6 ms·

This is a version of the silent majority argument, and I think you underestimate how much the public is onboard with these policies. And give it a few decades,

This is a version of the silent majority argument, and I think you underestimate how much the public is onboard with these policies. And give it a few decades, opposing them will simply be outside of the Overton window. Competing over conformity is the Olympics sports of our time and boy is society keen on participating.

mbg721 4y ago
The public just wants to give the underdog a fair shot; they don't care much about what's happening in academic publishing, but they get angry if they perceive that somebody is being oppressed because of who or what they are. A few decades from now, the public response will depend on how successfully these issues were cast as matters of justice.
fallingknife 4y ago
Then why do I never hear woke language IRL? People who I associate with are overwhelmingly left of center and under 35 BTW, so sample bias is actually making this a stronger indication of public opinion. Edit: and anybody who has ever dealt with an HOA knows that the silent majority is absolutely a real thing.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  The key is that it doesn’t take ‘a majority’ to affect change. Activists just need to be in positions of power, or put pressure on those that are. The average person in ‘the silent majority’ is against all the ‘wokeness’ but won’t actually fight it. They’ll prefer to reassure themselves that no one truly believes it while doing virtually nothing to confront those who are pushing it. As far as your HOA example goes, I’ve found most people really do not like being in one, but are relatively helpless when it comes to actually changing the association’s rules.
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I lived in Chicago and I heard woke stuff all the time at work (we had some pretty insane DEI meetings and posters around the office), among friends, at church, and of course protests/demonstrations/riots on the streets. I think it’s not evenly distributed IRL and that has some people feeling like “woke” is just some Republican boogeyman. Also, people seem to be forgetting the #MeToo and #BLM eras surprisingly quickly—woke ideology spurred nationwide protests and riots and somehow that seems to be getting memory-holed.
  - willnonya 4y ago
    I work in an environment that has a lot of focus on DEI, training, posters etc. Unless you're standing in front of the equivalent of a polit officer the language is used mockingly. This isnt some right wing coven but a mix of perspectives. This mocking stems from the shared recognition of the absurdity of the issue. As far as Me Too and BLM being "memory holed" that has more to do with the movements themselves. They each started with very real sparks but were both consumed rather quickly by movements that bore little resemblance to those sparks. They abused their support for unrelated and often self serving objectives and made themselves irrelevant as a result.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      My wife works as a marketing consultant for major US corporations (including but not limited to FAANG). In pitching to companies, her company explicitly (and cringeingly) advertises their diversity—race, gender, nationality, languages spoken, etc and their commitment to DEI. Her company holds DEI meetings internally and with clients where they basically cite disparities out of context and get collectively (and performs timely) angry about them. To be clear, her company is not in the DEI space, it’s just a competitive advantage to get contracts. In meetings with her coworkers (1:1 or group), no one is mocking DEI at all—there are lots of True Believers and others who just don’t want to rock the boat (including my wife, for better or worse), but no one is openly critical (subjectively, people are definitely afraid to be seen as failing to toe the party line). Previously, she worked at a non-profit which was also not DEI affiliated but was obsessed with DEI stuff. Again, no one was openly critical of anything remotely DEI related. I’ve had similar experiences at every company I’ve worked for as a software engineer. I’m not arguing that our experiences are THE experience, but there are definitely a lot of places that take DEI super-seriously. My thesis isn’t “DEI is taken super seriously everywhere”, but rather that how seriously it is taken isn’t evenly distributed across the country or across industries.
throwaway894345 4y ago
I sort of agree that we underestimate support for these policies, but critically I think we underestimate who (rather than how many people) supports these policies—notably the elites in Hollywood, media, academia, and business (at least via DEI platforms in every major company). Even still, I’m somewhat optimistic that this ideology won’t be adopted in its current form because it’s so inconsistent and often counterfactual, and I believe in a sort of “truth floats”. Moreover, our society is already “less woke” (or whatever term you prefer) than we were in the BLM and #MeToo eras. Honestly, my biggest concern is that proponents of woke ideology are pretty successfully framing it as the only alternative to Republican anti-wokeness or otherwise as the best way to “own the conservatives”. At least that’s the impression I get from debates I’ve had.
- jwalton 4y ago
  I have a number of friends who, a decade ago, jumped down the super woke rabbit hole. They’re quite far from academia - in fact the one thing that ties most of them together is that they didn’t bother going to university and then spent a long chunk of time essentially unemployed. So it isn’t just the elite and the Hollywood types… although my anecdotal evidence isn’t any better than your anecdotal evidence. :P
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    Oh, I fully agree that it isn’t limited to academia. I’m only saying that your unemployed super-woke friends aren’t as influential as Hollywood, the media, government bureaucrats, academia, DEI departments, etc. :)
Beltalowda 4y ago
I've only known a single person who buys in to all this stuff, and my social circle leans overwhelmingly left. And with "this stuff" I don't make the basic precepts – many people agree on that – but rather the more outlandish "woke" interpretations of things: "structural racism exists and is a problem": sure, loads of people agree with that, as do I. But "math education is full of white supremacy culture" ... yeah, not so much. Not a very scientific poll by any standard of course and I'm sure it's a biased selection in all sorts of ways, but it doesn't seem that common of a viewpoint to me. I think the reason that you don't get a lot of pushback is that accusations of racism, transphobia, ableism, etc. are completely toxic, no matter how bullshitty they are. If you have to say "I'm not racist" then you've kind of already lost. It's a "cheat code" for winning the argument; the ultimate "stfu hammer". And you have to ask yourself: do I really have anything to gain by engaging on this and what do I risk losing?
- zozbot234 4y ago
  Structural racism exists and is a problem, but the clearest, most obvious and most prototypical example of a structurally racist society is not the United States; it's Latin America. Where racialized ideology got its start in the first place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta and where the whole of society was twisted over five centuries to build up and sharpen a correlation between ancestry, social status and in fact outright social oppression and coercion. Of course this correlation is quite obvious today and explains much about the social dysfunction that persists there. Does structural racism then exist in the U.S.? Undoubtedly so in some places, especially those that were most influenced by Latinx norms and by the homegrown culture of oppression in the South. But to call it ubiquitous to the U.S. as the "woke" almost always do is to deeply misunderstand the nature of it.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    I guess? I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with the history of South-America. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to primarily focus on their own country in their own time. Historical context is important, sure, both to understand the cause of today's problems as well as put things in perspective. But in the end, I'm not so sure if it really matters all that much when discussing contemporary issues in e.g. the US or Europe. I mean, you can look up how the ancient Greek treated their women and suddenly you will find that modern feminists from the 70s didn't have all that much to complain about either, never mind contemporary countries like Saudi-Arabia. It's interesting to learn about it for all sorts of reasons, but in the end ... not really all that directly relevant when discussing the status of women in your own country.

