose pronoun is much more recent.
• Barrin92 5y ago
  I'm glad that the Economist points out at the end that 'wokeness' has become a favorite of business, and the reason is pretty obvious, as a movement it's self-defeating because all identitarian politics eventually ends in infighting, with its subjective, choice and preference based worldview it's actually ill-equipped to move anything. It might exist in academia or PR departments or journalism or facebook pages and twitter threads but it does very little to affect material relations and power structures, so it's if anything the Left and not anyone else who should be concerned with it. It's always surprising to me that this seems to be such a Conservative topic of concern who if anything should be glad that it occupies so much mindspace.
  • mc32 5y ago
    It's like wokesters complaining about X-fragility. One does get fed up from the constant droning on.
  • nradov 5y ago
    Leftist movements tend to consume themselves in escalating purity spirals. https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a-purity-spiral/ https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • bengold14 5y ago
      > Nor is it confined to the Left: neo-Nazi groups offer some of the clearest examples of purity spirals Seems like your own linked article says it's not just a leftist thing?
      • invalidOrTaken 5y ago
        To an extent left and right are asymmetrical---leftist groups tend to be groups organized around being leftist as their main purpose, while "rightist" groups (churches, police unions, gun enthusiasts) tend to be rightist incidentally. Neo Nazis feel like the exception that proves the rule.
• rvz 5y ago
  Well given that they have to redefine terms under new names and to create a newspeak for all of this, it was not long until it had spread unchallenged from the social-sciences classrooms in universities to the workplace and we now see rejected concepts that were left in the past to later resurface under a redefinition under newspeak. A great way to confuse the general public and push an agenda to create a culture of silencing anyone opposed to view points someone disagrees with.
  • wumpus 5y ago
    Newspeak, like... Ms? Plenty of past examples, you probably use most of them now, and don't think about the controversy when they first appeared.
  • Animats 5y ago
    A great way to confuse the general public and push an agenda to create a culture of silencing anyone opposed to view points someone disagrees with. That's what's bothersome. It's not just advocacy. It's mandatory advocacy. That generates a backlash. The push for transgender bathroom privileges just before the 2016 elections may have pushed Trump over the top.
  • belltaco 5y ago
    >A great way to confuse the general public and push an agenda to create a culture of silencing anyone opposed to view points someone disagrees with. Can you give me some examples of the viewpoints you're referring to here?
    • rvz 5y ago
      Plenty of examples in the article if you have already read it. Example of enforcing this with cancellations: > Even as students began scouring the words of academics, administrators and fellow students for microaggressions, the oppressive slights embedded in everyday speech, and found them, complacency ruled. which was later enforced... > When invited speeches from people such as Christine Lagarde, then head of the International Monetary Fund, were cancelled after student activists accused her of complicity in “imperialist and patriarchal systems” Also... > James Bennet, who resigned as editorial-page editor of the New York Times after one such row, now works for The Economist; he was not involved in this article. The 'row' in question [0] lead to the editor's resignation [1] because he defended it. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/03/new-york-times-op-ed-tom-cotton-backlash-staff https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/03/new-york-times... [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/business/media/james-bennet-resigns-nytimes-op-ed.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/business/media/james-benn...
• serverholic 5y ago
  I think this is the result of the gradual femininization of our culture. It started with the feminist/gender-studies types and slowly caught on. Not because people necessarily wanted to change, but cancel culture makes it so that you can't risk nonconforming. At first it was little things like switching to softer language and giving kids participation trophies so that they don't feel bad. Now it's spread to the point that they feel the need to invent words like Latinx just in case a couple of latinos feel left out.
  • pseudalopex 5y ago
    Hispanic people who felt left out invented Latinx. Other people thought they had a point.
  • decremental 5y ago
    People on this forum/website might not like it but you're basically dead on. Everyone can see this is what's happening. Outside of this bubble, normal people see it. Our enemies abroad see it. The only people trying to suppress us talking about it are the people trying to inflict it upon us.
    • missblit 5y ago
      Well feminization is the completely wrong word for one thing, since being feminine is totally A-OK and not anything negative. Ain't nothin' wrong with flowers and dresses and whatnot even if people on this website might not like it!
      • ZephyrBlu 5y ago
        Being feminine is not "totally a-ok" for men. Please talk to some men and ask if they enjoy being called feminine. I guarantee you most if not all (Straight) men would hate someone saying they're feminine. If you don't believe me, flip it around and think about how a woman would feel if someone told them they act like a man. Most would not take kindly to it.
• knownjorbist 5y ago
  I'm saddened that "intellectual dark web" stuff has purchase here. But then again SV is where it metastasized.
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  • api 5y ago
    Your IQ is obviously not high enough to comprehend the greatest intellectuals on YouTube.
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• spamizbad 5y ago
  It didn't. It lives entirely in elite society. If you aren't a member of an elite social strata it doesn't impact you and nobody gives a damn.
  • chemmail 5y ago
    It really comes down to priorities. Are you rich? Then most of your needs are taken care of and you now need to search for something else to divert your attention. Not rich? Need to worry about your job? Paying bills? Housing? Food? You have not fuckin time to care about anything else than to just survive.
    • AussieWog93 5y ago
      I don't think it's that at all. There are plenty of tradies and other well-off groups without university education that just do not give a shit about this stuff.
      • haswell 5y ago
        And conversely, many starving artist types who care deeply.
  • AussieWog93 5y ago
    From the article: "What links these developments is a loose constellation of ideas that is changing the way that mostly white, educated, left-leaning Americans view the world." It's moved from academic circles to "regular" middle-to-upper-middle class society for sure. You can argue that they're "elite" in some respects, but at the same time you're looking at an "elite" 30-40% of the population compared to the single-sigit percentage of people who espoused these beliefs 20 years ago.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • itronitron 5y ago
• tazjin 5y ago
  I recommend anyone who spends a lot of time thinking about this type of thing to take a break for a few months in a country that doesn't indulge it, e.g. Russia.
  • remontoire 5y ago
    How about north korea?
    • tazjin 5y ago
      You could do that and would probably learn a lot, but I suspect safety and availability of visas might be a concern.
    • optimiz3 5y ago
      A serious study of North Korea will illuminate how trite many issues are relative to the basic freedoms and services we take for granted.
    • EvilEy3 5y ago
      Talk about kneejerk reaction. Or you think country not tolerant to gays is the same as actual living gulag?
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    This probably isn’t the argument you think it is. Many reactionaries seem have a romanticized view of Russian culture and probably would be fine there.
    • unity1001 5y ago
      No, actually they have no idea how Eastern European cultures are, less Russia. They would stick out like a sore thumb, they would be shunned, treated with distance for being foreigners. Being 'christian' wouldnt do literally sh*t. The only places where they would be getting treated normally would be ironically places with more woke Russians - ie Russian liberals, educated, woke people. Who would not shun others for being foreigners and who would not exhibit automatic/traditional Russian behaviors of suspecting/shunning strangers and being closed to them.
• dndbejdificj 5y ago
  Isnt it just that HR thinks if people believe they are working towards a greater cause, then they will be more willing to take the 3.2% comp adjustments every year?
• roenxi 5y ago
  The elite have always had a disconnected culture from the masses. Things like a taste for golf or the influence of certain clubs over high levels of government. That isn't unusual. That people from that culture then get to control the rest of a country because someone has to, and it may as well be the elites. So the cultural disconnect isn't new or a problem. The problem is that this ideology seems to be (1) heavily focused on race and (2) be the most credible home for a resurgence of the ideas that powered the communist disasters of last century. It is deviant from cultural norms. And that is fine and dandy, elite cultures are always deviant. The problem is this culture looks bad. It has abandoned some excellent ideals of tolerance and liberty.
  • m0llusk 5y ago
    It is amusing how wokeism not being defined allows it to be just about anything. Gay and trans people have a history of being locked out of most social groups and in all recent history have lower incomes and political influence than most, yet now they are portrayed as elites because of a like to recognition higher learning. Wouldn't it be easier to admit that people confuse you and that makes you upset?
    • roenxi 5y ago
      Gay & trans people generally aren't woke, in my experience. Only one of the ones I'm friends with is, at any rate. Being a member of the elite is a better predictor than sexual orientation at any rate.
