How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life? | Hacker News Reader

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

economist.com

525 pointssystemvoltage1,274 comments

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.

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.“

This causality claim seems like a real stretch. If Glen is just providing opinion, I will say that all the LGBT people I know (friends and internet personalities) are skeptical of a lot of pinkwashing and in fact many make fun of corps doing so. During this years pride my twitter timeline was filled with people laughing at how stupid and backwards it all was when corps like Raytheon and Axon pinkwashed their logos.

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”.

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.

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.

I highly doubt many “woke” people would agree with you and call an unknown white family in Oregon—and not Zuckerberg—“the real bad guys” .

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.

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?”

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.

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.”

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.

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".

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.

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.

proceeds to detail conspiracy

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.

Unfortunately this laissez fair approach is the exact opposite of modern wokeness. It’s their way or it’s attacks and cancellation. If you’re an oppressor class you have almost no way to be forgiven.

The easiest way to show this is just ask some woke stars on their views of libertarianism, which is literally to let everyone be themselves.

Some, even most, of the goals of that movement are commendable, with the exception of the more idealistic goals such as equality of outcome. What I find worrying, however, are the tactics that are used to accomplish those goals. I find it hard to understand how people do not see how discriminating against other people because of their views is not the right approach to solve discrimination.

What you’re describing seems to be ordinary, popular liberal values. Wokeness regresses toward segregation and race essentialism.

For example, a white Dane is unfit to translate the work of a Black poet because a white person cannot understand the experiences of a black person—the difference between any white person and any black person in the 21st century are far greater than the 21st century Dane and the 15th century Shakespeare whom the Dane regularly translates without controversy.

Or similarly, a school board decides that an eminently qualified white man is unfit to volunteer because he can’t possibly empathize with the experiences of minorities.

Or the woke demande to dispense of standardized tests because these tests only judge us according to “white” strengths (literacy, reason, etc) which blacks or other minorities don’t possess. https://mobile.twitter.com/JamaalBowmanNY/status/13765200627...

> Nothing wrong with people with non conformist clothing and views. Let them be, let them express and find themselves.

...and be cancelled, fired and banned from being hired anywhere.

Part of me doubts that it's a permanent shift. There was a hippie movement in the 60s and 70s in the US, but conservatives are still going strong 50 years later.

I agree 100% with you but that’s not the woke viewpoint.

“Silence is violence”.

Either get on board and start supporting them or you’re the enemy.

'Woke' is illiberal. A lot of the ideas behind it attack liberalism as they see at enabling the status quo as opposed to action for change.

Edit: Why are people down voting me? Critical theories are very open about their critique of liberalism and rationality? And how they've led to lack of change. It's not some weird conspiracy.

I personally think it's not worth it to abandon liberal ideas. As suddenly you validate a lot of illiberal politics. It allows for authoritarianism. I can't stand inconsistencies.

there is evidence that runs contrary to your last sentence

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.

What about if their tattoos are swastikas or nooses, and the "non-conformist" views are antithetical with the ideals of "wokeness"? They're "doing as they like", so let them express and find themselves, right?

>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

Wonder if you would be as supportive of the Hitler mustache

I think you mean

- "the more open minded ... as long as it's open to what I like and closed to what I don't"

- "do as you like as long as I approve"

And I'm not speaking to you-- But rather extrapolating these as they represent the fake tolerance of the anti-traditional neomarxists-- SJWs who typically exhibit substantial fascist traits

* --> See those downvotes? Point proven :) The hypocrisy of those who claim tolerance of different perspectives *

Unfortunately the lolbertarian approach overlooks the fact that you live in a civilization composed of others humans, and that the collective mental health of said humans can very quickly impact your day to day life.

So you, as an individual, have a vested interest in participating in social trends/resisting social normalization of beliefs that harm your way of life.

Say you enjoy the pub, it is in your interest to resist a social movement banning alcohol (or immigration from countries where these views are common).

See "concept creep" - 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.

> I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm

Or maybe once you've weaponized a concept, it's tempting to use it as much as you can.

When being a nerd stopped being shameful and started being cool, all the cool kids started calling themselves nerds for liking Avengers and Harry Potter - why wouldn't you claim the social points that are just lying around?

And when you live in a society that rewards victimhood, when calling someone a bully gives you power over them - of course people will jump at any chance to call themselves a victim.

> 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?").

I have noticed this with “victim blaming”. I understood it to refer fairly specifically to sexual assault victims being blamed for “asking for it” by wearing a skirt or whatever.

Now I see it being used in relationship advice subreddits and agony aunt columns to basically mean “don’t dare disagree with me” when someone decides that they were the victim in some some dispute.

Sounds very similar to "Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment" - https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aap8731

> Why do some social problems seem so intractable? In a series of experiments, we show that people often respond to decreases in the prevalence of a stimulus by expanding their concept of it. When blue dots became rare, participants began to see purple dots as blue; when threatening faces became rare, participants began to see neutral faces as threatening; and when unethical requests became rare, participants began to see innocuous requests as unethical. This “prevalence-induced concept change” occurred even when participants were forewarned about it and even when they were instructed and paid to resist it. Social problems may seem intractable in part because reductions in their prevalence lead people to see more of them.

See syllogisms. Technically a battle against "whiteness" is not the same as a battle against "white". But in practice the syllogism makes the two indifferentiable.

> I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda.

I don't feel comfortable with anyone using the term "liberal moral agenda" unironically because of culture-specific connotations: for starters, it's a very US-specific phrase which will have attached meanings that would be lost or misinterpreted by people unfamiliar with how the term "liberal" specifically relates to US political discourse - and the hugely negative (to downright toxic) connotations attached to the label "liberal moral agenda" by the reactionary right-wing - which all make conversations like these impossible to have.

leaky abstractions

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.

Id recommend getting outside of your social circle/geo a bit more. I’ve never once experienced this in Denver, and have only ever seen gender pronouns be a thing on linkedin.

In my US company, we've been strongly encouraged to use pronouns on our very first day of work (actually, even before that).

I consider myself progressive as well. If this helps with inclusion, I'm glad to use them. But it brings a mccarthysm vibe that makes me uncomfortable and slightly worried.

I'm Fab (he/him/his, or in German er/seiner/ihm/ihn/ sein/seine/seines/seiner/seinem/seinen/seins/sich/ der/dessen/dem/den/ dieser/dieses/diesem/diesen/ jener/jenes/jenem/jenen/derjenige/etc.)

My wife is a history professor at a major university. Literally in the belly of the beast as far the reactionaries are concerned. Specifying gender pronouns there remains optional, for both students and faculty. Many people do it willingly but it is not universal.