mbg721 4y ago

The public just wants to give the underdog a fair shot; they don't care much about what's happening in academic publishing, but they get angry if they perceive that somebody is being oppressed because of who or what they are. A few decades from now, the public response will depend on how successfully these issues were cast as matters of justice.

fallingknife 4y ago

Then why do I never hear woke language IRL? People who I associate with are overwhelmingly left of center and under 35 BTW, so sample bias is actually making this a stronger indication of public opinion. Edit: and anybody who has ever dealt with an HOA knows that the silent majority is absolutely a real thing.

BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
The key is that it doesn’t take ‘a majority’ to affect change. Activists just need to be in positions of power, or put pressure on those that are. The average person in ‘the silent majority’ is against all the ‘wokeness’ but won’t actually fight it. They’ll prefer to reassure themselves that no one truly believes it while doing virtually nothing to confront those who are pushing it. As far as your HOA example goes, I’ve found most people really do not like being in one, but are relatively helpless when it comes to actually changing the association’s rules.
throwaway894345 4y ago
I lived in Chicago and I heard woke stuff all the time at work (we had some pretty insane DEI meetings and posters around the office), among friends, at church, and of course protests/demonstrations/riots on the streets. I think it’s not evenly distributed IRL and that has some people feeling like “woke” is just some Republican boogeyman. Also, people seem to be forgetting the #MeToo and #BLM eras surprisingly quickly—woke ideology spurred nationwide protests and riots and somehow that seems to be getting memory-holed.
- willnonya 4y ago
  I work in an environment that has a lot of focus on DEI, training, posters etc. Unless you're standing in front of the equivalent of a polit officer the language is used mockingly. This isnt some right wing coven but a mix of perspectives. This mocking stems from the shared recognition of the absurdity of the issue. As far as Me Too and BLM being "memory holed" that has more to do with the movements themselves. They each started with very real sparks but were both consumed rather quickly by movements that bore little resemblance to those sparks. They abused their support for unrelated and often self serving objectives and made themselves irrelevant as a result.
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    My wife works as a marketing consultant for major US corporations (including but not limited to FAANG). In pitching to companies, her company explicitly (and cringeingly) advertises their diversity—race, gender, nationality, languages spoken, etc and their commitment to DEI. Her company holds DEI meetings internally and with clients where they basically cite disparities out of context and get collectively (and performs timely) angry about them. To be clear, her company is not in the DEI space, it’s just a competitive advantage to get contracts. In meetings with her coworkers (1:1 or group), no one is mocking DEI at all—there are lots of True Believers and others who just don’t want to rock the boat (including my wife, for better or worse), but no one is openly critical (subjectively, people are definitely afraid to be seen as failing to toe the party line). Previously, she worked at a non-profit which was also not DEI affiliated but was obsessed with DEI stuff. Again, no one was openly critical of anything remotely DEI related. I’ve had similar experiences at every company I’ve worked for as a software engineer. I’m not arguing that our experiences are THE experience, but there are definitely a lot of places that take DEI super-seriously. My thesis isn’t “DEI is taken super seriously everywhere”, but rather that how seriously it is taken isn’t evenly distributed across the country or across industries.

