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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 ski

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.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    It's especially ironic since "upper class media" are far whiter than many other industries. Yet somehow, they're never expected to undergo the Maoist self-criticism and struggle sessions they demand from others.
    - bsksi 5y ago
      White is not the race you're looking at.
      - idroveatrain 5y ago
        Is "white" really even a race? There's a lot of distinct people in Europe. Are Spaniards, Portugese, Italians "white" are Slavs "white"? Scottish or Irish? Germans? Where do we draw the line of distinction? Or are we just going off skin color?
        marton78 5y ago
        White in this context follows the definition on the US census
        skissane 5y ago
        I'm not sure it actually does. Officially the US census defines "White" as "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa" [0] However, the "Middle East, or North Africa" part seems rather disputed in American culture. Some Americans are happy to view the Middle Eastern and North African people (MENA for short) as "White", and some MENA Americans are happy to identify as "White". Other Americans disagree that MENA people count as "White", and some MENA Americans disagree with the application of the "White" label to themselves. [1] The US Census Bureau proposed to add a separate MENA racial category to the 2020 US Census, [2] but later dropped the proposal, allegedly due to political pressure from the Trump administration [3] Another issue is the status of Hispanic people. Approximately 65% of all Hispanic/Latino people in the US identify as "White" (that's what they put down on their Census forms), but I know from discussions I've had with Americans on this topic that some of them don't actually perceive "White"-identified Hispanic/Latino people as "White". And many US sources, e.g [4], claim that the US will become "minority white" around 2045; that is only true if one excludes "White Hispanics" from the category "White" – if one includes "White Hispanics" as "White", the US will likely still be majority "White" by the end of this century – but this just shows how even in official contexts "White Hispanics" are often not considered "really White". Many other countries sidestep these kinds of issues by officially avoiding putting people into broad racial categories, and focusing instead on narrower ethnicity/nationality/ancestry categories (Nigerian, Mexican, Argentine, Irish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Iranian, Indian, Arab, Jewish, Kurdish, Tibetan, etc). But, viewing human diversity as coarse rather than fine-grained groups is deeply entrenched in American culture, and seems in the last few years to have become even more emphasised than it was in the past, so it appears unlikely that America will follow the example of any of these other countries any time soon. [0] https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html [1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-census-middle-east-north-africa-race/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-census-middle-east-no... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/11/519548276/for-some-arab-americans-checking-a-census-box-is-complicated https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/11/519548276... [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/1/why-is-there-no-mena-category-on-the-2020-us-census https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/1/why-is-there-no-mena... [4] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-...
igravious 5y ago
This is correct with the caveat that there's no "they" there. Or like people say, there's identity politics and then there's actual politics. Or yet another way of putting it is that class differences trump fake differences in the real world but academia and the media focus on fake differences. Hierarchies and social strata exist and persist over centuries. The problem of economic inequality is a tough nut to crack. We have pretended to ourselves that there is decent social mobility and that economic inequality is not too bad. But it's bad, so – hey – let's focus on non-issues of race and gender and whatnot. Some call "wokeness" radical egalitarianism – enlightenment ideals taken to their breaking point and beyond. People urge us to focus on reaching some utopian ideal of equality of outcomes. Better to focus on reducing economic inequalities. But entrenched interests will not share the pot without being forced to, I believe. This is the defining struggle of our era – of every era really. The struggle between those who have access to opportunity and wealth and those that barely do. It's a lie that we've had a bunch of popular revolutions. We've never truly had one. A landed aristocracy and merchant class has held sway over us all (systemically) from feudal and aristocratic times down through to this era of nation states – be they communist or capitalist, doesn't matter.
- chakkepolja 5y ago
  The main problem is wokeness gives some people political leverage they wouldn't otherwise have, and it's hard to fire them even if they are shitty at work. That's a real problem.
  - Retric 5y ago
    It’s common to see people spout some version of “How dare any group try to maximize it’s leverage!” With an implicit that I am not part of. People leverage a wide range of subtle interactions to their advantage. From shared national, ethnic, religious, or even educational background to good looks and height. It’s easy to point to any of them as being unacceptable. However, while they can be minimized, I don’t think this stuff is going away. What’s interesting is the knock on effects as these interactions get internalized into culture. Working out to maximize attractiveness, especially while networking, just becomes part of climbing the corporate ladder.
Josteniok 5y ago
This is pointed out in the article when it says: >“Corporate wokeism I believe is the product of self-interest intermingled with the appearance of pursuing social justice,” says Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotechnology executive and author of “Woke, Inc.”. He argues that Big Tech pursues corporate wokeism because appearing to embrace social justice suits such firms’ commercial interests—both in terms of recruitment and appeal to their customers. It performs allegiance to identity politics while simultaneously rejecting the left’s critique of capitalism. “A lot of Big Tech has agreed to bend to the progressive left,” he says, but “they effectively expect that the new left look the other way when it comes to leaving their monopoly power.”
nonameiguess 5y ago
This is true I suspect, but as siblings have noted, it doesn't require reifying the "upper class" as some decision making entity that is doing this on purpose. It's just that discrete sectors of the "left" push both social-identity based and class-based critiques of inequality. Both of these get broad pushback from the political right, but identity-based inequality remediation is generally acceptable to business interests, who are far less likely to care and may even largely be socially liberal, cosmopolitan, and urbane. Start trying to remove class distinctions and alleviate economic inequality, on the other hand, and now you're a threat both to the political right and to business interests that otherwise don't give a crap about politics. Maybe somewhat ironically, though economic leftism or at least Marxism certainly started in academia (Marx himself being a scholar), as far as I know, the recent push for wokeness and the term "woke" itself arose originally from AAVE in the 1930s and became popular more recently thanks to Black Twitter. It did not come from academia, and it doesn't seem like the form it has taken in academia is anywhere near what the original proponents had in mind. Lead Belly was singing "stay woke" back in 1938 and he was not talking about intersectionality and transgenderism.