If a company asked this I would put "gavinray [I don't give a flying fuck what you call me]".

Happy to use other people's pronouns if it makes them happy, it really makes no difference to me, and clearly it's a big deal to some people so I've no problem obliging.

But if you ask for something this stupid, company-wide, IMO you're due what you ask for.

Because there's my pronoun. Call me he/she/they, or a goddamn Attack Helicopter, I really don't care.

I have had to go out of my way to break the habitual "Hey guys" -> "Hey all/Hey folks" though, and I don't find that one unreasonable.

The only place I have really seen this take off is on US headquartered social media sites (I live in Australia) that have added pronouns as an optional field.

It's definitely optional. I have yet to have anyone in real life try and pull me up over it, except for my 11 year old daughter. If a virtue signaller tried to give me a hard time about it, they can "talk to the hand".

I want everybody to address me as “Your Lordship”. People who don’t are clearly violent oppressors. Obviously!

This is not something I or anyone I know wants enforced by policy or "if you know what's good for you." It's nice and helps normalize the practice for people who need that acceptance, and it stands out in a good way, but the lack of stated preference isn't a negative indicator.

Now, when someone flips out on me because I default to they/them in text when someone has no stated preference and there's no way to tell, that's a negative indicator. It's clear they have a preference and refuse to state it just to be difficult. But it's a rare occurrence.

Where does it feel like it's no longer optional? I don't see your preferred pronouns here just for example. In all of my social circles the overwhelming opinion expressed by progressives is that not specifying your pronouns is as valid a preference as any other. I've even seen that specifically stated in diversity and inclusion training. Making people feel like they have to specify pronouns is the opposite of being inclusive and progressive so I'm glad I've never come across this.

Would their majesty be an acceptable pronoun?

Legitimately who cares? It's not like you have to sacrifice anything by just saying you'd like to be called he or whatever. It's an incredibly easy thing to do.

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.

I agree, and I'm concerned about the divide and conquer-type of impact it's having in societal discourse. This effect seems way too convenient (and beneficial) for the ruling class, and in that respect, I'm afraid academia may be inadvertantly working against the common interest of the working classes by pushing these worldviews.

I'm curious what any possible alternatives might be to the practical problems "wokeness" tries to present itself as a solution to.

I don't think the problem of racism and sexism (two classic "woke" topics) are "Left" problems, which is why it strikes me as odd that I don't see ideas about how to deal with them coming from everyone, beyond a straight denial they exist, or that it's actually the fault of the folks experiencing the discrimination somehow.

People are getting fired over those things, it is not just mindspace of silly people.

Leftist movements tend to consume themselves in escalating purity spirals.

https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...

> 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.

Are you sure? It feels like it has a much stronger influence, at least in Western Europe.

What is the long term plan here? The infighting is at an ever increased risk of leaking into real world and real violence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Wars

Identitarian does not mean what you think it means. In fact, it's basically the exact opposite. I also have no idea what you mean when you say it has no ability to change anything. Are you talking about identity politics? Politics that specifically aim to better the position of people in certain subgroups? Because there are many political movements that have been wildly successful in doing that, women's suffrage, the US civil rights movement, universal male suffrage, the LGBTQ movement. There's a lot of politics based on group identity that has been successful.

>> "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."

I think most people who self-ID as conservative really believe what they claim to believe about wanting to work with people who have other views to make a better world where they don't have to worry so much.

There are people within their own spheres who encourage their fears because they know it's a distraction. A lot of them do seem to be wising up to it, but only because the firestarters overplayed their hand. The people who once persuaded people to see this as some majority, overwhelming force did so by sounding more reasonable than the people they complained about.

Once the agitators went off the deep end, I think most people are reasonable enough to see it for what it is even if the realization takes a while to propagate past the scripts people have developed in a half decade or so getting mad online about it.

A similar thing happened on "my" side when people started to catch on to all the plainclothes cops in protests trying to turn them into riots.

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.

I speak Spanish and frequently talk to native speakers from all over Latin America, given that I use Spanish in my job and have a number of Latin friends. I’ve still yet to meet a native speaker who likes “Latinx”, although I did hear one on the radio once. (A college student).

Gendered nouns are kind of silly and antiquated when you think about it though, and many languages have a neuter gender too (e.g. German). The "X" suffix is an attempt by younger Spanish speakers to introduce a neuter gender to their native language.

English doesn't have gendered nouns, but we do have gendered pronouns, which not all languages have. Chinese doesn't have gendered pronouns, which is why you'll often hear native Chinese speakers accidentally refer to a woman in English as "he".

Today, young English speakers are trying to popularize "they" as an English neuter pronoun, and it's not too absurd: we already use "they" this way when the gender of the person is unknown. For example, if you found a random wallet, you might say, "Someone lost their wallet," and it would be acceptable.

Intentionally changing language isn't unprecedented either: in the 1970s, feminists successfully introduced "Ms." as a female equivalent to "Mr." to denote a woman who may or may not be married, (instead of Miss and Mrs.).

Ultimately, most language evolution is driven by young people: they're bending their native tongue to better describe their world. And that's a good thing. Language is supposed to be fluid and dynamic. We shouldn't be constraining our thoughts to a static unchanging language invented by our ancestors to describe their world that no longer exists. It's a tool meant to serve us, we're not meant to limit ourselves to it.

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.

Languages also evolve due to political/social movement pressures. With words taking on new meanings so that the old connotations and slogans can be attached to these new meanings.

the point is not the specific words you use, the point is that you do not have a choice in using them

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The way American values have spread all around the world and started supplanting the native values is upsetting.

Everything from commercialism and employment to attitudes towards nakedness and violence.

People have adopted burgers, coca-cola, Hollywood movies etc. from The Current Dominant Culture, why wouldn't they parrot things like woke pronouns.

I have a friend in Europe who informed me matter-of-fact that American corporate explicitly asked them to sport pronouns in their social media profiles. Or else I suppose.

Yes. The fact this craziness is actually encouraged by Finnish state media as something normal nowadays is seriously starting to destroy my will to live in this country. Idiots are copying everything that's wrong with America here.

Funnily, it seems like some form of 21st century imperialism. But this time it's using cultural tools instead of guns.

Do you mean English pronouns?

I am calling for a Finnish dictatorship until we have abolished gendered pronouns.

> Woke Finns add American Pronouns to their twitter pages

Social memia is the game of acquiring cheap prestige. Imitation of fleeting English fads is one such cheap use.

> Woke Finns add American Pronouns to their twitter pages.

Could it be these Finns interact with English speaking tweeps?

