Why Woke Organizations All Sound the Same | Hacker News Reader

Why Woke Organizations All Sound the Same

city-journal.org

30 pointsbarry-cotter10 comments

When I read "woke," I smell the culture wars. In this article, it is a pejorative.

I sat through a "subconscious bias" and "microaggressions" training at work, and it made me uncomfortable because I'm a white guy. The material didn't strike me as "woke," though, because I didn't notice any critical race theory. It was more like, "hey, look at these examples of people assuming a coworker fits a stereotype." There was also some "I bet you assume some things that are wrong," but the gloves were on in that section.

What does "woke" mean? Does it mean "you know what it means..."?

If you are worried about microagressions and subconscious biases then you are already hand-wringing about the wrong things. Being truthful, polite and hardworking are what matter, not specifically how you situate your legs on the bus or what pronouns you use in your shitty bio.

That seems a rather unnecessarily aggressive response

CRT doesn't necessarily mean woke, it is just one expression. The important part of woke is self-proclaimed experts that allegedly know how to discriminate in the correct way and attest themselves to be able to correct bias. A self-image of being enlightened is the best description. Does fit almost everyone in their teens, but in academia you should have grown out of it.

It is no accident they have difficulties with liberties and freedoms, especially regarding free speech. Because in the end they don't believe in their own ideas.

> Many employees will complain that they expect the firm to express their values, which includes holding seminars featuring “privilege walks” to reaffirm the firm’s commitment to ending white supremacy and other forms of domination.

I've heard of privilege walks for students in middle/high school where they're separated by race groups and those that are privileged are "pointed out" or walk in front of the others -- but has anyone here worked somewhere (as this article implies a focus on the workplace) where they've had to take this style of training?

This reminds me of the communists brainwashing with self-critic.

It basically is the same line of thought. Oppressor vs. oppressed. they might seem to hate white people because they are synonymous with oppressors (which already certifies an extremely reductive understanding of sociology and history). But for these proponents minorities that don't mirror these opinions are even worse.

Communism created two conflicting parties. The have and the have-nots and put them into classes. It is a reductive view of the world that lead to much death because people started to blame any form of failure on the respective other group.

Not saying the analysis of Marx aren't correct on a lot of things as are aligned authors. But any implementation has proved that the ideas have problems with dissent. Forced equality will become totalitarian every time.

Not "education" tries the same with white people and the others. Two completely reductive groups. I believe if you are decently intelligent and know the basics about group dynamics, you are just an asshole and certainly nobody that anyone should listen to.

And then there’s companies like Coinbase that buck the trend with astounding success. I think this has to do more with individuals than “organizations”. Simply put, everybody in the organization has nothing to gain and a lot to lose by doing anything different. I would conjecture that the phenomenon might be a barometer of innovation for the same reason.

On one hand, I agree that people are prone to magical reasoning. The invisible hand of the market would be one such quasi-religious belief. On the other hand, using 'woke' as a pejorative as the article does is troubling given that being woke is simply being aware of injustice and power imbalances. That's basically just understanding the world you live in - it's not a personal attack and if you think it is I suspect you need to think about why that may be.

Being woke is not simply that, though. At the risk of being pejorative, it involves being smug about possessing such awareness, and judgemental about others’ supposed lack of it. That smugness may be exuberant but innocent (e.g. teenagers), or it may be hostile (e.g. uni students seeking to de-platform people).

I agree that the article would have been better to steer clear of implied pejoratives.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com