zpeti 5y ago
These two paragraphs from Glen greenwald are my favorite and very relevant to your post: “But they [GCHQ] want you to know that they absolutely adore gay people. In fact, they love the cause of LGBT equality so very much that, beginning on May 17, 2015 — International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia — they started draping their creepy, UFO-style headquarters in the colors of the rainbow flag. The prior year, in 2014, they had merely raised the rainbow flag in front of their headquarters, but in 2015, they announced, “we wanted to make a bold statement to show the nation we serve how strongly we believe in this.” Who could possibly be opposed to an institution that offers such noble gestures and works behind such a pretty facade? How bad could the GCHQ really be if they are so deeply committed to the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people? Sure, maybe they go a little overboard with the spying sometimes, and maybe some of their surveillance and disinformation programs are a bit questionable, and they do not necessarily have the highest regard for law, privacy and truth. But we know that, deep down, these are fundamentally good people working within a fundamentally benign institution. Just look at their flamboyant support for this virtuous cause of social justice.“
- finfinfin 5y ago
  It’s a strongly expressed opinion that isn’t necessarily supported by evidence. Do you know of any statistical or anecdotal evidence? I personally don’t know anyone who changed their opinion of GCHQ for better because of their support of LGBT. I don’t agree that it’s so easy to draw such conclusions and exclaim “sure they spy on us but look at their flamboyant support of social justice”.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    To give you the perfect example, I think all the types of people who were protesting (100% correctly) at the Occupy Wall Street movements have been completely neutered and neutralised with this woke movement in corporations. These bankers and banks basically destroyed the american dream like no other person/corporation in history, they did more damage to minorities than any "white oppressor", yet they've basically been forgotten because activists types feel like they can make a difference by introducing trans issues into corporations. No, you didn't. The same crooked billionaires are syphoning off even more cash, not to mention the government is now printing money for them to socialise their losses. I have to congratulate these corporations, it's been the perfect divide and conquer tactic. Almost everyone's forgotten the 2008 crises, who caused it, and what damage it did.
atkailash 5y ago
This is true but they also have the luxury of worrying about it versus survival, so it isn’t necessarily a “distraction” they cultivated intentionally. But also, members of the LGBTQIA+ and people of color always have to worry about these issues because it is part of our survival. Many in the queer community (I personally advocate for this term versus LGBTQIA but that’s a separate thing) are also willing to call out companies who are obviously unfriendly but take advantage of pride month (I suspect it’s similar for people of color but since I am not I don’t want to speak to that)
imbnwa 5y ago
W.E.B. DuBois detailed this not long after it started happening during Reconstruction over 100 years ago when he wrote "Black Reconstruction in the South".
rayiner 5y ago
It’s convenient that under wokeness, the real bad guys are my white in laws in rural Oregon and not the white people “doing the work” in Wall Street and SV.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  I'll give you Wall Street, but SV is very much a target of this Neo-Maoist craziness. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of interesting problems wrt. how to improve diversity and equity in the industry, but politicized catchphrases like "there's no such thing as meritocracy" (a prime example of Orwellian duckspeak if there ever was one) are not conducive to this goal.
  - eli_gottlieb 5y ago
    Well, if there's truly no such thing as meritocracy according to whichever tech company said that, I'd love if they could hire my disabled younger brother who never completed his degree for an engineering role! He can work remotely.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    Meritocracy was coined to satirize the concept.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
    - Siira 5y ago
      The origins of a word don’t quite determine the physical reality of the ideas around it.
      - pseudalopex 5y ago
        Physical reality? What physical instrument measures merit? The origin of the word shows criticism of the concept isn't just "Orwellian duckspeak".
- finfinfin 5y ago
jtsiskin 5y ago
How does this work, practically? Do the owners of media corporations call up their reports and say “hey, focus on gender issues, stop those wealth inequality articles?”
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- EatZeBugs 5y ago
  Yes, this is exactly how it works: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great-racial-awakening https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great...
- UWillOwnNothing 5y ago
  Yes, that’s exactly what they do: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great-racial-awakening https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great...
- ip26 5y ago
  It would presumably be much like scientific research. Nobody tells you what to study, but Philip Morris isn’t going to bankroll you if you’re studying what makes tobacco addicting. Similarly, Media Corp enthusiastically sends an army of reporters to cover racial issues, yet just doesn’t happen to assign anyone to investigate corruption in the press. Think less Mafia Don and more Invisible Hand.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >It would presumably be much like scientific research. Is there some sort of shadow organization funding all the woke stories?
    - dandotway 5y ago
      Corporate ad-spend funds the woke stories. Apple doesn't want to buy iPhone ads for stories about how Apple has 300,000 Chinese working for $3 an hour making iPhones that sell for over $1000 (with a gross profit margin exceeding 50%) while minorities in the USA can't find work that pays rent.
curation 5y ago
Yes. Race/gender/sexuality are classes that are fighting to be respected and co-exist. This is an upper class dream. They need to be abolished. My graduate degree is in Equity Studies from the late 90s. I was trained to write what is called "critical race studies" curriculum. We did not call it that - we called it critical theory. My work was on class intervention, specifically being working class in the Academy. My advisor, the late great Roger Simon (who was also born working class) told me there was one book on this subject and it was anecdotal. I was further told that there would be no future for me in the academy if I pursued this.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stjohnswarts 5y ago
It's both. I agree that currently the Biggest Problem is the 1% vs the 99%. However you also can't sweep racism, sexism, and gender identity under the rug either, because a lot of the 99%, particularly in rural areas, are indeed heavily to blame for their being backward and opposed to equality in racism/sexism/sexual orientation issue. Try being a gay couple and being open about it a typical rural brick and mortar store. I've experienced it with my girlfriend (she's a POC) in rural areas just going road trips which we love. You definitely get looks and unfriendly faces. Of course you do your best to ignore them but it does make me simmer sometime.