Probably for the same reason that foot biding took off in China

How does adding pronouns really affect your life at all? Seems quite a small thing to get annoyed about, especially if it ends up helping someone else.

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-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-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.”

Skin color identity in second grade? That's so ridiculous, I'd be pretty upset if I found that out. Let kids be kids. Anyhow, thanks for sharing.

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.

I went to a decently progressive elementary school, and the kids were absolutely racist by second grade. It'd be nice if we could just ignore race, but that's not reality yet.

This so much.

If you tie your identity, your idviduality, your importance to your melanin amount or ethnicity you are racist. You are dividing up humans into "us and them". You are using it to set yourself apart, to make yourself different (which inevitably leads to divisiveness and bigotry because you've divided up humanity) and to stake out a claim of ownership on some part of human culture.

It's not your culture it is our culture. We are all humans. All culture is human culture.

Bigotry will persist for as long as people invest importance and value into ancestral and cultural differences between groups. Whether as a positive (celebrate X culture) or negative (blame Jews).

Obviously, until we view ourselves as united, as one. We will remain divided.

Not going to lie, but that type of education seems like a great way to create a massive bolus of right-leaning kids that reject the ideas forced on them by their parents generation (they always rebel!) that just lead to self-defeating internal dialogue.

> This is the next batch of folks who will be doing your IPO paperwork:

No these are not the next batch of people filling out your IPO... that article you picked is like half a dozen randos attending an optional one time event that from the selective information they gave doesn't even seem to represent progressive views. Then soundbites were taken out of context by a hardline conservative outlet and you were told that this is what the left stands for. Can you honestly tell me that you believe progressives want to mandate that you begin every day chanting "i am tango-unchained and i am racist"?

Back to the article, what did the rest of that conversation look like besides a single screenshot? Is there any context where it might make sense to say "i am racist" without literally wearing a white hood. Maybe those words are being used to capture concepts that are more difficult to explain than firing someone based on the color of their skin or telling your daughter she shouldn't marry outside her race. These aren't dumb people and they made the decision themselves to say these things and I'm sure had good reasons that made sense in the moment.

The professor screenshotted here has like 22 years of legal teaching experience. Don't you think there's a chance he was having an interesting conversation about intellectual concepts and was taken out of context? That article you posted never asked these questions or got the "other side" and asked him to explain himself. Instead we just have quotes from a few conservatives that were offended by the training. It kind of reveals the purpose of this article.

It's fine to have ideological disagreements, but to frame this article as representing a movement let alone a generation of thinking is dishonest and hysterical.

>I went to a very white, quite red Virginia public school 30 years ago and nobody ever told me about brown skin being bad.

Then you got very very lucky. It has been an issue for a very long time.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/apr/09/coloris...

it was a problem long before the modern era.

https://www.naacpldf.org/ldf-celebrates-60th-anniversary-bro...

Preparing kids for the real world seems like a good education strategy to me...

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 :-/

Where exactly did it pretend to be neutral? This IS The Economist, after all.

I'm really unimpressed at the economist for publishing this, which is lazy partisan flame bait that I've flagged.

I agree. The author obviously considers "wokeness" stupid as hell, but hides with the thinnest veneer of neutrality.

It's a distraction piece:

Is the important issue in the US the enraged far right mob that attacked the Capitol in January, and continues to deny the legitimacy of elections, and plans further violence? Is it the actual COVID pandemic? Is it the science denial that accompanies the pandemic and has people turning to unproven horse-dewormer over proven vaccines? Is it the disinformation engines on social media and their weaponization by global actors? Is it the looming climate catastrophe? Is it right-wing lawmakers attempts to remove women's rights over their own bodies, and limit the right to vote and thereby "manage" democracy?

No, we need to pay our attention to lefty-wokies instead! They're the enemy of the day! Ignore your lying eyes about where these issues are coming from, pretend that there's an issue on the left here instead!

It's a pathetic piece.

And its pathetic that it gets so much traction here.

I still don't get the term latinx.

Have they considered... Latin. As in, Latin America, for instance?

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.

Hispanics don't get it either.

Or latine which was invented by people who actually speak the language.

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.

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.

> On a related point, what I’m uncertain about are the reasons for the increase in transgender kids in the west.

Broad acknowledgement (though there remains some sharp and often violent denial, so while better than the best the current situation isn’t at the limit of this) that gender identity can differ from socially ascribed gender and that such a difference is cause for realigning socially ascribed gender to gender identity means that people whose gender identity differs from their socially ascribed gender both are likely to have:

(1) a framework for understanding the source of their discomfort that would not exist absent the degree of acceptance, and

(2) a license to identify their understanding of the source of their discomfort to others that woud not exist without the degree of acceptance, and

(3) a hope of relief that would not exist without the social norm of realigning ascribed gender to match gender identity.

Naturally, this means that more people aren’t just going to keep quiet and attempt to fit into the box society has assigned them at whatever pain it takes, as would previously have been the case because there was no visible alternative.

> but it was also a time when society encouraged the view of everyone being unique and mysterious and don't put labels on things.

I'm glad, for your sake, that you felt like this about society, but I can assure you that at no time that any living person grew up was it the case; and, particularly, the labels put on those who failed to outwardly conform to gender norms tended to be quite harsh.

> 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.

That’s, literally, the opposite of the case.

Depending on how much your surroundings insist on putting labels and associated limitations based on what is between your legs on you during growing up; the puberty experience of one half of society can be more awful. This may also get reflected in current numbers of transmen vs transwomen. A transition is an extreme decision taken based on an unbearable amount of such psychological pain.

Wondering what started the labeling too though, I’ve also been teached the value of individualism and fended off any label applied to me.. maybe it’s about realizing that most people out there want to apply labels, so a response to their rigid labels is coming up with unlimited new labels.

There was a recent podcast that goes into deep detail of the causes of this phenomenon. How immense social, political, and even legal pressure suppresses those critical to transgender theory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSKQfATa-1I

I understand this might get downvoted and while I agree with the parent I also blame the contraceptive pill, dysregulation of hormone systems (various reasons), environmental toxins and the general malleability of people when it comes to sexuality at very young ages and for reasons we don’t understand. In my father’s generation the vast majority of men by the time they were 25 years old could grown thick beards now I’d say it’s a minority. We should be more curious about where these changes have come from.

On the other hand, there's no easy way to count the suicides who were closet-trans or just dysphoric without having the words for it. I've now known at least two adults with histories of depression who have transitioned and report being much happier.

Look for stories of people who are post-op or have gone a large portion of their life as trans. Sometimes they end up figuring out it's not for them. In most of those cases, it's not really that they were tricked or coerced, it's just that they get more help than people who do not identify as trans, but after they fully transition it disappears. In some rare cases a young person is pushed by someone.

