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Comment by kerneloftruth | Hacker News Reader

I keep hoping that we reach and pass Peak Woke, but I think we're still not there. Journalism (capital J) has been thoroughly damaged by it, as is evident in so many magazines, newspapers, sites, channels, etc.

I'm optimistic that there will be a renaissance of objective Journalism, and eager for it to happen.

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There has to be a downside to wokeness for it to peak and decline. For some employers, this is starting to happen as the downsides become apparent but for most who kneel at the altar of wokeness, it's almost all upside for them. Society as a whole turning against it or widespread violent blowback are probably the only things that could change this anytime soon. Doubt either happens, though sporadic violence already seems to be taking place.

For many employers wokeness is a legal requirement. If they don't make all the right noises suddenly they get sued for "hostile workplace environment" and have to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars. This happened to Tesla a few months ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/05/tesla-must-pay-137-million-t...

> colleagues used epithets to denigrate him and other Black workers, told him to “go back to Africa” and left racist graffiti in the restrooms and a racist drawing in his workspace.

This sounds like plain racism, nothing to do with wokeness.

I skimmed the article, and I can't tell if he was able to prove that they actually said those things (like a recording or email or corroborating witnesses). Otherwise I will go on a limb and say this person 100% made it up...because "wokeness".

Also:

"[...] three other witnesses (all non-Tesla contract employees) testified at trial that they regularly heard racial slurs (including the n-word) on the Fremont factory floor [...] they also agreed that most of the time they thought the language was used in a ‘friendly’ manner and usually by African-American colleagues."

Sounds like black-people making the workplace non-White friendly. Didn't see anybody sueing because of that...because lets be honest, "wokeness" is racist against white people.

> evidenceless conspiracy theory that black people are plotting against you

Literally anything to protect daddy musk from criticism.

The conspiracy is not "black people plotting against daddy musk," its "sleazy trial lawyers plotting to get 100 million dollar payouts." Which is a tale as old as time

Obviously no one should be harassed at their workplace. However, the wokeness here is manifested in the $130 million the California jury has awarded. Even the infamously excessive "hot coffee lawsuit" [1] looks unimpressive compared to this.

I'm sure many of us would already be retired if we could claim even a fraction of that for every time we are treated poorly.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald's_Restaura...

Big companies need big judgments to care. The point isn't simply to make the one victim whole, but to make the consequences so fearsome that the company decides that a second time must not happen and changes its internal practices.

Otherwise you have the famous Fight Club recall formula.

We won’t sadly, “post peak woke” will be a current re-writing of history to fit whatever woke ideology is fashionable (MiniTrue style).

If it can't be escaped does that mean it was always here?

It or similar ideologies. For example religion played a similar role. Now that people are more secular, many have adopted social justice as a new kind of religion.

We've been in the woke phase for 30 years now. I don't think it's going anywhere, at least as long as Western culture remains dominant.

"Journalism (capital J)" was always trash. "Objective" journalism is just a euphemism for institutional journalism, which has always served the interests of the powerful. Now that the institutions of power have shifted from projecting white/male-supremacist nationalist Christian conservatism to pure predatory neoliberalism, a lot of people who thought that the newspapers were noble carriers of the light of truth are shook.

There's nothing that the networked financial scams that we refer to as first world economies love more than making the real issue irrational predjudice rather than anything material.

We'll pass peak woke after the white male backlash results in serious consequences for already oppressed people. Then we'll get back to white male identity politics, and the papers won't be any more objective than they were before.

My favorite story about all this was that in 2016 MSNBC was so sure of Clinton's pending win that the new head was going to completely revamp the network editorial line in order to attack Clinton from the right. Instead, with the curse/blessing after the election of the Trump media gravy train continuing, they doubled down into what we see today. How do you attack Trump when you generally agree with him on policy? Wokeness and Russians, while periodically slipping in actual political objections, which consisted of objections to withdrawal from lucrative wars, not arming the Ukrainians, and tariffs.

Wokeness is a PR strategy. A summer of marching in the streets, and the police are more funded than ever.

It is the way you put it which is troublesome. The key is that a single grand narrative never work as there are many beings, institutions, dynamics and unknowns in play. At any one time you may see a pattern. But that is superficial. Many in many with unknown is always in play. Single out any one aspect would lead to totalitarian even if you are libertarian.

Start with many and end with many. Not one. Not even you You will die one day and hence it is not just you or your belief.

Open your mind. And walks on.

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