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.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  It's especially ironic since "upper class media" are far whiter than many other industries. Yet somehow, they're never expected to undergo the Maoist self-criticism and struggle sessions they demand from others.
  - bsksi 5y ago
    White is not the race you're looking at.
    - idroveatrain 5y ago
      Is "white" really even a race? There's a lot of distinct people in Europe. Are Spaniards, Portugese, Italians "white" are Slavs "white"? Scottish or Irish? Germans? Where do we draw the line of distinction? Or are we just going off skin color?
      - marton78 5y ago
        White in this context follows the definition on the US census
        skissane 5y ago
        I'm not sure it actually does. Officially the US census defines "White" as "A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa" [0] However, the "Middle East, or North Africa" part seems rather disputed in American culture. Some Americans are happy to view the Middle Eastern and North African people (MENA for short) as "White", and some MENA Americans are happy to identify as "White". Other Americans disagree that MENA people count as "White", and some MENA Americans disagree with the application of the "White" label to themselves. [1] The US Census Bureau proposed to add a separate MENA racial category to the 2020 US Census, [2] but later dropped the proposal, allegedly due to political pressure from the Trump administration [3] Another issue is the status of Hispanic people. Approximately 65% of all Hispanic/Latino people in the US identify as "White" (that's what they put down on their Census forms), but I know from discussions I've had with Americans on this topic that some of them don't actually perceive "White"-identified Hispanic/Latino people as "White". And many US sources, e.g [4], claim that the US will become "minority white" around 2045; that is only true if one excludes "White Hispanics" from the category "White" – if one includes "White Hispanics" as "White", the US will likely still be majority "White" by the end of this century – but this just shows how even in official contexts "White Hispanics" are often not considered "really White". Many other countries sidestep these kinds of issues by officially avoiding putting people into broad racial categories, and focusing instead on narrower ethnicity/nationality/ancestry categories (Nigerian, Mexican, Argentine, Irish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Iranian, Indian, Arab, Jewish, Kurdish, Tibetan, etc). But, viewing human diversity as coarse rather than fine-grained groups is deeply entrenched in American culture, and seems in the last few years to have become even more emphasised than it was in the past, so it appears unlikely that America will follow the example of any of these other countries any time soon. [0] https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html [1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-census-middle-east-north-africa-race/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-census-middle-east-no... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/11/519548276/for-some-arab-americans-checking-a-census-box-is-complicated https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/03/11/519548276... [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/1/why-is-there-no-mena-category-on-the-2020-us-census https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/1/why-is-there-no-mena... [4] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-...