You see the same thing with people who attempt suicide. People who attempt suicide have better life outcomes in general because they are given more help. Notably suicide is infectious and can trigger copycats.

This doesn't mean I think transexualism is fake -- there's a really interesting nature article where they use ML to identify the sex of brains separate from the body's apparent sex. But there definitely are incentives to ID as trans.

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.

Anecdotally, in the startup where I worked there was one summer in 2017 when 3 white women (a significant percent of the women in the office at the time) all suddenly came out as non-binary and asked to be called they/them. If that's not some kind of freaky bandwagon thing going on then I don't know what is. It was like a competition to see who could get the most oppression points or something. Now I'm in a different company, with a lot of folks who are pretty clearly biologically female claiming the non-binary identity. Most confusing of all to me are the non-binary people who still self-describe as lesbians. Do they think gender is a thing or not?

I'm expecting a pretty harsh backlash against all this gender politics at some point. I'm not sure when or how it will manifest, but even some of my LGB friends privately tell me they think it's gone too far. For the most part, though, they are too afraid to say anything in public because they don't want to get attacked and possibly lose their jobs over it. It's clear that the gender radicals have wielded online bully tactics to gain full control over the range of acceptable discourse.

LGBT are often portrayed as some kind of monolithic entity in mainstream media, but the reality is that there's a lot of ideological tension in the mix between the cis and trans people. The only place I see these tensions spilling into the open is in the UK, where the LGB Alliance and Stonewall organizations are at odds. Wondering when the same will happen in the US.

Let me lay out the tension for those who may not be familiar. On the one side you have LGB people who mostly say their sexuality is immutable and based on attraction to specific sexes. "Baby, I was born this way" in the words of Lady Gaga. As an example, maybe you're a lesbian which means a woman who is attracted to other women; for most of history this was understood to mean a person of the female sex attracted to another person of the female sex. Meanwhile you have trans activists trying to stretch the meaning of words like "man" and "woman" to the point that they don't really mean anything anymore. Anybody can be a woman if that's how they identify today, which has the effect of broadening what it means to be a lesbian in a way that some lesbians may not agree with. The status quo today is that if you're a lesbian and not willing to include the "female penis" in your sexual orientation, you're at risk of being called a TERF/transphobe. This seems like an irreconcilable difference of views.

Despite what you might think if you've read this far, I do not hate trans people. I have sympathy for them and whatever lack of self-acceptance has led them into their current path. I make an effort to use preferred pronouns and be respectful to those I work with. But I'm also extremely concerned about what the collateral damage to LGB people will be when Republicans capitalize on woke extremism at the ballot box.

I think it is just about growing knowledge and acceptance on one side and growing need to demarcate yourself on the other. Everything is a spectrum, right?

I remember ~20 years ago, when I knew nothing of being trans-gender as a concept, and I bearly heard of some people being trans-sexuals.

These days I am fairly on board with the concept of gender as being a role in society you choose to play, that is often informed by your sex, but doesn't have to.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6095578/

It's not a new thing. In some parts of the world at least transgendered women typically transitioned during their puberty, at 13 or 14. A great source for this observation is 'Travesti: Sex, Gender and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes' by anthropologist Don Kulick, who followed a group of trans sex workers in Salvador. Most of them transition from young boys to teenage sex workers after a sexual encounter with an adult male. From personal (though anecdotal) experience this is a common pattern in many cultures of the so-called Global South, if we include in that South East Asia. Basically for most of the 20th century, most transwomen who transitioned, transitioned in their puberty and went straight into sex work.

What has changed recently is that many more trans women transition later in life, after having lived for many decades as men, having married and had children and careers well outside sex work etc. Perhaps because of a more general shift of ideas about gender and sexuality (gay men are nowadays not considered effeminate or feminine just because they fancy men) most transwomen in western countries were generally of this later kind.

Then the wheel shifted again. My guess (and it's just a guess) is that the number of people transitioning later in life and in a context that had nothing to do with underage sex and sex work, helped convince society that transition does not have to mean sex work (although in most of the world, it still does, by and large, so what I say applies to more western societies) and that gave more space to younger trans women and also young trans men to express their identity without fearing that a life of humiliation and inevitable sex work awaited them.

In my part of the world, when I was transitioning in the late 90's a trans woman who was not into sex work was something unheard of and indeed I had to immigrate to be able to do anything with my life. As to concerns about giving young children puberty blockers etc, I would have to say that this is much better than 13 year olds taking cross-sex hormones without medical supervision and then going to the red light district to display their budding breasts with pride.

I hope all this doesn't come across as "wokeness". My concern about other trans women has always been the limited opportunities they've had in life, in my part of the world, and the squalid, degrading and dangerous conditions in which they had to survive as a result (google a bit about the transgendered community in Istanbul if you have strong nerves). I tend to think of all the outrage about identity issues on Twitter as a pleasant change of tone from the grim darkness that was before.

A link to that book:

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo362138...

What do you reckon is the reason for the increase in gay kids in the west after the decriminalization of homosexuality in most western countries? Hint: it's the decriminalization and social acceptance allowing gay people to come out of the closet rather than having to pretend they're straight for fear of consequences.

The kids aren't being transed. I know there are several mostly British authors having extremely loud voices spreading FUD about "rapid onset gender dysphoria" but that's not even a thing. It's based on a paper that used answers from parents about trans kids. Follow-up research has demonstrated that to the kids it was anything but rapid. You might as well invent a phenomenon of "rapid onset body size" to explain why grandparents will insist "how can you already be so big, it feels like you were a tiny baby only such a short while ago".

You're overthinking this, but to ease your mind: people aren't undergoing HRT and surgery because all the cool kids are doing it. They might experiment with neopronouns and gender identity labels for a bit but there's literally no demonstrable harm in that.

Also if you think identity politics is a new thing: US politicians literally put God on the dollar bills to appeal to Christian conservatives (prior to that the national motto was always "E pluribus unum", not "In God we trust"). We just don't tend to think of things as identity politics when we take the identity for granted.

EDIT: That you see more trans people is a good thing actually. Visibility is the result of social acceptance. And social acceptance is the biggest contributor to reducing suicidality and improving quality of life. Trans people haven't been killing themselves because they're trans, they've been killing themselves because everyone kept telling them they're not. You can't trans a kid any more than you can make them gay.

What's your actual goal with this comment?

> I understand there's been a massive increase in cases for transmen in the UK

No, there hasn't. You've been lied to.

There was no treatment for trans children (in the UK). Then a clinic opened up. We went from zero trans boys to some trans boys.