• wisty 5y ago
  See "concept creep" - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-08154-001 https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-08154-001 Abstract: > Many of psychology's concepts have undergone semantic shifts in recent years. These conceptual changes follow a consistent trend. Concepts that refer to the negative aspects of human experience and behavior have expanded their meanings so that they now encompass a much broader range of phenomena than before. This expansion takes “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena. The concepts of abuse, bullying, trauma, mental disorder, addiction, and prejudice are examined to illustrate these historical changes. In each case, the concept's boundary has stretched and its meaning has dilated. A variety of explanations for this pattern of “concept creep” are considered and its implications are explored. I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. Its implications are ambivalent, however. Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood. The full article has a bit more nuance. It points out that intolerance to minor forms of harm has both pros and cons.
  • tablespoon 5y ago
    > This expansion takes “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena.... Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood. Also the dilution in the "downward" direction denies the people with the original, more-serious issues the vocabulary to deal with their unique problems and will eventually engender skepticism in large parts of the general public (e.g. if "abuse" expands to encompass extremely common experiences, saying "I was a abused" ceases to have much meaning, and you end up with nonsense like "Were you just abused, or were use abused abused?").
    • AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      And in the meantime it creates injustices in the other direction, e.g. when Julian Assange is accused of "rape" which the public understands to mean a particular very serious thing, but Sweden uses a definition that encompasses much more than that very serious thing. Meanwhile a thousand articles are published containing his name and the word "rape" together in the headline.
• babyshake 5y ago
  It definitely seems as though specifying your preferred gender pronouns is no longer optional. This is required "in solidarity". Being an otherwise progressive person, I don't feel great about this and how quickly it happened.
  • newacct583 5y ago
    Can you elaborate? Pronouns have never been "optional" for casual conversation. You're saying you now feel, I guess, compelled to declare them or something? Or are you mad that people expect you to use pronouns they want you to use? What's the beef here? This kinda sounds like knee-jerk conservatism. It's different and new and forces you to learn new habits (true), and therefore it's bad and an erosion of civil society (false). This kind of skew has happened REPEATEDLY in society in the past, you just didn't notice. To be glib: how many times have you used the word "negro" in the past year?
    • babyshake 5y ago
      Specifically I meant specifying your own preferred gender pronouns in certain contexts. When enough of your peers do it, it feels downright strange to not do it even if you don't imagine anyone would have any problem deducing your gender and you wouldn't feel offended if they did happen to use the wrong gender for you. Of course it is completely fine for people to share preferred prounouns. But as pg has said the problem is with the things you not allowed to say, or alternately the things you are required to say and/or do. Being required to, say, share drinking fountains or pools with people of another race should not be compared to this. One is about allowing people to co-exist with you, the other is about complying with a strongly encouraged communal display of ideology. There are obvious comparisons to make but you can use your imagination about what those are.
      • newacct583 5y ago
        > Being required to, say, share drinking fountains or pools with people of another race should not be compared to this. Indeed. And I didn't. I said "negro". Generations of people genuinely thought that was a neutral term. They were pissed as all fuck when all of a sudden it became a symbol of centuries of oppression. And they used language exactly like yours to express their exasperation. But the words changed anyway. And we all got over it, and civil society didn't dissolve. And at the end of the process, most of us look back and think of it as largely a good thing that we went and, well, cancelled that old word as a symbol. The new one is better, simply because it was born out of the self-determinism of the oppressed. Which is to say: get over yourself and declare your pronouns. (I'm a he/him, FWIW). Your grandkids will be ashamed that you fought it.
• badRNG 5y ago
  It seems like this question could be asked at any period of social conflict historically in the West. How did ideas that were once extremely radical like women's equality in the social sphere (to include holding office and suffrage), desegregation, slavery abolition, and many more work their way from the intelligensia (academics, philosophers) to the masses? How did "Marxism" jump from academia to workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? The fact that businesses are supportive of such causes is somewhat new, but is likely explained by the same forces that lead to the masses embracing these ideas. Largely, this seems to be the molding of our social sphere by market forces. The northern competitors to the agricultural South found slavery abolition to be inline with their material interests. Likewise, as the industrial revolution shook up familial units and proletarianization of women moved wives into the factories, equality in the social sphere was no longer resisted by structures that had a material basis. Desegregation could assist in curbing a growing black nationalist movement through assimilation and a reduction in direct antagonism. Ideas are often forged in the conflicts and conditions of the day that they arise in. Had this article been written in the '90s about the "extreme" gay rights movement, or in the '60s about the "woke" Civil Rights Movement, how many would actually stand by their critique a decade later? Businesses seem to understand that showing token support for progressive issues is better for their brand than silence or reactionary opposition to progressivism (which, let's face it, never holds up well for long.) While I doubt any corporate co-option for social issues actually materially benefits those movements, I can't help but find myself even more cynical about the reactionaries complaining about how "extreme" or "woke" their positions are.
  • spats1990 5y ago
    Yeah, I tend to think "woke" as a sneer word is just the new "PC/politically correct" as a sneer word. Corporations wouldn't be engaging in this kind of token support for progressive issues if they did not believe such issues were broadly popular. Such organizations rarely do anything for free. The token support is a reflection of something in the culture. Most of the "backlash" to "woke stuff" is a working-through of the cognitive dissonance this notion brings for certain people/organizations. They cannot believe that such ideas can have even token support among the broader public. So it gets framed as some sort of virus, or as an orgy of cynical virtue signalling. But in order to virtue signal, you need somebody who understands (and ideally even shares) the virtue that is being signalled. Your entirely reasonable comment being flagged currently is an example of this cognitive dissonance at work. There are many valid critiques of so-called "wokeness" but most of them come from angles that reactionaries generally dislike.
• neonate 5y ago
  http://web.archive.org/web/20210904034230/https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/09/04/how-did-american-wokeness-jump-from-elite-schools-to-everyday-life http://web.archive.org/web/20210904034230/https://www.econom...
• RappingBoomer 5y ago
  one theory is that this is a product of the capital vs labor struggle...as madison wrote, "divide et impera" is how the elite can rule america...wokeness might be considered a divide et impera tactic to turn labor factions against each other, thus empowering elites, i.e., Capital
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  It could be motivated demoralization and subversion. Former KGB agent Yuri explains: https://youtu.be/IQPsKvG6WMI?t=55 https://youtu.be/IQPsKvG6WMI?t=55
• deleted 5y ago
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• choeger 5y ago
  As someone who lives in a formerly fascist country and was born in a socialist country that borrowed many fascist tools, I can tell you all one thing: Taking control of the language is a telltale sign of a fascist movement. Whoever tries to control the language automatically stands on the wrong side of history. It is not an accident that the woke movement attacks liberties so vehemently. It is also not an accident that it seems to pile one more extreme demand on top of the other, look how currently feminism gets cleansed, this is just the internal power struggle (think Röhm purge or Trotzkists). Do not make the mistake to think this movement is out there to improve anything for anyone. It is solely a revolutionary movement trying to survive and radicalize until it can get to power.
  • sn41 5y ago
    I don't agree with this fully. The most extensive language reform movement in the last 100 years was by Ataturk in Turkey. I don't think it falls into the above category. I think it is due to some form of idealism, and there are such people at all points along the political spectrum.
    • choeger 5y ago
      Language reform ain't language control. Reforming a language can have negative impact, for sure, but it normally has a positive goal that lies in the language itself: Simplified orthography (latest German reform), reviving a dead language (Hebrew), or simplification of writing (simplified Chinese). And yes I see the irony that this last reform was issued by Mao. In contrast, language control is about eliminating certain forbidden words, either hoping to eliminate certain facts or thoughts by litery making them unspeakable or by creating rules that every normal person will violate sooner or later, allowing it to denounce everyone when necessary.
  • neilwilson 5y ago
    Less a fascist movement, more an authoritarian movement. 1984 and Animal Farm are not about Fascists. Same problem though. It's about the power of a self appointed elite group to dictate terms to other.
• unity1001 5y ago
  You call it 'wokeness' in US. Rest of the world calls it 'manners' or 'civilized behavior'. In actual civilized countries, such things have been legislated a long time ago - most of the 'freehdumbs' which many Americans freely enjoyed in denigrating, insulting, harassing other Americans would land you in court in civilized countries. In countries where there arent such laws, it will cause you to get a broken nose because no one will tolerate abuse like how some Americans expect other people to tolerate it for the sake of their own 'freehdum'. Some Americans are going to extreme in some angles does not change the fact that a lot of you call civilized manners 'wokeness'. Like how many old, racist boomers complain about not being able to talk sht about minorities, immigrants and stuff. Incredible stuff. But it tells why US is in the shthole it is in - like how Texas implemented a totalitarian state in which American Taliban can snitch on other people via state-run mechanisms. Something which did not even exist in East Germany - who preferred to spy on people normally, by funding actual spies instead of turning everyone into snitches.