igravious 5y ago

This is correct with the caveat that there's no "they" there. Or like people say, there's identity politics and then there's actual politics. Or yet another way of putting it is that class differences trump fake differences in the real world but academia and the media focus on fake differences. Hierarchies and social strata exist and persist over centuries. The problem of economic inequality is a tough nut to crack. We have pretended to ourselves that there is decent social mobility and that economic inequality is not too bad. But it's bad, so – hey – let's focus on non-issues of race and gender and whatnot. Some call "wokeness" radical egalitarianism – enlightenment ideals taken to their breaking point and beyond. People urge us to focus on reaching some utopian ideal of equality of outcomes. Better to focus on reducing economic inequalities. But entrenched interests will not share the pot without being forced to, I believe. This is the defining struggle of our era – of every era really. The struggle between those who have access to opportunity and wealth and those that barely do. It's a lie that we've had a bunch of popular revolutions. We've never truly had one. A landed aristocracy and merchant class has held sway over us all (systemically) from feudal and aristocratic times down through to this era of nation states – be they communist or capitalist, doesn't matter.

chakkepolja 5y ago
The main problem is wokeness gives some people political leverage they wouldn't otherwise have, and it's hard to fire them even if they are shitty at work. That's a real problem.
- Retric 5y ago
  It’s common to see people spout some version of “How dare any group try to maximize it’s leverage!” With an implicit that I am not part of. People leverage a wide range of subtle interactions to their advantage. From shared national, ethnic, religious, or even educational background to good looks and height. It’s easy to point to any of them as being unacceptable. However, while they can be minimized, I don’t think this stuff is going away. What’s interesting is the knock on effects as these interactions get internalized into culture. Working out to maximize attractiveness, especially while networking, just becomes part of climbing the corporate ladder.