Anti trans campaigners misuse percentages to show an "alarming" rise, when in fact we've simply gone from "none" to "some".

This book’s trying to explain why this is happening for girls: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_Damage

The question would be, how many people who declare up front that they're transgender are actually medically diagnosed with such condition and how many just jumped on the bandwagon of what is fancy on the internet right now?

Disclaimer - personally, I'm sceptical about the concept and scientific grounds behind transgenderism and I expect my comment to be downvoted.

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

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.

This was not my early education experience in an American public school. The history taught to elementary school students circa 2000 was whitewashed to the point of almost being propaganda for American exceptionalism. Yes, later on in my education career I took classes that emphasized critical thinking and deconstructing ideas and texts, and these had a big impact on my worldview. But as a someone on the younger end of the millennial generation, I think collectively we became critical of our society due to the back to back travesties of the Iraq War and the financial crisis (as cliche as that sounds). For me, I have been completely disillusioned to the idea that social progress is inevitable, so I believe it’s well worth learning how to call out regressive ideas and the asymmetrical power structures that exist in our society.

Yes I believe some people take this way too far (and the media capitalizes on this by cherry picking the most egregious examples and using those as a straw man to represent all of left wing thinking), but on the other hand I don’t think we should accept the status quo. On Hackernews, we usually strive to look for better ways to solve problems or to solve problems people didn’t even know they had, so I don’t see why we should accept the organization of society as either a global maximum or as static and immutable. It’s something that should be hacked and improved upon like anything else. As you can tell, my experiences have culminated in my adoption of a liberal worldview (more moderate on a few ideas, radical on a handful) but I can see how different life experiences could lead someone to adopt a different ideology. My biggest frustration currently is the status quo bias of mainstream American thought where we just ignore the existence of inconvenient problems. If you think less government activity will solve a problem, I’m glad to hear you out as long as your argument is in good faith.

> This is why "wokeness" strikes so many as performative

I think part of the reason is many of the talking points I would call "ominous". Take for example the Civil Rights movement or Women's Suffrage. Looking back at them, they had clear goals and clear talking points, you could read their message and see where they were trying to go, what their ultimate goal was.

Wokeness on the other hand does not seem to have the same goals. Take the classic "ending systemic racism" goal. Ok fine, lets end systemic racism, how do we start? Where can we find it? On you see, if you don't know what systemic racism is then you have no hope of solving it. Oh you see, you're white so systemic racism is in you, so it's not a problem that you can solve.

I would say that unlike previous movements, the goal of Wokeness isn't to solve a problem in society, it's a "movement" you join for likes on Instagram, comments on Facebook, and upvotes on Reddit.

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.

I agree with your broad outline, but have a very minor quibble with one word: "hippies". I think that, even in the 60s, there was a bit of a distinction to be made between the "hippies" and the "radicals" -- not that there wasn't overlap. My impression is that the "hippies" were less militantly political, borrowed more (superficially) from Eastern religion, were more relaxed, and came in back-to-the-land varieties. They would have scored high on "agreeableness". Their music would have featured strumming guitars.

Whereas the radicals were more academic, more willing to engage in violence, with a variety of aesthetics that, overall, leaned more towards Black Panther berets (the real Panthers, not the superhero), than toward faux-Hindu paraphernalia. They would very much not have scored high on agreeableness. Their music then would have been funk, in the 90s would have been rap, and now is pop which features, not the relaxed strumming of a guitar, but a marching 4/4 (maybe even a snare).

And, in my imagination, the typical "person on the Right" had a tendency to conflate the two.

If you were watching Scooby-Doo, you'd suspect that Scooby and Shaggy were hippies, Velma was a radical, Fred was a little "Right", and Daphne was just a normcore moderate.

Anyway, the split is still with us today. "Mindfulness" and pop-yoga come from the hippies. Ski-/granola-bro is descended from the hippies. #vanlife borrows a ton from them too, including the VW vans (when they can get them). Permaculture comes from the back-to-the-land branches, and, though mostly "liberal", has even now grown its own somewhat "conservative" branches. And you sense a lot of residual "hippyness" throughout California.

Whereas "woke" stuff -- well, we've been talking about it nonstop for the past five years, so I probably don't need to describe it more. Point is, it's not like the hippy-descended stuff of the last paragraph. It's less Stuart Brand, more Focault and Fanon.

And you know -- I said that "red-state" people couldn't distinguish them. But probably low-tier "blue-state" people can't either. Which might explain some of what's going on.

You may have a point. I’ve always seen it as a desperate attempt to be on the right side of history, but there are so few causes of importance left. Of course, with post-modernism and linguistic relativity added to the mix.

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.

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.

>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.

Masculine plural is used as gender neutral for Spanish. Latinos already refers to both genders.

Even fringe social groups that disagree with using the masculine for neutral terms (which are already a huge minority, since grammatical gender is everywhere in Spanish and it doesn't imply anything -a chair is female and a wall is make) Ignore the x. They would use the e for neutral (latine), an @ symbol in writing, or just use the long form (Latinos y Latinas).

The x is an American invention that is unknown in the culture it tries to adapt and also not pronounceable in that language.

> I don’t really see the big issue with Latinx…

Here’s the issue:

English had the word “Latin” which was gender-nonspecific, and meant exactly what Latinx is used for.

It fell out of favor, being replaced with Latino/Latina (used with the same gender rules as in Spanish) specifically because it respected the language and cultured of the people to whom the label was applied.

Recently, some have adopted Latinx in place of Latino as the neutral in semantic gender form (specifically in the Hispanic LGBTQ community, it is one of several forms that small minorities have adopted in part to express identities which specifically reject the gender binary [others include latine and latin@.) While the various forms used for emphatic rejection of the binary do have some uses, the breadth of the use to which many major – mostly institutions have adopted Latinx as a general term for the Hispanic community outside of an LGBTQ context is unwarranted, especially given that it is (1) unnecessarily unpronounceable, (2) awkward in English and Spanish, and most importantly (3) almost entirely rejected by the target community, where the overwhelming majority of the tiny minority even aware of the term reject it, preferring Hispanic (mostly) or Latino (less preferred than Hispanic, but vastly preferred to Latinx) as the generic term, if one must be used.

>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.

I see two issues in Spanish, one in English, and two in general.

The only viable way to read this word in Spanish would be /latinks/, and it's against the language's phonotactics. So if you must replace the gender mark with something else, you'd need to use a vowel (cue to "Latines").

It is not necessary though, simply because grammatical gender is not social gender. There are a thousand ways to conceal the gender of someone in Spanish - refer to "la persona" (always feminine, no matter if you're referring to a man), plurify (the plural will take the masculine for mixed groups), so goes on. Or even, you know, use the default grammatical masculine, like the RAE recommends? Granted the RAE is a bunch of pedants but they're spot on in this case.