throwaway894345 4y ago

I sort of agree that we underestimate support for these policies, but critically I think we underestimate who (rather than how many people) supports these policies—notably the elites in Hollywood, media, academia, and business (at least via DEI platforms in every major company). Even still, I’m somewhat optimistic that this ideology won’t be adopted in its current form because it’s so inconsistent and often counterfactual, and I believe in a sort of “truth floats”. Moreover, our society is already “less woke” (or whatever term you prefer) than we were in the BLM and #MeToo eras. Honestly, my biggest concern is that proponents of woke ideology are pretty successfully framing it as the only alternative to Republican anti-wokeness or otherwise as the best way to “own the conservatives”. At least that’s the impression I get from debates I’ve had.

jwalton 4y ago
I have a number of friends who, a decade ago, jumped down the super woke rabbit hole. They’re quite far from academia - in fact the one thing that ties most of them together is that they didn’t bother going to university and then spent a long chunk of time essentially unemployed. So it isn’t just the elite and the Hollywood types… although my anecdotal evidence isn’t any better than your anecdotal evidence. :P
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  Oh, I fully agree that it isn’t limited to academia. I’m only saying that your unemployed super-woke friends aren’t as influential as Hollywood, the media, government bureaucrats, academia, DEI departments, etc. :)

Beltalowda 4y ago

I've only known a single person who buys in to all this stuff, and my social circle leans overwhelmingly left. And with "this stuff" I don't make the basic precepts – many people agree on that – but rather the more outlandish "woke" interpretations of things: "structural racism exists and is a problem": sure, loads of people agree with that, as do I. But "math education is full of white supremacy culture" ... yeah, not so much. Not a very scientific poll by any standard of course and I'm sure it's a biased selection in all sorts of ways, but it doesn't seem that common of a viewpoint to me. I think the reason that you don't get a lot of pushback is that accusations of racism, transphobia, ableism, etc. are completely toxic, no matter how bullshitty they are. If you have to say "I'm not racist" then you've kind of already lost. It's a "cheat code" for winning the argument; the ultimate "stfu hammer". And you have to ask yourself: do I really have anything to gain by engaging on this and what do I risk losing?

zozbot234 4y ago
Structural racism exists and is a problem, but the clearest, most obvious and most prototypical example of a structurally racist society is not the United States; it's Latin America. Where racialized ideology got its start in the first place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casta and where the whole of society was twisted over five centuries to build up and sharpen a correlation between ancestry, social status and in fact outright social oppression and coercion. Of course this correlation is quite obvious today and explains much about the social dysfunction that persists there. Does structural racism then exist in the U.S.? Undoubtedly so in some places, especially those that were most influenced by Latinx norms and by the homegrown culture of oppression in the South. But to call it ubiquitous to the U.S. as the "woke" almost always do is to deeply misunderstand the nature of it.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  I guess? I'm afraid I'm not too familiar with the history of South-America. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to primarily focus on their own country in their own time. Historical context is important, sure, both to understand the cause of today's problems as well as put things in perspective. But in the end, I'm not so sure if it really matters all that much when discussing contemporary issues in e.g. the US or Europe. I mean, you can look up how the ancient Greek treated their women and suddenly you will find that modern feminists from the 70s didn't have all that much to complain about either, never mind contemporary countries like Saudi-Arabia. It's interesting to learn about it for all sorts of reasons, but in the end ... not really all that directly relevant when discussing the status of women in your own country.