Josteniok 5y ago

This is pointed out in the article when it says: >“Corporate wokeism I believe is the product of self-interest intermingled with the appearance of pursuing social justice,” says Vivek Ramaswamy, a former biotechnology executive and author of “Woke, Inc.”. He argues that Big Tech pursues corporate wokeism because appearing to embrace social justice suits such firms’ commercial interests—both in terms of recruitment and appeal to their customers. It performs allegiance to identity politics while simultaneously rejecting the left’s critique of capitalism. “A lot of Big Tech has agreed to bend to the progressive left,” he says, but “they effectively expect that the new left look the other way when it comes to leaving their monopoly power.”

nonameiguess 5y ago

This is true I suspect, but as siblings have noted, it doesn't require reifying the "upper class" as some decision making entity that is doing this on purpose. It's just that discrete sectors of the "left" push both social-identity based and class-based critiques of inequality. Both of these get broad pushback from the political right, but identity-based inequality remediation is generally acceptable to business interests, who are far less likely to care and may even largely be socially liberal, cosmopolitan, and urbane. Start trying to remove class distinctions and alleviate economic inequality, on the other hand, and now you're a threat both to the political right and to business interests that otherwise don't give a crap about politics. Maybe somewhat ironically, though economic leftism or at least Marxism certainly started in academia (Marx himself being a scholar), as far as I know, the recent push for wokeness and the term "woke" itself arose originally from AAVE in the 1930s and became popular more recently thanks to Black Twitter. It did not come from academia, and it doesn't seem like the form it has taken in academia is anywhere near what the original proponents had in mind. Lead Belly was singing "stay woke" back in 1938 and he was not talking about intersectionality and transgenderism.

zpeti 5y ago

These two paragraphs from Glen greenwald are my favorite and very relevant to your post: “But they [GCHQ] want you to know that they absolutely adore gay people. In fact, they love the cause of LGBT equality so very much that, beginning on May 17, 2015 — International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia — they started draping their creepy, UFO-style headquarters in the colors of the rainbow flag. The prior year, in 2014, they had merely raised the rainbow flag in front of their headquarters, but in 2015, they announced, “we wanted to make a bold statement to show the nation we serve how strongly we believe in this.” Who could possibly be opposed to an institution that offers such noble gestures and works behind such a pretty facade? How bad could the GCHQ really be if they are so deeply committed to the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people? Sure, maybe they go a little overboard with the spying sometimes, and maybe some of their surveillance and disinformation programs are a bit questionable, and they do not necessarily have the highest regard for law, privacy and truth. But we know that, deep down, these are fundamentally good people working within a fundamentally benign institution. Just look at their flamboyant support for this virtuous cause of social justice.“

finfinfin 5y ago
It’s a strongly expressed opinion that isn’t necessarily supported by evidence. Do you know of any statistical or anecdotal evidence? I personally don’t know anyone who changed their opinion of GCHQ for better because of their support of LGBT. I don’t agree that it’s so easy to draw such conclusions and exclaim “sure they spy on us but look at their flamboyant support of social justice”.
- zpeti 5y ago
  To give you the perfect example, I think all the types of people who were protesting (100% correctly) at the Occupy Wall Street movements have been completely neutered and neutralised with this woke movement in corporations. These bankers and banks basically destroyed the american dream like no other person/corporation in history, they did more damage to minorities than any "white oppressor", yet they've basically been forgotten because activists types feel like they can make a difference by introducing trans issues into corporations. No, you didn't. The same crooked billionaires are syphoning off even more cash, not to mention the government is now printing money for them to socialise their losses. I have to congratulate these corporations, it's been the perfect divide and conquer tactic. Almost everyone's forgotten the 2008 crises, who caused it, and what damage it did.