In English it sounds even more spurious. There's "Latin" already, why the hell are you adding a gender mark that doesn't exist in the language and then replacing it with yet another?

While this, one of the general issues I see is that we Latin Americans don't really identify ourselves by this sort of catch-all label. We have a bunch of local identities - using an equivalent for "the other side", calling us "Latins" (with -o, -a, -x or whatever) is like talking about the ethnic Germanic culture of Canada, Suriname, Jamaica, USA and Belize, as if they had a lot to do with each other.

The other issue I see is related to the above: who are the people using that word to identify themselves? Dunno about you, but I think they're just a bunch of Americans conflating heritage with identity. Every time I see someone claiming to be "latino" on the internet, I'm almost tempted to say "you are not one of us, stop lying" because of that. It's the same deal as the "Italians" from New York, or the "Irish" from who cares.

> 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.

The problem I see is that Latinos massively overwhelming don't use "Latinx" for themselves. 76% of adult Latinos say they have never even heard of the term "Latinx" [1]. 20% have heard of it but do not use it. Only 3% use it.

Even among younger Latinos, 18-29, less than 50% have heard of it and only 7% use it.

Among the minority of Latinos who are aware of the term only 10% say it is the preferred term. 50% say the preferred term is Hispanic and 31% say Latino is the preferred term.

It seems pretty arrogant to call a group by a word that most people in the group don't even recognize and most that do recognize it do not consider it the correct word for them.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/11/about-one-in...

Would you say Gringx instead of Gringo? Or afficionadx instead of afficionado?

Let the Latin language people decide and not delegate to white commissars.

> 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.

In English, we often use the word Latin with no gender suffix (as in the term Latin Americans). As I understand, Latinx is not an attempt to be gender-neutral but gender-inclusive and language-inclusive (as Latin lacks the gender suffix used in Spanish and Portuguese, and Latino/a excludes French-speaking Haitians).

Hispanic is also gender-neutral, and is probably what most people intend when they say Latin or Latino/a or Latinx. Hispano would be the Spanish word, but has never been a household word in the US. You can find some advocates of Hispanx, but I don't expect it to catch on.

The biggest problem IMO with Latinx is how to pronounce it. The letter X is not pronounced the same in Spanish as it is in English.

So this thread introduced me to the idea of "latinx" and now I wish I had never heard of it. What a ridiculous concept and a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

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.

Wokeness is a problem because it is an intentional distraction from the real problems.

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.

Interesting you mention Russia. The leadership of Russia spends a lot of time thinking about how to denigrate LGBTQ+ folks. Racism is alive and thriving in Russia. They even recently went through the trouble of decriminalizing first time domestic violence. Could you elaborate on why you think a trip to Russia would be useful to [eta:American] progressives?

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.

Indeed, there are only two positions available on any given issue and we are all compelled to pick one.

It's either intersectionality or Russia?

What about old liberal ideals?

Are you advocating a holiday in cambodia?

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.

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.

>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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

For your first question - equal to their share of the population. So blacks should be ~12% of all Harvard students, for example, as opposed to the current 6%.

To begin with, no reasonable person is saying there should be a completely even balance in proportions of race in any field, for exactly the reasons you point out. The problem is that in reality, certain "merit-based" programs such as workplaces or colleges don't also align with the racial demographics of the general public, and it's a discrepancy that should make you ask "why?".

The problem with a blind "merit-based" approach is that it doesn't make any attempt to understand why what we'd expect in a perfectly egalitarian world isn't what we see in reality. Studies on biological differences between race and gender show no or very small differences that can't fully explain these gaps. Other factors, such as a family's wealth, do show significant changes to the opportunities provided to a person during their lives. As it so happens, we can also see (from the US Census data you bring up) that there are wealth and income disparities between race.

And now we're hiring/accepting college students/etc. Of course we want to only hire qualified people, but a disproportionate number of people of certain races were not given the opportunity to get those skills already. So we're stuck in a cycle where the people most likely to succeed are the ones who are already in this cycle of success, often due to their parents having been given those opportunities as well. So in order to actually _meet_ the expectations of racial composition (because as mentioned earlier, perfectly egalitarian expectations would be close to the proportions in the general population), we simply can't turn a colorblind eye to people's race. Breaking the cycle requires attention to be paid to people's race. Merit ignores context.

The hard part about this is that it comes off as saying that you should treat people differently because of their race. And that's pretty much what it is. It would require some level of sacrifice by the privileged, at least temporarily, in order to bring everybody back to equal footing. And humans are not good with things that don't seem fair.

On a different note regarding gender, there is not particularly strong evidence backing the argument that women simply "naturally gravitate towards other kind of work". Studies have shown some psychological differences in preferences of the kind of work, but it doesn't not explain the disparity we see in STEM as a whole. Of course, there are not the same multi-generational explanatory powers behind gender as there are for race, but there are other factors, largely rooted in the ideas that there are both explicit and implicit societal expectations for women that lead them towards other kinds of careers.

> If success to them looks like an equal number of white/black/asian/women it's an unreachable goal

It's not the goal. You've created a strawman and wasted your own time fighting it.

> In my mind it's equality of opportunity. I don't care what color your skin is

That doesn't magically erase that they grew in up in a racist society that does care what color their skin is.

It's insulting to many people of color to hear "I don't care what color your skin is". An appropriate and honest response from a person of color might be "Must be nice. I wouldn't know what that's like because I never had the privilage of not caring what color my skin is". Probably not the great start you were hoping for.

It sounds like you want imagine the starting line was in the same place for every person who arrives to you as a candidate. When in fact some people got to you with a head start. Ignoring the starting line does the opposite of creating equality of opportunity. But ignoring the starting line is far simpler. And even useful for those who benefit from maintaining the status quo.

The best candidate for the work might just be the person who arrives less qualified and slightly behind the winner. Someone who started from far behind and almost caught up. If racism exists outside your interview, then equal opportunity at your interview must take into consideration that someone's race might have put up many obstacles on the long journey that got them to your interview.

Let's do a thought experiment. You're in a room with 57 white people and 12 black people. Those are the numbers you used. 10% of people in the room are racist. Every racist in the room gets to insult every person of the other race one time. Do the math. How many times is each white person insulted? How many times is each black person insulted? Is there "equality of opportunity" for everyone to leave that room and head to a job interview with the same level of self esteem? Multiple that by a lifetime.

If US demographics were in fact 50% white, 50% black, it would make things far easier to understand. Living in a society where race matters and you are hugely outnumbered is something the majority will always have great difficulting in relating to.

