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Follow each point on the Engl Document that is attached—No Rushing No 2nd Chance
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September 25, 2024
Truth and Misconceptions: The Wokeness Debate
publicsquaremag.org/dialogue/social-justice/truth-and-misconception-wokeness-debate/
This essay is adapted from It’s Debatable: Talking Authentically about Tricky Topics,
published by Olive Branch Press.
In the “culture wars” being waged in the United States these days, one of the rhetorical
weapons is the term “woke.” Many of the left are proudly woke. Many on the right decry
wokeness. Many others—perhaps the majority—may not be sure what the term means.
So, let’s start with definitions.
We can understand wokeness in a positive sense.
Does “woke” mean staying aware of social injustices such as racism, remaining vigilant and
attentive to the need for constant struggle? Huddie William Ledbetter, the folk/blues
performer better known as Lead Belly, thought so. Discussing his song “Scottsboro Boys,” he
advised black people to “stay woke” to the violent realities of white supremacy, especially in
places such as Alabama, where those nine boys and young men accused of rape in 1931
escaped a lynching but found themselves railroaded by a racist court system. “I advise
everybody to be a little careful when they go down through there,” Lead Belly said of
Alabama. “Just stay woke. Keep your eyes open.” That’s widely considered to be the origin
of the term, long before it was bandied about in the dominant culture.
Or does “woke” describe the attempt by people on the left to impose their ideology on
everyone else, either through public policy or pressure on private institutions and
businesses? That’s how conservatives have redefined the term, usually with some contempt
https://publicsquaremag.org/dialogue/social-justice/truth-and-misconception-wokeness-debate/
https://www.songhall.org/profile/Huddie_Ledbetter
https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy
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and derision toward those they accuse of “virtue signaling,” a public displaying of wokeness
to demonstrate one’s presumed moral superiority.
Both definitions can be accurate, depending on the situation.
We can understand wokeness in a positive sense, following Lead Belly. Should people who
are at the bottom of various social hierarchies stay woke? That certainly seems sensible,
given the way people in power so often work to maintain those hierarchies, even though they
may publicly pledge to pursue the goal of equity. Should a black driver who gets stopped by
a police officer be awake to patterns of the disproportionate use of force against African
Americans? That seems like good advice, not because all cops are abusive in every
encounter but because some people are at greater risk. And if vulnerable people should stay
woke out of self-interest, it would be appropriate for people in dominant positions in the
hierarchies to strive to be woke out of solidarity.
Experience matters in how we understand the world.
What about wokeness in a negative sense? Do people who consider themselves to be woke
ever behave in overly zealous ways when they apply their analysis of hierarchy and
oppression to situations in their lives? Almost everyone, especially those of us who have
spent time on college campuses over the past decade, can tell a story about such
zealousness undermining productive conversations. For example, the phrase “check your
privilege”—intended as a reminder to people with unearned advantages to be self-reflective
—can be used in ways that shut down engagement rather than open up an exchange. In
practice, “check your privilege” can be wielded as a synonym for “shut up.”
Here’s an example of the complexity that will be familiar to many readers. During a meeting,
some participants will preface a statement with phrases such as “As an indigenous man” or
“As a black woman.” Sometimes, those details help others understand their comment, but
some speakers use their identity to suggest that critique from white people or men, or both,
is out of bounds and that their analysis is beyond challenge.
Experience matters in how we understand the world, but it doesn’t guarantee one has the
best argument. As I repeatedly told students, their experience may be the starting point for
an analysis, but simply recounting their experience isn’t an analysis. If those kinds of identity
invocations shut down a conversation, everyone loses. That doesn’t mean that hierarchies
don’t exist or that oppression is acceptable. It simply recognizes that some people can derail
important conversations by implicitly claiming that some other people cannot challenge their
statements.
If this critique seems suspect coming from me, an older white guy, consider the analysis of
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, which describes him as “a
nationally recognized social movement strategist, a visionary leader in the Movement for
Black Lives, and a community organizer for racial, social, and economic justice.” In an essay
https://aeon.co/essays/why-virtue-signalling-is-not-just-a-vice-but-an-evolved-tool
New data: Police use of force rising for Black, female, and older people; racial bias persists
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widely circulated on the left, Mitchell was blunt: “Identity and position are misused to create a
doom loop that can lead to unnecessary ruptures of our political vehicles and the shuttering
of vital movement spaces.” On a podcast after the essay was published, he said he has seen
identity “being weaponized in ways that were not useful for the work.” He elaborated:
As a black person, it does no favors to me for me to say, “As a black son of
immigrants,” and then for white people to sit on their hands and shut up. I need to be
sharpened by debate. I might, at the end of the day, think you’re wrong. But I need the
back and forth in order to sharpen my position or change my mind.