atkailash 5y ago

This is true but they also have the luxury of worrying about it versus survival, so it isn’t necessarily a “distraction” they cultivated intentionally. But also, members of the LGBTQIA+ and people of color always have to worry about these issues because it is part of our survival. Many in the queer community (I personally advocate for this term versus LGBTQIA but that’s a separate thing) are also willing to call out companies who are obviously unfriendly but take advantage of pride month (I suspect it’s similar for people of color but since I am not I don’t want to speak to that)

imbnwa 5y ago

W.E.B. DuBois detailed this not long after it started happening during Reconstruction over 100 years ago when he wrote "Black Reconstruction in the South".

rayiner 5y ago

It’s convenient that under wokeness, the real bad guys are my white in laws in rural Oregon and not the white people “doing the work” in Wall Street and SV.

zozbot234 5y ago
I'll give you Wall Street, but SV is very much a target of this Neo-Maoist craziness. And don't get me wrong, there are plenty of interesting problems wrt. how to improve diversity and equity in the industry, but politicized catchphrases like "there's no such thing as meritocracy" (a prime example of Orwellian duckspeak if there ever was one) are not conducive to this goal.
- eli_gottlieb 5y ago
  Well, if there's truly no such thing as meritocracy according to whichever tech company said that, I'd love if they could hire my disabled younger brother who never completed his degree for an engineering role! He can work remotely.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  Meritocracy was coined to satirize the concept.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
  - Siira 5y ago
    The origins of a word don’t quite determine the physical reality of the ideas around it.
    - pseudalopex 5y ago
      Physical reality? What physical instrument measures merit? The origin of the word shows criticism of the concept isn't just "Orwellian duckspeak".
finfinfin 5y ago

jtsiskin 5y ago

How does this work, practically? Do the owners of media corporations call up their reports and say “hey, focus on gender issues, stop those wealth inequality articles?”

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
EatZeBugs 5y ago
Yes, this is exactly how it works: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great-racial-awakening https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great...
UWillOwnNothing 5y ago
Yes, that’s exactly what they do: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great-racial-awakening https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-great...
ip26 5y ago
It would presumably be much like scientific research. Nobody tells you what to study, but Philip Morris isn’t going to bankroll you if you’re studying what makes tobacco addicting. Similarly, Media Corp enthusiastically sends an army of reporters to cover racial issues, yet just doesn’t happen to assign anyone to investigate corruption in the press. Think less Mafia Don and more Invisible Hand.
- gruez 5y ago
  >It would presumably be much like scientific research. Is there some sort of shadow organization funding all the woke stories?
  - dandotway 5y ago
    Corporate ad-spend funds the woke stories. Apple doesn't want to buy iPhone ads for stories about how Apple has 300,000 Chinese working for $3 an hour making iPhones that sell for over $1000 (with a gross profit margin exceeding 50%) while minorities in the USA can't find work that pays rent.

curation 5y ago

Yes. Race/gender/sexuality are classes that are fighting to be respected and co-exist. This is an upper class dream. They need to be abolished. My graduate degree is in Equity Studies from the late 90s. I was trained to write what is called "critical race studies" curriculum. We did not call it that - we called it critical theory. My work was on class intervention, specifically being working class in the Academy. My advisor, the late great Roger Simon (who was also born working class) told me there was one book on this subject and it was anecdotal. I was further told that there would be no future for me in the academy if I pursued this.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

stjohnswarts 5y ago

It's both. I agree that currently the Biggest Problem is the 1% vs the 99%. However you also can't sweep racism, sexism, and gender identity under the rug either, because a lot of the 99%, particularly in rural areas, are indeed heavily to blame for their being backward and opposed to equality in racism/sexism/sexual orientation issue. Try being a gay couple and being open about it a typical rural brick and mortar store. I've experienced it with my girlfriend (she's a POC) in rural areas just going road trips which we love. You definitely get looks and unfriendly faces. Of course you do your best to ignore them but it does make me simmer sometime.