By not caring what someone's skin color is, you're passing over candidates who worked far harder to get where they are compared to someone who had fewer obstacles. Of course not every obstacle in life comes from race and some people of color may have even experienced a life of privilage.

So let's take a deaf candidate applying to your job. Like skin color, it's not something they chose nor something they can change. It very likey created obstacles for them in life that you never experienced. Would you treat them the same as non-deaf candidates? Speak to them with your back turned perhaps? Or would you adapt to who they really are?

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.

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.

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.

> 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?

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.

Was wondering that myself? Maybe it focuses exclusively on European art? (I don’t actually know this… speculating)

I really think this kind of content is probably bad for hackernews discourse and should be flagged.

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.

Yes, deplatforming is the way to go.

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.

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?

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 for more info

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.

http://web.archive.org/web/20210904034230/https://www.econom...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Referenced in the article

https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-vivek-ramaswamy-put-wokeism...

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.

Doesn't everything jump from the elite schools to everyday life?

I noticed that when I click the thumbs-up emoji in Slack, I now have to select its skin color. That's fucking dystopian.

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.

Sorry honest question: why is that dystopian? Also :+1: gives me the usual yellowish emoji.

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

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.

More importantly, when did American culture war nonsense infect The Economist?

Do they really have a regular 'illiberal left' column these days?

> 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.

The philosophy of the Economist magazine could be defined as liberalism. So they're probably hyper sensitive anti liberal ideas.

Honestly everyday people aren't becoming woke - when they actually find out about it, they get majorly pissed off and angry.

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.

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.

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

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.

One can only hope the free market will take care of those companies (ie they implement woke policies and become bankrupt)

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.

> Many Millennials [hold] very anti-capitalist and anti-billionaire views

Same thing happened in the 60s. There's lots of older "capitalist hippies" now.

Is the ultimate woke state to not care at all about being woke?

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.

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.

It could be motivated demoralization and subversion.

Former KGB agent Yuri explains:

https://youtu.be/IQPsKvG6WMI?t=55

wow, hard political stances through comments straight into 'hackers' community :) I guess politics eats everything

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

>> don't want you to lose your job because you don't agree with me.

But lots of people want that power. It is within living memory that people could be fired or denied employment based on thier religion. Many today still want thier religion beliefs to be enforced against believers and non-believers alike (abortion, education, marriage, adoption, right to die etc). Not every person of faith is so liberal about the affairs of others. Many call for a return to a past where religious "values" were enforced by the state at the point of a sword.

Under the woke philosophy the criterion for deserving forgiveness still exists but is changed. In classical Christian philosophy, forgiveness requires contrition whereas under woke philosophy forgiveness requires powerlessness.

This is often misinterpreted as an absence of forgiveness because no amount of contrition seems to abate the condemnation.

The practice of Christianity is primarily about repentance. We none of us have full control over our behaviour but we always have the ability to correct our hearts by swallowing our pride and accepting divine forgiveness. And we are obliged to forgive others who have repented.

Wokeness doesn't understand this. It sees people, woke and Christians both, as hypocrites. And we are! This is because it's necessary to advocate ideal moral standards, even the ones we ourselves are incapable of meeting.

However, if someone posts 'hate speech' somewhere this will always be held against them by the woke. So, yes, wokeness does not forgive. There is no mercy.

> 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.

Perhaps that's true. But too many of your fellow faithful do, or at least, want to. Just look at Texas and their recent abortion law for one of many egregious and current examples of "good christians" spreading the "good word".

The ruthlessness is born of centuries of persecution, belittlement, prejudice, and hate. This does not make it justified, but it is a natural consequence of the masses and the natural swing of the social pendulum.

I suspect you very much do understand, but just wish it weren't true, just as the woke and the progressive overlook their own overreach, hate, prejudice and hypocrisies in their plight to right perceived wrongs and pursue some balance of equality and opportunity.

In order to achieve peace and understanding, we must hold ourselves responsible, and our own accountable, and that starts with not being ignorant (willful or otherwise) to the misdeeds of those in each of our own tribes.

Where is there mercy and grace in being unwilling to make an effort to show the utterly minimal respect of e.g. addressing them how they prefer?

There's a ruthlessness to it in large part because of a recognition from many that asking nicely has been met with immense vitriol, anger, even violence in some cases. At some point you stop asking and start demanding.

See also Karl Poppers paradox of tolerance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

What are some concrete examples of the ruthlessness you mention?

More than a few people that identify as Christian are more than willing to ban abortion, as an example. They could care less about what anyone “believes” but will gladly force others to live as they want. How is that any less ruthless than someone losing their job because they went on a racist tirade and let it end up on Instagram?

Lgtbq+ have a long history of not even being allowed to acknowledge their nature for fear of violence, actual violence. Losing a job due to anti-lgtbq+ views that are expressed and recorded, and nobody forces anybody to express their opinions, just doesn’t seem ruthless in comparison.

I get it that it sends a chilling to those that share those particular ideals but it’s not like they are trying to have civil discourse either.

You say "you" don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what you believe. Are you fighting against the people you voted for passing those laws? Are you willing to vote the other side given evidence that the current group is passing un-Christian laws? If you aren't speaking up for others, then you are complicit in these things you "don't want".

I'm sure many may have heard this quote before:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

The back story of Niemöller is quite interesting. He was a Christian pastor who heard the general message and agreed with the goals of making a better German and having individuals give up some freedoms to make a better country. However, after a meeting with Hitler, some things became very clear. 1) He was being spied on and his phone was tapped (remember, he was pro-Nazi and preaching as such) 2) Hitler didn't care about making Germany better, he just wanted complete and total control over everyone and everything. After this meeting, he saw the man behind the curtain and started preaching against the Nazis and was shortly after locked in the camps. The quote from above was from after the war. He spent the rest of his life recounting how he had failed to life up to his beliefs. Writing and speaking about (essentially) the slippery slope of in-action so others wouldn't end up making the same mistakes he did the next time evil returns. Too many people would rather not do this critical thinking on their own, instead just believing and trusting in others who are "right".

Wokeness is not unique in having people like that. As with any group of significance, there's some included that actively weaponize it. And also many people are new to it. I experienced this first-hand when I was introduces to something that was new and exciting to me, that suddenly everything I did was about that thing, and that I was doing everything to further my experience with it. I feel like some people do that with wokeness too, pushing it as far as they can with this momentum. Which is experienced as ruthlessness from the outside.

Probably one of the reasons Western Europe diverges from the US, despite the academic scene being similar and even more entrenched, is that the conservative bogeyman in Europe was smaller.