Where does this leave us? Let’s take the case of race. Some on the right say that racism is
no longer a powerful force shaping people’s options. Most on the left argue that racist
practices continue, albeit in different forms than in previous eras, and must be addressed in
public policy. (I say “most” because some leftists argue that class divisions in capitalism are
primary, both in terms of analysis and action.)
Let’s start with potential points of agreement. Everyone should be able to agree that the
United States, both in legal and informal ways, has made progress in confronting white
supremacy and changing racist practices. Would anyone argue that the United States in
2024 is no different than it was in the pre-civil rights 20th century? I think of this in concrete
terms, about the year I was born. Does anyone—anyone who isn’t an overt racist, that is—
want to return to the racial dynamics of 1958?
Yet it’s also true that racialized disparities in measures of wealth and well-being—the
statistics that tell us roughly how well people are doing—continue even after changes in law
and policy. Given the racist history of the United States and the recent resurgence of openly
white supremacist rhetoric, would anyone argue that we have transcended white supremacy
in the few decades since the end of legal apartheid? Does anyone want to freeze racial
dynamics at this moment in history because it can’t get any better than this?
How do we sort this out? Too often, too many white people want to deny the lingering racist
patterns in virtually every aspect of American life. When those white people are quick to label
antiracist activists as overly zealous, that might be part of a denial strategy. It’s fair to ask
whether critiques of wokeness might sometimes be a way to divert attention from the
enduring nature of white supremacy.
Yet it’s also reasonable to worry that such zealousness sometimes undermines the difficult
work of building coalitions that can advance an antiracist agenda. People with a perceptive
critique of white supremacy are people, and people can be arrogant in all sorts of ways. For
example, the line between holding someone accountable for a racist comment and berating
a well-intentioned person who may not be up-to-date on the latest trends in progressive
https://convergencemag.com/articles/building-resilient-organizations-toward-joy-and-durable-power-in-a-time-of-crisis/
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/wealth-inequality-and-the-racial-wealth-gap-20211022.html
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terminology can be pretty thin. Even the director of a university’s Africana studies program
can find himself undermined by a self-righteous student who feels the professor isn’t taking
the correct position.
The only way forward is to acknowledge these complex social realities and step back
from the polarizing platitudes.
If all these points are reasonable, then the only way forward is to acknowledge these
complex social realities and step back from the polarizing platitudes. Reasonable people on
the right should be able to acknowledge that white supremacy is a dangerous part of
conservative political formations today. Reasonable people on the left should be able to
acknowledge that it is better to present arguments based on evidence and logic rather than
merely denounce political opponents who don’t share their views on race.
Vincent Lloyd, the Africana studies professor who saw that the seminar he was teaching
undermined, offers a perceptive analysis of the situation:
I worry that left political discourse today takes social movements, or even just an
individual who has suffered, as conversation stoppers rather than conversation
starters. That frustrates me because I firmly believe these movements are the key to
our collective liberation. Justice struggles always involve a back-and-forth between
movement participants making demands for radical transformation and those in power
trying to manage those demands so that they can keep their grip on power. … Those
of us who care about justice have to be willing to ask critical questions about these
dynamics rather than blindly deferring to the activist language.
I’ll conclude by making the question personal: Am I woke?
Because I’ve written critically about white supremacy, I have been described as part of the
woke mob on racial justice, one of those people who allegedly is ashamed to be white. But
I’ve also been shunned in left spaces for my writing on patriarchy, especially my challenges
to transgender ideology.
I have spent my adult life working in journalism and university teaching, endeavors that have
provided me a fair amount of freedom to explore a complex world without worrying (for the
most part) about who might attack me. I don’t have to worry about how I am labeled.
My concern is that framing intellectual debates as a culture war has been politically
corrosive, limiting people’s capacity for democratic engagement. In war, the goal is victory,
not deeper understanding. And given how complex the modern world is, we all need to
deepen our understanding.
I’m not naïve. I’m not asking, “Can’t we all just get along?” I am suggesting we have an
obligation to work at understanding why we don’t always get along.
https://compactmag.com/article/a-black-professor-trapped-in-anti-racist-hell
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/villanova-professor-vincent-lloyd-anti-racism-conversation/673079/