  • EvilEy3 5y ago
    > Rest of the world calls it 'manners' or 'civilized behavior'. Latinax+, Womxn is manners and civilized behavior? In actual civilized countries you'd get confused look or cuckoo sign. This insanity doesn't exist in Europe yet(thank God), but woke idiots are working hard, no worries.
    • unity1001 5y ago
      "Latinax, Womxn" -> Yeah, you totally invalidated the concept of wokeness by two phrases, good job. Despite i have explicitly mentioned that some extreme arguments dont invalidate concept of civilized behavior. > In actual civilized countries you'd get confused look or cuckoo sign You wouldnt. Dont make up stuff. > This insanity doesn't exist in Europe yet(thank God) Because Europe is not US. You cant rail about others, speak hatefully about minorities, immigrants, less harass people who wear masks or other bullsh*t and expect the state not to drag you to court to persecute your ass. Just give a try to exercising the 'freehdums' which American right is exercising and see how fast youll get prosecuted in Europe. Of course, not in reactionary countries like Poland or Hungary. I said civilized countries.
• watwut 5y ago
  I like how after yesterdays Texas law, it is woke that is a threat to freedom. How did fundamentalism jumped to real life?
  • the_only_law 5y ago
    > How did fundamentalism jumped to real life? It’s always been in real life. Funny enough, there are some cultural remnants of certain leftists from the 90s/00s where they were the ones railing against “political correctness” in attempt to shock the religious right of the time. The way I see it things have simply reversed as the religious right seemingly lost ground over the past years and progressives became more prominent.
    • unity1001 5y ago
      Not applicable. The 'wokeness' in US largely encompasses things like minorities not tolerating being denigrated, debased, harassed anymore. Not even talking about things like nudity in beaches, abortion and other bullsh*t in which US still stays back 150 years in the past in US.
      • m0zg 5y ago
        No, it's more of a virtue signaling scheme and a "luxury belief" that brown and black people can't think for themselves, and white liberal upper middle class knows what's best for them. Such as, for example, abolishing the police in high crime lower income neighborhoods and other loony bin shit like that, which does absolutely nothing to help anyone they pretend to care for. These tend to be the same folks who would move out in an instant if black folks started moving into their neighborhood, and won't spare a dime to actually help any of them with anything. It's words, Twitter and Facebook, and little else best I can tell. Purely performative virtue signaling.
        • watwut 5y ago
          I have seen quite a few blacks to advocate for what you call loony shit. The problem here is that you are making stuff up in order to build perfect demographic of your enemies.
• KKKKkkkk1 5y ago
  I noticed that when I click the thumbs-up emoji in Slack, I now have to select its skin color. That's fucking dystopian.
  • biswaroop 5y ago
    Sorry honest question: why is that dystopian? Also :+1: gives me the usual yellowish emoji.
    • nindalf 5y ago
      Presumably because yellow should work for everyone. There will always be some people who are offended that a choice exists, even if they don’t plan to take it.
  • luckylion 5y ago
    Be happy that you don't have to prove your skin color to Slack yet. You're currently still able to appropriate minority skin colors, but I guess we're just one white guy using a brown-skin thumbs-up ("it's literally the brown thumbs, it's the modern brown shirts") before Slack mandates skin color tests.
    • chrisan 5y ago
      Do you honestly believe what you type?
      • luckylion 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation Have fun.
  • skohan 5y ago
    It is interesting. On the one hand, I can see how the previous model could be sightly alienating to anyone who's skin color doesn't obviously map to "Simpsons Yellow". However, whether people pay attention to it or not, the new interface quantifies approval in a way which can be segmented by skin color, which seems kind of odd.
• gremloni 5y ago
  This is just feminine culture. The whole gender/trans movement is to blur the lines between men and women so modern feminist trash can be foisted on everyone.
• SunlightEdge 5y ago
  On a related point, what I'm uncertain about are the reasons for the increase in transgender kids in the west. I understand there's been a massive increase in cases for transmen in the UK and USA for example. Is this because we can identify these conditions much better now? Maybe. I don't have the background to say for sure. There is a real fear in society though that woke schools of thought are a harmful influence to the above rise. Again we need to be careful here. Personally what I do know is that growing up I had for a time quite severe identity issues (not about gender) but it was also a time when society encouraged the view of everyone being unique and mysterious and don't put labels on things. There wasn't anyway near this current level of identity politics and wokeness. I appreciate it's a bit of a stretch but in some ways it does feel now in society there is a growing pressure to box people's identities in more. Im so glad I grew up without the internet and could just be, and be a confused kid growing up without labels.
  • jmopp 5y ago
    It follows directly from more acceptance of being transgender in society. It is not pleasant to have to sit with gender dysphoria for years - and then when you eventually do treat it, to have to spend thousands undoing changes to your body. Much better to treat it before it becomes a problem.
  • joconde 5y ago
    Alternative explanation: there have always been as many transgender kids, but they hid it because they knew they'd get bullied by everyone, including their own parents.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • sammalloy 5y ago
      This. It's amazing what you find in the shadows, in the periphery of our culture, when you simply look. For a long time, we just refused to see what was right in front of us. There's a long tradition of transgenderism, and anthropologists have been writing about it for a while.
• timonoko 5y ago
  More weird is that Merican Wokeness is replacing *ness in other countries. Finnish has only one personal pronoun for all sexes, but Woke Finns add American Pronouns to their twitter pages.
  • fridif 5y ago
    Probably for the same reason that foot biding took off in China
    • swarnie 5y ago
      I'm not sure anyone has a clue what you're on about. Care to expand?
      • throwaway6734 5y ago
        I'm assuming op meant "foot binding". Not sure the relevance though
        • mountainriver 5y ago
          Foot bidding is actually a practice from 14th century China in which men would place bids to see a woman’s foot. The winner would receive a hand painted portrait of the foot.
      • fridif 5y ago
        Sorry, realized I never replied. First, yes, I made a typo and meant to say "foot binding". The reason I mentioned this is because foot binding originally began as a cultural practice among a small group of people in the 10th century. By the time of the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), most social classes were practicing foot binding. Thus, what I'm trying to say is that the Finns are adopting a cultural practice (pronouns in their twitter bio) as a result of being exposed to another group of people doing it. The reasons for why they chose to adopt it, though....
    • kazen44 5y ago
• carrolldunham 5y ago
  twitter. there is really nothing else to say
• sennight 5y ago
  This coupled with expectations of corporate "social responsibility" results in some pretty nightmarish possibilities. Politically motivated debanking has already been going on for a while, but that is really just the tip of the iceberg. Years ago my financial adviser tried to sell me on this new index that aggregated a bunch of progressive demands (race/sex quotas, etc). The scope of ambition is pretty astounding, because it is structured to be impossible to satiate. We've all gotten use to seeing some SV company announce the latest party they are shunning, but to distill that down to a financial instrument... it is hard to believe that anyone would advocate for such a thing unless they were an accelerationist actively rooting for social collapse.
• keewee7 5y ago
  Many Millennials now have very high-paying and influential jobs but still hold the very anti-capitalist and anti-billionaire views they had during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement. It will be interesting how corporations will react to a new generation of Millennial managers and leaders who seek to undermine capitalism.
  • axiosgunnar 5y ago
    One can only hope the free market will take care of those companies (ie they implement woke policies and become bankrupt)
  • robocat 5y ago
    > Many Millennials [hold] very anti-capitalist and anti-billionaire views Same thing happened in the 60s. There's lots of older "capitalist hippies" now.
  • UK-Al05 5y ago
    Hypocrisy of the highest order. Complain about wealth inequality, while at the same time seek higher paid managerial jobs. Either your ok with wealth inequality, or start asking for salary to be spread around your team and sub teams. I'm a liberal market capitalist, I'm ok with wealth inequality. What I can't stand are my peers who seek bonuses, extra salary, and ways to increase profitability but at the same time complain about wealth inequality. I don't mind old school hippy socialists because they at least follow their own ideas.
