"Wokeist" - When people talk about progressivism without acquaintance

[Hygro]

Offhand I would guess most white families escaped early 20th century poverty through the government spending of the 1930s-1960s, most intensely through the GI bill and a briefly very progressive tax code.

 

[Lexicus]

Offhand I would guess most white families escaped early 20th century poverty through the government spending of the 1930s-1960s, most intensely through the GI bill and a briefly very progressive tax code.

Yeah, I'd argue the decisive factor was the FHA guaranteeing mortgages for white people. And by the way, there is a direct line to the FHA refusing to guarantee any mortgages for black people back then, and the enormous disparity in white and black household wealth today. No amount of magical thinking about "making the right choices" can surmount that brute fact.

 

[Hygro]

I come from intergenerational education, and my children will come from intergenerational wealth.

The wealth comes from my parents finally “making it” in their 60s, dad working in his mid 70s. All of the wealth, all of it, is tied into two well placed properties, paid for by a strong income and good mortgage rates.

I am able to put the icing on this cake as I went from what seemed like permanent underemployment to a career by being able to live in one of those aforementioned properties while collecting mega covid unemployment bucks, training my way into an industry that pays the most.

I am a clear example of the system working, just as the exclusion to all of this privilege, to which I say thank you academy it’s a privilege and an honor to receive it, is evidence of the system not working.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

a misrepresentation of actual conflict in most cases.

What are you on about?

 

[Arwon]

 

[Traitorfish]

The thing is that the left doesn't do it efficiently. Yes, the stereotypical person you refer to tries to direct language, but the attempts have a hard time cementing themselves outside leftist circles. The left has a very hard time restructuring language in the centre. The right is just better at it, it has succeeded several times. It has picked up on observations of left-leaning researchers about this stuff and have weaponized it.

I think this is because, on the left, these language games about both internal and external control: about acquiring status and influence within liberal institutions such as academia and media, and about influencing society as a whole. But these are often incompatible goals, because they're aimed at two different audiences: highly-educated, affluent, professional class urban liberals on the one hand, and the culturally and economic heterogenous mass of working class Americans on the other. Not only are these audiences likely to be persuaded by different sorts of language, they are likely to be repelled by the language the other group finds persuasive. It becomes even more paradoxical overtime, as the numbers employed by these institutions shrink and they become more exclusive, so the compulsion to develop even more impenetrable jargon grows, and they drift ever-further from what the man in the street would recognise as English, let alone find compelling.

Conservatives settle their internal power struggles through brute force of wealth, by simply having more money, so they do not need to develop their own arcane cant, and can simply pitch their language politics in a demotic, "common sense" way.

Those are descriptions of what you were arguing, not inferences. I mean, you literally say in the post that you link to here that boycotting media products is an attempt to use market exchange as a sort of fig leaf to hide that a boycott is a totalizing attempt to control cultural expression.

Let's grant that I did characterise the sorts of liberal media boycotts discussed in this thread "totalising attempt to control cultural expression"? (I do not think that the imaginative leap from "control" to "totalising control" is supported by what I've written, but let's allow it for purpose of argument.) In what sense is that a right-wing argument? In what way does it betray the influence of right-wing ideas?

edit:

Here's the "wokey" thing. The acceptance of dialectic materialism/conflict theory as a baseline truth. That is the dogma. That is the religion.

I don't think this is correct. Plausibly true of the activist set (except for throwing "dialectical materialism" in there, that bits just silly), but almost exactly wrong as a description of how "wokeism" manifests at an institutional and political level. I would contend instead that "woke" liberals are basically functionalist in their outlook, that they understand society as an integrated whole, a social body, and the attempt to explain inequalities of race, gender, etc. as diseases of the social body to be treated by technical means. How else do we explain why so much of this stuff manifests, at a practical level, as corporate sensitivity policies? Does that sound like the product of people who see society as riven by irreconcilable conflict?

 

[Lexicus]

I do not think that the imaginative leap from "control" to "totalising control" is supported by what I've written, but let's allow it for purpose of argument.) In what sense is that a right-wing argument? In what way does it betray the influence of right-wing ideas?

I feel I've explained this already in our conversation up til now so let's just leave it at that.

I don't think this is correct. Plausibly true of the activist set (except for throwing "dialectical materialism" in there, that bits just silly), but almost exactly wrong as a description of how "wokeism" manifests at an institutional and political level. I would contend instead that "woke" liberals are basically functionalist in their outlook, that they understand society as an integrated whole, a social body, and the attempt to explain inequalities of race, gender, etc. as diseases of the social body to be treated by technical means. How else do we explain why so much of this stuff manifests, at a practical level, as corporate sensitivity policies? Does that sound like the product of people who see society as riven by irreconcilable conflict?