Do you not think there is a difference between 'you should follow my religion' and e.g. 'you should use neutral pronouns to make other people more comfortable?' The later isn't about some fundamental belief, it's really just an extension of a concept that has existed for thousands of years -- politeness

This is a perspective I had not even considered and that is why I am glad I came to HN to learn.

> I don't want to introduce laws to force you to believe what I believe

20th century America has spent years doing exactly this. It's still ongoing in Texas right at the minute. People have been fired for being atheist. Children are send to indoctrination camps for "gay conversion therapy" if they are suspected of homosexuality, a practice which leads some of them to commit suicide.

Rein in your fellow Christians and things might calm down.

Is there an example you have in mind? That is, an example of a dissenting view point being treated ruthlessly?

Wokeness is essentially a New England Puritan movement with some minor modifications. Even the sources (Ivy Leagues) are the same. If you view it through this lens, the lack of tolerance and crusader zeal becomes very apparent. It is perhaps the exact opposite of libertarianism.

Edit: some Puritan libertarians do not like this comment :)

Identity politics is a Marxist revolutionary movement. As Lenin pointed out, in the Revolution, morality is subsumed in politics and Revolutionary violence is not actual violence, or rather, it is not immoral. The is no mercy to be shown to anyone who obstructs the Revolution. Phase I of the Revolution is to destroy the values of the "oppressive" preexisting order. Phase II is the realization of the promised Utopia, which of course never happens. We are in the logically necessary nadir of nihilism where no values can claim universality. This could be considered the antithesis of Christianity. The woke are the intellectual vanguard of the Revolution when they are self-conscious of their historical role. Most are simply unwitting foot soldiers pushing this revolution forward like ants, without understanding. Many are simply aspirational elites playing the power game for petty stakes. Some are true believers. If you want to understand what the world looks like when morality is subsumed under politics, consider the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, for which that was a defining feature. The woke are playing a dangerous game, supported by the ruling elites who are thinking they can control this. Are they right? We'll see. There were plenty of elites who thought they could control the revolutionary forces they were harnessing to gain or keep power.

> There seems to me to be a ruthlessness to wokeness which I don't understand.

What part of “wokeness” are you talking about specifically?

I think that there is a hidden assumption, in wokeness. It isn't explicitly stated but it is strongly implied.

That assumption : The WOKE IDEOLOGY is realer than reality. That is to say, it comprises the primary reality and all else (time, space, dogs, cats...) Is secondary.

Thus reality is what we agree it to be. A side-effect of authority, consensus and conversation. If we agree that I am a frog then I am literally a frog.

And it follows that the greatest perversion is to contradict that ideology.

No doubt there are historical examples of something similar.

Where's the mercy and grace in allowing people to engage in terrible behavior without consequences? The ruthlessness was in tolerating serial predatory behavior, and people are finally tired of it.

You can't be seriously using Christians, of all people, as an example of people who don't try to force their views on others.

If your argument is that many don't, well I'd argue the "woke" people you're thinking of are just like the evangelical Christians who are not practicing what they preach.

> Where is mercy and grace in the midst of wokeness?

Friend, to be frank, I don't see any way that beliefs in providence and deferred reward can even begin to explain economics. (And I daresay this is by intent.)

Consider this definition from the article:

> injustice will persist until systems of language and privilege are dismantled

From a clear reading of history and world events, you can see that terrible wrongs have been mercilessly committed for profit. Today, if it is hard to discuss these problems, it is in part because the topics have been so well buried, and honest discourse is a forgotten social principle, replaced by social media.

There is a significant difference in that woke, like SJW, is for the most part a derogatory term. It would be as if the word "christian" was a word created by athiests specifically to refer to those who did not practice what they preached. Any discussion of the merits of "wokeness" is approaching the subject in a biased and unproductive way.

I would suggest that those you would describe as woke have, on average, just as much belief in the importance of mercy and grace as you do, and would likely believe they have more. The difference is who is seen as worthy of that grace and mercy. Is it grace to allow someone who has made unwanted sexual advances in the workplace a second chance? Or is it mercy to those who were victimized to remove the problem? Obviously this is a crude and simplified example, as examples often are, but it illustrates the point.

the economist is dogwhistling again

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

That seems to be a highly reductive concept you're using for "elite", basically meaning "people you imagine who you don't agree with". What constitutes "elite", to you?

How about the row after row of suburban homes in Livermore with BLM signs? Those are all median income neighborhoods, but I'm guessing you'd call them "elite"?

How about an expensive golf club in Little Rock filled with upper income, mostly white, mostly male players working the local social environment? Not "elite", I'm guessing?

I'll note that the linked article doesn't engage in this kind of tribalism or reductionism, and is actually pretty clear about what it means by things like "woke". That's something you added to the discussion, and I don't think it works well.

Is ‘Jordan Peterson-ism’ a reaction to wokeness?

twitter. there is really nothing else to say

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.

simple: the elite schools trained the people who went on to take the propaganda positions in government, media, and secondary schools.

> 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”.

The Economist, as a matter of principle, does not specify authors.

(As a matter of principle, I ignore The Economist in turn.)

How did garbage pop psychology jump from talk radio to what used to be a magazine about Economics?

Fwiw they consider themselves a weekly newspaper, not a magazine. It's been more than a century since they were focused on economics.

I like how after yesterdays Texas law, it is woke that is a threat to freedom.

How did fundamentalism jumped to real life?

> 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.

This is not news in that sense though. This article is from Economist weekly examining “Illeberal left”.

What’s this got to do with Abortion law that Texas passed?

We can talk about X without diverting the conversation to Y - which deserves its own discussion.

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.

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.

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).

Elite schools produce the managerial elite. It takes the culture in academia five years to flow to wider society.

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.

"Wokeness" is not jumping. The idea that everyone, even traditionally protected classes, should be held responsible for their actions is spreading.

"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.

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,"

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.

I'm saddened that "intellectual dark web" stuff has purchase here. But then again SV is where it metastasized.

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

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.

>>>I think sorting and discriminating on IQ is the only way to build some form of cohesive society.

IQ, and for other men, testosterone levels.

John / IQ140 / 300ng/dl: <--- can probably ignore his "dating advice" despite his intellect, but listen to his opinion on webdev frameworks.

Peter / IQ90 / 300ng/dl: <--- Just block him the instant he justifies his OnlyFans subscriptions, or why he thinks Windows 10 is the greatest OS ever.

Tyrone / IQ105 / 1100ng/dl: <--- Take detailed notes when he explains how to get Instagram models to pay you, after seducing them in a grocery store. Disregard his opinion on global military strategy.

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-mea...

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.

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.

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.

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