• Epa095 5y ago
  This is one of those articles which kind of pretends to be neutral, but are still so oppinionated that I don't know if I ended up smarter or dumber after reading it :-/
  • pjc50 5y ago
    I'm really unimpressed at the economist for publishing this, which is lazy partisan flame bait that I've flagged.
    • ketzo 5y ago
      The Economist is great when you want to read stridently neoconservative propaganda masquerading as neutral, high-minded thinkpieces.
    • blisse 5y ago
      I try to mention this every time I notice any major publications (WSJ, WaPo, NYT, Economist, Bloomberg, HBR) post basically trash under their main, but especially their "Opinion" channels. I think they're trying to reckon with their ads business model not succeeding in the online world, so their editors allow these controversial pieces to exist as a means to retain viewership by appealing to some mob anger. I also want to mention that of all the news agencies, I have consistently not felt this way from anything from the Atlantic, which is the only publication I now subscribe to, because this work is kind of nonsensical.
    • cout 5y ago
      As someone who is very slow to adapt to new language and social trends, I came away disappointed. I was hoping for more explanation of how ideas travel from a small group to the mainstream, but the only explanations given seemed aimed at delegitimizing the ideas themselves. Flame bait is perhaps a little strong but lazy and partisan I agree with.
  • geewee 5y ago
    I agree. The author obviously considers "wokeness" stupid as hell, but hides with the thinnest veneer of neutrality.
• quattrofan 5y ago
  Most of us as teens and younger have struggled with growing up, raging hormones etc. Now with this woke garbage i fear we are setting up many more psychological and family problems to satisfy a bullshit agenda. There are certainly people who legitimately feel they are in the wrong body and society should support them, but this deluge of identity questioning is going to manufacture a problem that doesn't exist.
• o8r3oFTZPE 5y ago
  Referenced in the article https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-vivek-ramaswamy-put-wokeism-out-of-business-11624649588 https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-vivek-ramaswamy-put-wokeism...
• m0llusk 5y ago
  How did garbage pop psychology jump from talk radio to what used to be a magazine about Economics?
  • atroche 5y ago
    Fwiw they consider themselves a weekly newspaper, not a magazine. It's been more than a century since they were focused on economics.
• lazyjones 5y ago
  From my observations, the most plausible explanation is that it's an organized campaign, augmented by many people unaware of the fact. Not cultural conquest, but sabotage.
• riffraff 5y ago
  > acronyms such as vapa (Visual and Performing Arts), on the ground that they are “a symptom of white supremacy”. wait, how? Surely all cultures have at some point embraced visual and performance arts?
  • cgrealy 5y ago
    Was wondering that myself? Maybe it focuses exclusively on European art? (I don’t actually know this… speculating)
  • IkmoIkmo 5y ago
    It's not that, it's the fact it's an acronym that only certain groups are familiar with. Calling it Visual and Performance Arts is fine, because everyone understands what it means. Calling it VAPA is inferior communication, because it only signals to those already familiar with the acronym, and leaves the rest out. Instead they now just call it the 'Arts Department', so everyone understands what it means. For example, if you're a first generation parent, new to the US, not very familiar with English, clean toilets for a living, not very familiar with the school system, have no network of people who work in schools or go to certain programs, and are looking for a good program for your child, then it's easier to navigate information on a website, brochure or banner that says 'Arts Department' than 'VAPA'. These parents may be unaware of the program entirely, and not apply. Whereas if you're white, your parents go to broadway shows and the NY MOMA, your brother-in-law is superintendent of an arts school whose daughter studies at VAPA, you'll be more likely to know what the acronym stands for, and more likely to navigate the same information (websites, banners, brochures) that say VAPA just fine, and apply for the program. I'm exaggerating the examples a bit, but the common thread is: language is a tool for communication, acronyms can be complicating and obfuscating factors in communication in certain contexts (in others they're fine), such as marketing school programs to children/parents from all backgrounds. And as (unintended!) outcome they can thereby happen to filter out poor/minority backgrounds, leaving white/majority/rich groups, who get access to these programs. That observed outcome benefits white people (which is why the words 'white supremacy' came in, which I think is wrong as it implies intentionality where there isn't one... instead I think it can better be defined as unintended extremely minor white privilege'.) Losing the acronym is a simple and potentially useful and also extremely minor step to take, that got dragged into the spotlight as a symbol for anti-'oppression' and anti-'wokeness' from both sides respectively.
• IkmoIkmo 5y ago
  I don't really see the big issue with Latinx... it seems to me an easy and correct way to refer to latinos and latinas, without saying both, or one or the other, or bringing in gender. Just like we don't have Asianas and Asianos, and we can simply say Asians. It makes less sense to add an s to Latin because Latins refers to something completely different already. Language is constantly changing. As long as references aren't derogatory and have linguistic purpose (either due to being academically useful to be precise, concise or general, or because they're useful in colloquial speak and new words create a sense of identity), I don't see the big issue. We obviously speak very differently from 50, 100 or 200 years ago, and I'm glad for it for the most part. Not sure why we're so resistant to this particular change. Removing acronyms because they're racist is obviously silly. But simplifying language is not. Instead of calling the Arts Department 'VAPA' (after Visual and Performing Arts) it's now simply called the 'Arts Department'. That means it should be more easily understood, and more accessible by students or parents who're not privy to navigating school systems to get their kids the best outcomes. We consistently see that certain parents are able to get their kids in the right programs, while other parents are not, and some of that relates to cultural capital which has been well studied. Acronyms probably play an extremely minor role in this cultural capital, but I don't see it as a bad move per se. (calling it racist, is) Those were two of the key examples the article started with to explain how bad things have gotten, before jumping in how we got to this ostensibly miserable place. There's some good stuff in the article - particularly around some hypocritical corporate wokeness in the 2nd half of the article - but mostly it comes across as very partisan, completely unwilling to assess the other sides' argument in good faith, and written to convince you of a particular viewpoint. Doesn't seem to fit into what I'm used to from the Economist.
  • comodore_ 5y ago
    > Just like we don't have Asianas and Asianos, and we can simply say Asians. south americans. your comment is the embodiment of the hola, my Latinx friends meme.
    • foldr 5y ago
      Most Latinos in the US are of Mexican origin. Mexico is not in South America.
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  Doesn't everything jump from the elite schools to everyday life?
• he0001 5y ago
  In Thai you speak differently depending on if you are male or female. Perhaps that’s an idea since I believe you then don’t need to assume anything.
• hn-is-life 5y ago
  Labelling people based on sexuality, gender identity, race, religion is just… arbitrary. Why not label people based on their IQ? If I knew people’s IQ I would simply ignore everyone below mine and only talk to my peers. “Hello, I’m John. I’m IQ140” “Hi John, I’m Mohammed, I’m IQ145” Instatnt friendship. “Hello John, I’m Peter, IQ90.” “bye Peter” I think sorting and discriminating on IQ is the only way to build some form of cohesive society.
  • hkt 5y ago
    Why wouldn't Mohammed adopt the same approach and refuse to speak to you? Also, IQ is fundamentally flawed. Perhaps your innate abilities (and acquired prejudiced) aren't a substitute for following contemporary research on intelligence? https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20121218/iq-test-really-measure-intelligence https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20121218/iq-test-really-mea...
    • jhgb 5y ago
      > Also, IQ is fundamentally flawed. That's like saying that glucose levels are fundamentally flawed. What does that even mean? Flawed for what? Carpentry? > Perhaps your innate abilities (and acquired prejudiced) aren't a substitute for following contemporary research on intelligence? https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20121218/iq-test-really-measure-intelligence https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20121218/iq-test-really-mea... Oh please, that reads like someone's blog post. Contemporary research on intelligence has repeatedly disproven claims of multiple intelligences. People have been trying to claim their existence many times but any form of a multiple intelligence model devised so far provided no improvement over a g-factor/single intelligence model. In case you came up with a multiple intelligence model significantly better than anything we've had so far, congratulations, you might get published.
      • hkt 5y ago
        > Contemporary research on intelligence has repeatedly disproven claims of multiple intelligences. Citation?