I think Adolph Reed has the right take on this, which is that race-first liberalism sees society as riven by irrenconcilable conflict between racial groups, such that someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates can write that "black poverty" is "fundamentally distinct" from "white poverty."
The issue with bernie's post is that treating race-first liberalism (racial "conflict theory") as interchangeable with dialectical materialism is silly given the drastically different practical implications of each idea.
Ultimately leftism is about seeing past and then working through the various abstractions that divide working people (of which race is only one) because the real fundamental conflict in society is between the rich and poor. So, to loop back to what you're saying, the idea that corporate diversity training has any meaningful relationship with dialectic materialism is absurd. Most of the Marxists I know despise people like Robin DiAngelo and as schlaufuchs already explained people like DiAngelo and Coates are self-consciously and inveterately anti-Marxist (or at least anti-materialist; see Coates repeatedly claiming that white supremacy itself is a motive force of history).

Anyway I may be rambling but to wrap up, right-wingers not understanding what they criticize is nothing new. Something something "cultural marxism"

 

[João III]

View attachment 627781

Reminds me of this article about the US "exporting wokeism" and the "anti-woke movement" in France:

France resists US challenge to its values

 

[Gorbles]

However, the new American ideas face a big difficulty in France, he believes, "because one of the cornerstones of French Republicanism is a principle that has become anathema in the context of US-style wokeism - and that is colour-blindness".

lol, France, famous for being "colourblind" in its handling of race-related (and religious) issues.

 

[El_Machinae]

France will always have a different path on such things. I think it will always seem strange.

 

[Farm Boy]

and can simply pitch their language politics in a demotic, "common sense" way.

Would you agree with this? If you can't (simply pitch...), "they're onto you."

Understanding the impulses are often opposing, but none may actually be parallel.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The victims of cancel culture!

From the White nationalists conference in Orlando earlier this year:
“She is a standard-bearer of Trumpism in the U.S. Congress,” Fuentes said. “She is pro-life, she is proudly America first … We are honored, we are humbled and excited to welcome her to the stage right now ... I think this is going to be the beginning of something great — the representative from Georgia, Marjorie Taylor Greene!”

Greene, who had just heard Fuentes cheer on Putin and admit to leading a movement for “young white men,” hugged Fuentes and took her place behind the lectern.

She began her speech by invoking her faith, leading the groypers to break into a chant of “Christ is king!” Then Greene — a transphobic QAnon conspiracist booted off Twitter for promoting COVID denialism who was stripped of her committee assignments last year for advocating violence against Democrats — told the assembled white nationalists that they, like her, were “canceled Americans.”

“You’ve been handed the responsibility to fight for our Constitution and stand for our freedoms, and stop the Democrats who are the communist party of the United States of America,” she said.

 

[Arwon]

There's a real irony to these white supremacists being so god damn enthusiastic to steal AAVE slang, but I guess stealing from black people has been kinda their whole thing hey.

 

[Hygro]

There's a real irony to these white supremacists being so god damn enthusiastic to steal AAVE slang, but I guess stealing from black people has been kinda their whole thing hey.

Heyy

 

[NovaKart]

Canceled is AAVE?

 

[Arwon]

Yes. Have people already completely forgotten this?

"Cancel" and "woke" are both lifted from black culture, originally used as kinda jokey and kinda serious terms to talk about, roughly, being done with someone's unacceptable behaviour, and being aware of structural oppression, respectively. The dumb irony is once they were assimilated, they were then almost immediately shorn of any nuance and weaponised specifically to sneer at and mock those exact same things.

 

[NovaKart]

Yes. Have people already completely forgotten this?

"Cancel" and "woke" are both lifted from black culture, originally used as kinda jokey and kinda serious terms to talk about, roughly, being done with someone's unacceptable behaviour, and being aware of structural oppression, respectively. The dumb irony is once they were assimilated, they were then almost immediately shorn of any nuance and weaponised specifically to sneer at and mock those exact same things.

To forget something you would have to know it in the first place and most people don’t know the origins of words popularized on Twitter, actually it’s not unusual to meet someone who isn’t online too much who doesn’t know them at all.

 

[Arwon]

Nah it's older than that, the journey of the term went roughly from the 1991 film New Jack City, to rap and reality TV in the 2000s, then to online more recently.

 

[NovaKart]

Nah it's older than that, the journey of the term went roughly from the 1991 film New Jack City, to rap and reality TV in the 2000s, then to online more recently.

I’m not trying to start an argument or anything but I said popularized, not one person using the word cancel (without culture attached to it) to talk about breaking up with his girlfriend.

 

[Arwon]

okay