  • 5y ago
• naturalauction 5y ago
  It’s sad that the economist published such a polemical and intellectually dishonest article. One thing that especially stood out was “ And why it embraces reparations-adjacent policies like the creation of a $4bn fund to pay off the debts of only non-white farmers.” There was a class action lawsuit where the USDA had to pay out tens of thousands of claimants who were discriminated against between 1981-1996. African Americans were discriminated against and were not equitably issued farm loans during this period. However, the majority of African-Americans were unable to get relief through the courts for various reasons (often filing late), not to mention that lawsuits for Hispanic and women farmers never even went ahead. This seems pretty different than the right’s idea of what reparations are and why they may be harmful. Instead it seems like ensuring that people are compensated for very recent (when compared to something like slavery) losses due to discrimination. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigford_v._Glickman for more info
• JanneVee 5y ago
  I'm really suprised, it has spread around the whole western world. There is not enough pushback on the foundational philosophical flaws of this phenomena. The biggest flaw of "wokeness" it doesn't try to combat the human proclivity to treat other groups of people as sub-human if they aren't members of their own the "correct" tribe. A couple of days ago I just took a break of the internet for the simple reason that people are celebrating the death of anti-vaxxers. Poking fun of people that are so desperate and scared when they get sick so they use a drug intended for horses. Very few people say anything against this and those who do are dismissed as "anti-vaxxers". Wokeness doesn't try to combat this phenomena, it tries to stoke it by forming their own tribe and treat everyone outside tribe as idiots and uneducated buffoons. They don't see that they are feeding a psychoological mechanism that partly the basis of the social ills that arise when we treat other people as less than themselves. "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others" - George Orwell.
• concordDance 5y ago
  I really think this kind of content is probably bad for hackernews discourse and should be flagged.
  • FiberBundle 5y ago
    Yes, deplatforming is the way to go.
    • avaldes 5y ago
      It's The Economist, they're their own platform to support whatever content they want. Banning them from HN will hardly have any impact. It's not like banning a single individual.
  • h2odragon 5y ago
    Despite all the flames; there's plenty of actual honest "this is what I think and why" that wouldn't be tolerated elsewhere because its a controversial topic. That's worthy. It may not be pleasant now, but perhaps its the fertilizer from which some flowers of enlightenment will sprout.
• artifact_44 5y ago
  A better question is how did common decency and empathy for the experience of other people get reduced to the label of "wokeness"? Oh right... It's the ongoing assault of the conservative patriarchy on the public discourse.
• ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  More importantly, when did American culture war nonsense infect The Economist? Do they really have a regular 'illiberal left' column these days?
  • dmurray 5y ago
    > Do they really have a regular 'illiberal left' column these days? No, the house style has been to have a short subtitle like that on every article for a long time. Sometimes the subtitle is just the name of the country or region being covered, just as often it's a one-off. Examples from this issue include "China's bad debts", "prostitution in Indonesia", "Venezuela talks", none of which are monthly columns.
  • UK-Al05 5y ago
    The philosophy of the Economist magazine could be defined as liberalism. So they're probably hyper sensitive anti liberal ideas.
• skohan 5y ago
  These kinds of social movements always arouse the armchair anthropologist in me. This one in particular, because I think it has to do a lot with the rise of social media. My theory is, what people might refer to as a "woke discourse" has been going on forever in left and progressive activist spaces, like certain parts of academia, political organizations and so on. Within those subcultures, there has for a long time been a strong emphasis on fairness, which is often enforced through a set of cultural and linguistic tools which have evolved over the years to identify and correct words and actions which fall outside the boundaries of what is considered acceptable or desirable in those communities. So then came social medial platforms. Now you have forums like Twitter where suddenly everyone's conversations are out in the open. Now instead of pointing out perceived social problems and inequities over a lunch table at Oberlin, members of these subcultures are having that conversation in view of the whole world. And instead of reacting only to their own communities and media environment, they're also responding directly to problematic phrasing from some guy in rural Nebraska which left-wing students at elite universities polished out of their language years ago. So you have this confluence of a social technology which had been developed for ages, and a communications technology which happened to be a very effective vehicle for what was probably quite a minority viewpoint to have a vastly outsized impact on society. I actually think this concept of having one big conversation that everyone can be a part of is something we haven't even really began to wrap our arms around, and it will be interesting to see what online discourse looks like in a few decades.
• yawaworht1978 5y ago
  It's just a shift from older, less flexible values like family, church etc to the more open minded approach, "do as you like". Nothing wrong with people having tattoos everywhere, green or violet hair, non conformist clothing and views. Let them be, let them express and find themselves. I am the shave every day suit kinda guy and will remain so, but if someone chooses to be different or wants to complain about new woke culture values , fine by me. There's not more or less trans and gay people these days, they are just more visible and have a voice, as they won't be burned at a stake anymore, metaphorically speaking.
  • concordDance 5y ago
    Modern wokism is actually defined by illiberalism. It's very much about what you are not allowed to do. Not dressing like X, not using Y things, not saying Z, not getting a place at uni or a job due to having the wrong skin color, etc.
    • mkr-hn 5y ago
      Some of those Xes, Ys, and Zs are actually good points and it's good the people who were talking about it all along have a voice now. Just because some people, usually not those actually affected, go overboard or talk over the people they're trying to help doesn't invalidate the concerns. It's actually good that, now, I understand the big ol generic "Indian" with a war bonnet painted in the school gym when I was a kid was a misrepresentation and misuse of sacred, hard-earned symbols. It's good that I know whose land those pipelines cut across now. It's good that I understand spirit animals are a sacred, private thing, not something to bandy about or declare for every fleeting interest on Twitter. It's good that I know naming certain evils is kind of a jerk move to do in a crowd of people who believe in them.
      • concordDance 5y ago
        Goodness is orthogonal to liberalism. Something can be illiberal but good or Liberal but bad.
      • njharman 5y ago
• p0d 5y ago
  As a christian I believe in mercy and grace. And yes, many of us 'believers' have not practised what we preached. Many of us do try however not to be hypocrites. Here's my question. Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness? I want you to believe my christian message but I will not force you to do so. I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe. I don't want you to lose your job because you don't agree with me. There seems to me to be a ruthlessness to wokeness which I don't understand.
  • lemmsjid 5y ago
    I think the answer to your question is actually answered in your first paragraph. In the same way that you believe all Christians shouldn’t be judged by those who haven’t “practiced what they’ve preached”, consider that your understanding of “woke” people might be tainted by the fact that whatever media you are consuming might be focusing on the ones who also don’t practice what they preach. In other words, any movement, Christian or “woke”, will have a subset of people who are hypocritical and/or ruthless. It is an easily observed behavior of biased media outlets that they will pay especial attention to the more unsavory outliers of a movement.
    • sokoloff 5y ago
      Though this is undoubtedly good for click-rewarded media, it’s also good for society if it invokes a rejection of the extremists and unsavory outliers both from outside and within the community, whether woke extremists, Christian Taliban, or other. Unfortunately, I don’t see quite strong enough (for my taste) version of that repudiation (in general across both causes I believe in and ones where I disagree).
    • kortilla 5y ago
      But the core principles of being woke require ruthlessness (“silence is violence”, etc).
      • ggggoz 5y ago
        What are the core principles of being woke?
• dmz73 5y ago
  I have no data or research supporting my opinion. What I think is happening is this: Rich countries now allow people to have an abundance of free time and an easy way to connect to like minded peers. This results in anyone in a "phase" of their life finding a number of other people in a similar "phase" and instead of moving on to the next "phase" they re-enforce each other's current "phase". As an example, this means a person who would temporarily feel insecure about their "gender" (maybe 1 transgender person in a 1000) and who would normally get to ignore it, now these people are a lot more likely to find support for their current "phase" online and decide to follow through. What does this say about people? We are all sheep that find like minded peers to help us conform to our current state of mind. In the past it was much harder to stray away from "traditional" view of world but now it is much easier and more accessible. The problem is not with people following through and embracing different view of the world, the problem is that they are now expecting everyone else to "embrace" their new view of the world and themselves. While it is perfectly valid to expect to be treated equally in the view of the "law", I believe it is equally invalid to force your view of the world onto other people. Let's be blunt - if I believe I am GOD and control the world, I cannot reasonably expect other people to accept this and conform to my wishes. The "woke" culture is trying to do the something similar, is is no longer enough to be equal = now "woke" people expect everyone to accept that their "woke" view of the world is valid and whatever other views may exist are irrelevant. This is, in my opinion, just an immature and narrow minded expectation as the old no-homosexual, no-transgender views that existed in the past. What you see yourself as right now is your problem and other people can perceive you however they see fit. We are all most likely just a bunch of assholes anyway so leave everyone else alone and live your life.
• CryptoPunk 5y ago
  Elite schools produce the managerial elite. It takes the culture in academia five years to flow to wider society.
• ptr2voidStar 5y ago
  Can someone explain to me (controversial, I know - but we've already opened Pandora's box): If the category "transgender" is legally recognized, why does the category "transracial" come under such virulent attack? Both (in my view), are manifestations of a disposition that induces a "distortion of reality" alongside a refusal to accept that "one's reality is distorted". In most (if not all cases) of male to female transitions (which seem to be the most vocal segment of the transgender community) - the human brain is able to instantly recognize the gender of an approaching person - from a considerable distance, regardless of choice of clothing or make up. Likewise, someone claiming to be of a different "race", say "white" to "yellow", "red" or "black" (or any permutation thereof), is laughably recognizable as an "interloper". So why is one form of delusion celebrated, whilst another form frowned upon? Side Note: when talking about race (which is a color based hierarchy, I deliberately assigned racial colors uniformly to everyone, even though I'm aware that some might find it offensive to be referred to by skin color; what is good for the goose, is surely good for the gander. I believe in equality). [Edited]: innumerable typographical and auto-correct errors whilst commenting on my phone.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• MichaelMoser123 5y ago
  Can someone explain what wokeness actually means? I mean the article is full of quotations that are somehow taken out of context, I don't quite understand what this movements principles are, what it wants, what its methods are.
• asdswe 5y ago
  Modern "wokeness" and so called social justice is just another way of tricking ordinary people away from the one issue that matters - wealth distribution. It's much better for the 1% to have wage slaves fighting each other about things like race, gender and culture. Modern political left in Western world is a disgrace to everything that socialism originally stood for.
• gurumeditations 5y ago
  This thread is filled with an unbelievable amount of vile ignorance and hatred against Trans and Gay people. This is why straight people and non-trans people need to shut up when it comes to those respective topics, because you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. I wish I could see the faces of the commenters saying this evil hate and ignorance. I bet it’s many immigrants from regressive cultures like in India (considering it’s HN) and basically anywhere but the first world where Gay and Trans people are trampled on and hated and shunned compared to the US. Watch this get banned though because straight liberals only care about “racism”. Straight liberals don’t give a fuck about Gay and Trans people. The amount of hatred and ignorance in this thread is flat out shocking. The fact that this is all allowed to stay up is disgusting and HN should be ashamed of itself. If this was about racial identities, this thread would become a national news story about how HN allows hordes of racist computer nerds. But homophobia and transphobia is OK to straights. Fucking disgusting.
  • UK-Al05 5y ago
    I'm gay, and I have no idea what you seeing in this thread to see you react like this. I saw the odd comment, but theyve got lots of counter arguments.
• ggggoz 5y ago
  I don’t really understand the handwringing around wokeness. It feels like it’s one step away from McCarthyism. As a Scot, I’d consider the economist to be in the faux respectability area of the British right wing press. Sophisticated lies.
• slibhb 5y ago
  I think "wokeness" comes not so much from "safetyism" but from a generation who were educated to be critical of their own society. They were raised and educated by ex-hippies, who had successfully critiqued the post-war US. I think this was a pedagogical crime (raising children to be critical). Every generation is supposed to critique its predecessor but teaching critique to children from a young age robbed them of the opportunity to level a critique from their own, unique perspective. This is why "wokeness" strikes so many as performative: it's desperately trying to recreate the greatest hits of the 20th century protest movements. An example of this is schools having scheduled protests (say, for gun control). Ironically, in this situation, the only genuine protest is to refuse to attend the protest.
  • christophilus 5y ago
    I agree that teaching kids to be critical of one sliver of reality, while uncritically absorbing anything from another sliver is a pedagogical crime. What we ought to be teaching is critical thinking.
    • rayiner 5y ago
      Kids need to be socialized in the ideas and values that make their civilization successful. Critical thinking is one piece of that, but we focus too much on it in elite environs. We also need to teach kids to tend to the edifice of civilization we’ve built, not just how to tear pieces of it down.
      • andrew_ 5y ago
        This really struck a chord with me as a parent of two toddlers.
        • ip26 5y ago
          “Tear things down” is practically the toddler core competency!
      • luffapi 5y ago
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  Is there anything that didn't eventually jump out of academia into "real life"? If you can control academia you control everything. I think it's interesting to consider how wokism came to be so prevalent in academia, even if it seems like it should be a small niche. Sociologists should be able to find the roots of that shift, i think a lot of it has to do with increased (and sometimes unjustified) focus on the role of women in academia, and the need to accomodate more immigrants than ever before. There might even be deeper reasons that only Carl Jung could identify. > “What you’re seeing is Gen Z or young millennials basically engaging in this collective war against the boomers and the Gen Xers who actually run the organisations,” says Antonio García Martínez I think that's the wrong way to explain it. The case is that GenZ are using the GenXers who are running this institutions to impose their however-fringe opinions on others of their own generation. GenZ do not appear to defy the power structures that were built in academiadecades and decades ago. Things like closed academic publishing or funding allocation have not been overhauled despite the existence of alternatives. Progress in these seems to follow the regular pattern of one funeral at a time
• DaniloDias 5y ago
  People who buy into this type of thinking have noisy, bigoted minds. I feel bad for them while removing them from my life. But there is no place in my life for the bigotry of that community.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• candyman 5y ago
  Is the ultimate woke state to not care at all about being woke?
• rayiner 5y ago
  Our political and cultural institutions are dominated by people who attended those elite schools. This is the next batch of folks who will be doing your IPO paperwork: https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-administrators-confess-their-racism-in-online-diversity-session/ https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-administrator... Now it’s making the jump to K-12. My second grader is apparently learning how to develop an “identity” around her “skin tone” (according to an email from her teacher). This has had the predictable effect of making my daughter unhappy with her dark skin. Kids are perceptive. Her teacher is making a big deal out of skin tone and how society sees dark skinned people as inferior, and naturally she wonders why society might pervasively believe it if it wasn’t true. (She goes to a progressive, diverse, private school in deep blue Maryland, so she’s not developing this sentiment from the other kids. I went to a very white, quite red Virginia public school 30 years ago and nobody ever told me about brown skin being bad.) Anyone who objects to this sort of teaching—not just teaching history, to be clear, but teaching woke concepts—is attacked as a Republican: https://www.vox.com/22644220/critical-race-theory-bans-antiracism-curriculum-in-schools https://www.vox.com/22644220/critical-race-theory-bans-antir... > In early June, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed a bill that restricts what teachers can teach in K-12 schools and at public universities, particularly when it comes to sexism and racism. It bans 10 concepts that Republican legislators define as “divisive,” including the idea that “one race or sex is superior to another,” that members of a particular race are inherently inclined to oppress others, and that “the U.S. and Iowa are fundamentally racist or sexist.”
  • dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp 5y ago
    The wording ‘divisive’ in all these laws is interesting. Why is this the operative word here? Banning ‘concepts’ on the grounds that they are ‘divisive’ is some of the one of the most Orwellian language I’ve ever read. It just seems like laws with the title ‘propagation of divisive concepts prohibited’ will evolve to an even expanding list of thought crime. This isn’t a comment on how race should be treated and discussed in a classroom.
    • naasking 5y ago
      This is a good point. Then again, the ideologies they're fighting as "divisive" have been pushing the position that some ideas can be harmful. So it seems like their own rhetoric is now being used against them, and if they don't like it, maybe they should rethink their own positions on this particular issue.
• k__ 5y ago
  Probably better access to information these days. Back in the days you'd have to go out to the right place to meet the right people. Now they're just a few clicks away. I guess, we just have to wait until the the generation of woke people is old enough to run the world.
• bawana 5y ago
  Is ‘Jordan Peterson-ism’ a reaction to wokeness?
• abvdasker 5y ago
  > When invited speeches from people such as Christine Lagarde, then head of the International Monetary Fund, were cancelled after student activists accused her of complicity in “imperialist and patriarchal systems”, the response was a collective shrug. This is a straw man. People have been protesting the IMF nonstop since the 90s and I guarantee patriarchy is not the main thing they complain about. Arguably the entire article is a straw man. Also where is the byline? Who wrote this? The piece is too dumbed down to really touch on the most interesting aspect of academic identity politics, which is the quite intricate system of post-structuralist theory from which it emerged. The question of why this form of theory osmosed into the public sphere but not some of its competitors did not is more interesting. Funny how as soon as an idea critical of the US and the mostly white mostly male people who have held power here gains prominence the Economist and its ilk seem to change their tune about the “marketplace of ideas”.
  • mikojan 5y ago
    The Economist, as a matter of principle, does not specify authors. (As a matter of principle, I ignore The Economist in turn.)
    • abvdasker 5y ago
      I didn’t know that. It sort of has the effect of sounding like the voice of amorphous global capital is speaking directly to you and also that global capital writes at about the level of a high school senior.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  It is by design. The viral idea behind intersectionality is that people are easier to manage both as interchangeable representatives of arbitrary group identities, and the consequent alienation and anxiety politically neutralizes them as potential opponents to their managers agenda. The tactic itself practically ancient, and the theory that scales it is just over a century old. It literally exploits social tolerance as weakness the same way that you can manipulate individuals by their agreeableness. We've got a late stage 3 case of it, with new intersectional groups being added every year, and they iterate to isolate the individual from any coherent belief or relationship beyond an ever shifting narrative of political expediency. Since the idea is viral, there is no direct confrontation against it other than to isolate the infected until the disease runs its course or they expire, or a chemotherapy approach, which requires an equivalent and improbable amount of co-ordination and viral spread, usually with unacceptable costs. Like the plot of every zombie movie ever, it's a periodic generational plague. A great example of new intersectional groups is how it's absolutely fine to publish that the unvaxxed are sacrificing our children for their far right beliefs, which until recently was called "the blood libel." A useful self test is, if you're cool with the blood libel, you may already be a zombie. The only question is whether you will self-treat with personal reflection, or join the shuffling mass of the damned in their hunt for brains and thirst for blood.
  • syops 5y ago
    I don’t understand your overall point. Bringing up anti-vax people the way you did suggests to me that perhaps you have become lost. Being an anti-vax person is objectively foolish and dangerous. We have decades of incontrovertible evidence that vaccines are good. Those who don’t vaccinate are stupid or being duped and led as if they are zombies (to use your parlance). If this group of people serves as a great example for your point then your position intellectually unsound.
    • motohagiography 5y ago
      I picked the hard one to challenge reflection on because it was useful. An equivalent blood libel zombie variation is the belief that a global elite is kidnapping children for abuse rings (pizzagate, etc.), but I didn't use that one because it was too close as a proxy for the anti-semitic original. The point is this is an established pattern, where unless you reflect on how you know what you think you know, and why you believe something, you're going to be the subject of a belief, and not a holder of it with agency. Just to add, when you hear a lie, you shift into a defensive mode where you do not act while you wait for the dissonance to resolve. A big part of this method is to produce lies that will in effect mentally paralyze those who percieve them, and by merely doing nothing as a result, they will not act or coordinate to resist the rest of the liars actions. A minority of people needs to understand this. People have ideas less so than it is ideas that have people, and intersectionality as an idea has collected a lot of people.
• mchusma 5y ago
  Its interesting that the political spectrum has shifted in the US. It used to be that the Republican party was economically liberal (by this I mean "less government") and socially conservative (by this I mean "more restrictive". The Democratic party was the opposite. This was always a very odd coalition of ideas, as libertarians were quick to point out. The parties should probably be "more government" versus "less government" Suddenly, over the last few years and once they "won" around issues like gay marriage, it's become apparent that the Democratic party is now socially conservative. The woke movement is really a new breed of "conservative" movement. The Republican party still seems a bit in shambles, but they may ultimately find themselves coalescing around libertarian ideas. Although right now it appears both parties are for "more government" and "even more government". (For example immigration under Trump and Biden are similar, both spent massively, etc).
• 5etho 5y ago
  wow, hard political stances through comments straight into 'hackers' community :) I guess politics eats everything
• seastonATccs 5y ago
  "Wokeness" is not jumping. The idea that everyone, even traditionally protected classes, should be held responsible for their actions is spreading.
  • mmastrac 5y ago
    Yeah. I always think back to an offhand quip by Douglas Adams in the Dirk Gently book when I see people complaining about this. "... nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change,"
  • bingohbangoh 5y ago
    "their actions?" I am not responsible for what my ancestors did, especially if it involved people who are only nominally my ancestors. My family emigrated here in the 1970s and, yet, I'm supposedly responsible for what white southerners did to African slaves a few centuries ago. I'm sure this is obvious and I'm actually misinterpeting something. Such comments always provoke that response in the Woke. But, in practice, this is what boxing people into identities based on skin color, sexual orientation, and gender does.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• fallingfrog 5y ago
  How about we get mad about the fact that the top .01% wealthiest people are stripping the country for profits, using the military as a mercenary force to grab other countries oil reserves, and wrecking the climate and leaving us to die, rather than this vacuous culture wars bullshit? Meanwhile the fed prints trillions and trillions of dollars and shoves it directly into the stock market while millions of people have no health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. The whole economy, long since deindustrialized, is only limping on because as the holder of the world reserve currency we can print unlimited amounts of money- for now. But of course we don’t use that power to build a modern infrastructure or provide free college to the next generation. Oh no. We use it to make sure that asset bubbles are pushed into infinity. Which will only make the inevitable crash all the more devastating. We have real, actual problems but this wokeness crisis isn’t one of them.
  • sattoshi 5y ago
    Wokeness is a problem because it is an intentional distraction from the real problems.
• echopurity 5y ago
  HN claims to be ideology free but every third article is this kinda nonsense from The Economist. And they shadow ban anybody who dissents. Tech bro culture is the worst.
• dekhn 5y ago
  simple: the elite schools trained the people who went on to take the propaganda positions in government, media, and secondary schools.
• DethNinja 5y ago
  I think people are over-analysing this issue here at HN. It is far better for upper class to ensure that people discuss and focus on issues like gender and skin colour than the class differences. Hence, they ensured that this is the issue plebs would hear all over on the media and shift their attention from class divides to gender and skin colour.
  • platz 5y ago
    proceeds to detail conspiracy
    • sarahjosh 5y ago
      It’s not really a conspiracy as it doesn’t need to be centralized. Class resentment articles don’t get traction with upper class media gatekeepers but white guilt does. So the market produces what the gatekeepers want.
      • aeQu5igh 5y ago
        This was, quite ironically, often missed by critics of feminism. They would say: What do you mean, a secret conspiracy by all men in a smoke-filled room to keep all women down? As if there was no such thing as incentives and soft power.
        • throwaway894345 5y ago
          In fairness, they were probably trying to elicit a more detailed description of the nebulous “patriarchy” that seems to be behind every social ill in the eyes of the feminist.
      • ransom1538 5y ago
        "upper class media gatekeepers" I do enjoy CNN anchors lecturing and belittling middle America from Martha's Vineyard. It's some sick fetish of mine. Equipped with the latest air pod pros and Zoom they don't have to leave their beach front properties.
• ahallock 5y ago
  The "woke" movement uses the same tactics as religions. Followers try to shame you and offer absolution for your original sin of racism or transphobia. There are different sects of wokeness, similar to denominations in the Christian Church. It's also a form of mob mentality and bullying. Corporations, unsurprisingly, have also jumped on the trend.
  • beerandt 5y ago
    Anyone who doesn't have a (or acknowledge their) religion is really just oblivious to what theirs really is. religion being the loose/broad definition, and not necessarily (but sometimes) the dogmatic and organized big R Religion.
    • guerrilla 5y ago
      I think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying but I think there are also many exceptions which would include many academic philosophers, people who vascilate a lot and people really looking for something but not having found it.
      • iammisc 5y ago
        Those still searching almost always have a belief system and are now looking for a group that shares it. Or a group that can clarify it
  • daenz 5y ago
    Religion minus the formal concept of God. In other words a democratic religion, where the rules have no grounding in an externality, and can change rapidly based on who currently has influence.
• jrm4 5y ago
  I hate the phrase, because people on the other side use it to conflate longstanding serious thought and action on the matters with young naive liberal chatter. That being said, the easiest way to cut through most of it is to look toward people who have dealt with this sort of thing most of their lives, and "older black professionals" nearly always fit the bill. There's an unfortunate 'survival of the fittest' bent to this -- i.e. if they're still in the workforce and/or politics, they've already survived a process that harshly punishes people who aren't good at it.
  • hanselot 5y ago
    Of course that's only if their politics agree with the status quo. Otherwise they are labelled a coconut and deplatformed.
  • iammisc 5y ago
    Older black professionals will empirically speaking also be against transgenderism and homosexual marriage. To those who will inevitably down vote me, I am describing demographically informed stances on arguments not saying what the correct answer is.
    • jrm4 5y ago
      Almost. 5-10 years ago, they would be. In 5-10 years, they will almost certainly universally won't, and that's kind of part of my point; On one hand, yes, our "internal" debates on this type of stuff end up being very public, and as such, people who lean in strong directions become visible. But also, we tend to collectively adapt much quicker and much better. I'm pretty comfortable claiming that this will be the case based on my own experiences with friends and family. In college, I'd say about half of my black friends were pretty "homophobic" and exactly zero of those same people are still.
      • iammisc 5y ago
        Okay... So basically you're claim is to listen to black professionals at some uncertain point in the future at which they'll agree with you? That's very... Woke.
• steve76 5y ago
  Xi says China will never be subjugated. Then he turns around and enslaves China horribly himself. What's the difference between Xi and anyone else? Ah. I see. So who's the racist now? And isn't Karl Marx the one European white man who has murdered more people than anyone else? Here's a quick cure for wokeness. Make them live around the people they champion. The smart ones leave to Cypress or New Zealand as fast as they can. From far away they open the gates to the zoo and let out the animals for some sick senile revenge. The dumb ones walk right in. In a few days, they're cooked in a pot and eaten under an ever doubling murder rate. Say you're abused. OK. Since you're being abused, what's the harm in abusing you more? marxists, jihadists, totalitarians, you're never going to win. Bombard the Earth from the Moon. Billions of people horribly murdered overnight. It's easy to do. A solar panel. A few springs or charged pressure vessels. That's enough to rain molten ceramic death down on all of us. It's so easy, even Musk can do it, the college dropout. How difficult could it be? Not long ago, teachers used to beat students for not just misbehavior, but also for being stupid. We've come a long way since then. I'm thinking artificial cerebral spinal fluid. Cut out your brain. Throw it in a jar. And when I'm angry, kick the hell out of it. You will never see jannah.
• GiorgioG 5y ago
  What exactly is the goal of the 'woke' as it pertains to race or gender? If success to them looks like an equal number of white/black/asian/women it's an unreachable goal. According to the 2020 census: 57.8% of Americans are white, 16.3% are hispanic, 12.2% are black, and 5.9% are asian. It seems as plain as day that even if we could remove racism from the equation, it's more likely that whites will make up more share than others. As far as women in tech for example, yes there are very few of them. But is that because we discourage girls from getting into tech or simply because they, as a group naturally gravitate towards other kind of work? Nobody complains that there are too few men in nursing or too many women in nursing (my wife is in a nursing program and it is dominated by female students.) As of 2010, 14.4% of active duty US military personnel are women, 30% are minorities. What exactly is their definition of 'success'? In my mind it's equality of opportunity. I don't care what color your skin is or what gender you are - are you the best candidate from a 'doing the work' perspective. To me that should be the goal.
  • zionic 5y ago
    Their goal is not equality of opportunity, it is equality of outcome. They’ll willingly sacrifice anyone in the top 50% to elevate the lowest of the low, no matter how little they try or deserve it. This is broadly true in all leftist policy, from higher education to taxation to the way we structure kindergarten. Success, achievement, and work ethic are to be admonished. Leftist pseudomorality establishes the victim as the highest achievable social status, rewarding those who take more from society than give to it.
    • sebastianconcpt 5y ago
      I'd add to what you said that it's an apparent goal, because it's goal isn't concrete nor fixed. It's an impossible always changing imaginary that always needs more power and more obedience. Everything is about grabbing the power to produce behavioral control to keep them in power.
    • GiorgioG 5y ago
      > They’ll willingly sacrifice anyone in the top 50% to elevate the lowest of the low, no matter how little they try or deserve it. > This is broadly true in all leftist policy, from higher education to taxation to the way we structure kindergarten. Success, achievement, and work ethic are to be admonished. Leftist pseudomorality establishes the victim as the highest achievable social status, rewarding those who take more from society than give to it. Maybe you should spend some time away from the news media and consider how we're all being bamboozled by the both parties, "right" and "left". Consider reading freely available "The Three Languages of politics" (summary here: https://quillette.com/2018/08/08/the-three-languages-of-politics-a-review/ https://quillette.com/2018/08/08/the-three-languages-of-poli... and enlighten yourself as to why the conservatives and progressives can never agree - because they're not talking about the same things. The democratic and republican parties take advantage of this because once you're talking their language, you'll never be convinced to switch sides. If anything can bring this country down it's both of these parties tearing us apart. I'm an independent and I've voted for both parties over the years. Don't be a lemming - these two parties are just vying for power, anything the 'little people' like us get is just a side-effect.
• golemotron 5y ago
  There's a book everyone should read who is interested in these topics: The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer
• nashashmi 5y ago
  Obviously there is more interest in people expressing their views on this new woke world and how they are or are not ok with it. From an intellectual point of view no one is ok with woke culture because it does not get everything right. But that is the nature of trends. The few things that it used to be about was so empirically true but in trend when it’s stretched to every civil fight it loses the central meaning. Now it has become an expression for things that need to change. Used by whatever genre of people are open to its founding culture.
• kaitai 5y ago
  The "upper class" will always use whatever tools are at its disposal to further its own agenda. Doesn't matter what the tools are. The "upper class" has done plenty of Trump band-wagonism, just from evangelical and corporate elite circles. Look back in history: what was Carnegie trying to do with all his libraries? Not pure altruism. What did the "upper class" do with women's lib? Turn women into workers and consumer from whom more profit could be extracted. What has the "upper class" done with concern for the environment? Corporate greenwashing. What has the "upper class" done with religion? Used it for control, from Myanmar and India and Pakistan to the US to the Thirty Years War in the 1600s to Nigeria today. Just want to keep things in perspective. Everything is a tool when it comes to retention of power: religion, conscience, nature, food. And no one should be fooled. People should all realize the limits of the "support" and strive to do the right thing and treat each other well regardless of those larger forces. Powers & principalities & politics have been discussed since antiquity.
• 1auralynn 5y ago
  Pfft "wokeness" is just the latest label for people who have an investment in the status quo to complain about. Before that it was "political correctness", "hipsters", "hippies", etc. Not saying that there aren't annoying "woke" people (just like in any cohort of 22 yr old grad students there are gonna be some annoying ones who take themselves too seriously), but the pearl clutching is getting ridiculous here. The world isn't black and white, "woke" culture has some good points, for sure includes some amount of "taking it too far", but ultimately is, on the whole, made up of humans who you probably relate to on a personal level more than you don't.
• 8eye 5y ago
  people want to make money, being rude to others often prevents that, “elite” schools teach “elite” students who end up in places of privilege, they then teach or pass those lessons onto their workers. wokensss is really just HR on steroids
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• sjg007 5y ago
  I don't understand the issue really. CRT just looks at the role that race has played or plays in shaping our systems and institutions. This goes all the way back to the Constitution, the Three Fifths compromise and the 15th amendment. The Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow are all taught in high school. These are all explicit things that happened and were codified in law. American history has largely always been about race.
• bob229 5y ago
  Women don’t have penises. Nearly everyone knows this but nearly everyone is a coward
• morpheos137 5y ago
  The progression was from twitter to msm to npc. I will probably get down voted to hell for saying this but everything the west has seen since and including the fall of the USSR was straight out of the Illuminati playbook. It is classic divide and conquer.
• xyzzy21 5y ago
  Honestly everyday people aren't becoming woke - when they actually find out about it, they get majorly pissed off and angry.
• crawsome 5y ago
  the economist is dogwhistling again
• sgregnt 5y ago
  AFAIS, defense of anything is often a coercion, yes. There are millions of subtle situations for court to decide who, on the one hand, exercised his freedom and who, on the other hand, initiated a coertion, who responded to a coercion, and there is a room for interpretation. Also, the core principle is not a set of laws, it's just a guiding principle. If a court interprets certain possessions of proprties or certain actions as an initiation of coercion on other individuals, than it can judge it unlawful. For example if you place a bomb near someone, or your property blocks an entrance for someone etc... that could be a coercion, AFAIS. At the same time the core principle is akin to declaration of a constitution and as such it steers the lawmakers and society toward certain direction. But it's not an utopia that aims to describe everything by a single short paragraph.