Primarily based on the dialogue over quite a few posts on this sequence (starting right here) unpacking the arguments of Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have By no means Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, one may assume that al-Gharbi is hostile to woke concepts or woke values. However that may be a mistake, and would present that one has did not intently take note of his arguments.
The title of the guide itself ought to make this clear. The argument is that symbolic capitalists have did not be woke, not that wokeness as such is a failed thought. As I discussed in my preliminary submit on this sequence, the guide is a criticism of woke activism written by somebody who’s himself sympathetic to woke concepts. His criticism is that the activists have did not reside as much as the concepts—their conduct contradicts what wokeness would really suggest. As such, the strongest critique of woke activists is the precise content material of woke concepts:
Concepts related to wokeness can equally present us with instruments for difficult the order that has been established in its title. In lots of respects, that’s exactly the venture of this guide.
All through the guide, al-Gharbi finds that what woke progressives espouse and what they do are wildly out of sync with one another:
Over the course of this textual content, we’ve seen that the attitudes and inclinations related to “wokeness” are primarily embraced by symbolic capitalists. Wokeness doesn’t appear to be related to egalitarian behaviors in any significant sense. As an alternative, “social justice” discourse appears to be mobilized by modern elites to assist legitimize and obscure inequalities, to sign and reinforce their elite standing, or to tear down rivals – usually on the expense of those that are genuinely susceptible, marginalized, and deprived in society.
However this, by itself, doesn’t undermine the concepts the woke espouse. For instance, no libertarian would significantly assume that the arguments libertarians make towards lease management laws (each financial and ethical) are undercut by the truth that Robert Nozick as soon as invoked lease management laws to attempt to stop his landlord from rising his lease. Was this hypocritical of Nozick? Actually. Does it represent proof that arguments towards lease management are subsequently invalid? In fact not. This, too, is the case with woke concepts, as al-Gharbi factors out:
What, then, ought to we make of the ideologies and modes of study related to wokeness? Can they be helpful guides for understanding and discussing the social world? Or are they basically harmful, deceptive, or irredeemably corrupted? Is the principle challenge that symbolic capitalists are likely to leverage social justice discourse in unlucky methods? Or is it that symbolic capitalists have been led astray by wokeness into pursuing social justice in a counterproductive method? Put merely, is the issue wokeness or are we, ourselves, the issue?
Simply as physicists (to this point) lack a idea of the whole lot, social scientists, too lack a idea of the whole lot. As al-Gharbi factors out, “any theoretical strategy that elucidates some essential side of society will usually obscure different phenomena. It’ll deal with some issues properly and clarify different issues poorly.” That is simply as true with woke concepts. For instance, al-Gharbi describes the so-called “discursive flip” in social analysis. This concept emphasizes that how phrases are outlined isn’t one thing that emerges in a purely impartial approach from the ether. How issues are outlined can strongly stack the deck in favor of or towards sure concepts or teams—and this makes the definition of phrases a big energy battle. General, al-Gharbi notes, “This can be a real contribution to understanding the world.” Nonetheless, regardless that the thought is official, the woke prolong the idea properly past its usefulness:
That stated, right now many symbolic capitalists appear to attribute an excessive amount of energy to symbols, rhetoric, and illustration. Many assert, within the absence of sturdy empirical proof, that small slights may cause monumental (usually underspecified) hurt. Underneath the auspices of stopping these harms, they argue it’s official, even mandatory, to aggressively police different folks’s phrases, tone, physique language, and so forth. As we’ve seen, folks from nontraditional and underrepresented backgrounds are among the many most probably to seek out themselves silenced and sanctioned in these campaigns, each as a result of they’re much less prone to possess the cultural capital to say the “appropriate” issues within the “appropriate” methods on the “appropriate” time and since their deviance is perceived as particularly threatening (insofar as this heterodoxy undermines claims made by dominant elites ostensibly on behalf of traditionally marginalized and deprived teams).
This overextension additionally leads the woke to place an undue emphasis on “symbolic gestures in direction of antiracism, feminism, and so forth,” even though these efforts “change nearly nothing concerning the allocation of wealth or energy in society.” General, the deal with language, whereas official within the correct context, has been stretched to the purpose the place it turns into ineffective and even actively counterproductive:
Campaigns to sterilize language, as an illustration, won’t ever raise anybody out of poverty. Referring to homeless folks as “unsheltered people,” or prisoners as “justice-involved individuals,” or poor folks as “people of restricted means,” and so forth are discursive maneuvers that always obscure the brutal realities that others should confront of their day-to-day lives…
Extra broadly, gentrifying the discourse concerning the “wretched of the earth” doesn’t make their issues go away. If something, it renders elites extra complacent once we discuss concerning the plight of “these folks.” On this the empirical analysis is sort of clear: euphemisms render folks extra snug with immoral behaviors and unjust states of affairs. This is among the predominant causes we depend on euphemisms in any respect.
One other thought related to the woke is that of “intersectionality,” an concept that al-Gharbi says is “each essential and pretty uncontroversial: there are emergent results, interplay results, which can be larger than, or completely different from, the consequences of two phenomena studied independently.” Nonetheless, as al-Gharbi has pressured all through his guide, the best way this concept is invoked by the woke tends to be unrelated to, and even the other of, what the scholarship they cite really says. For instance, al-Gharbi describes how the woke cite the thought of intersectionality to “merely tally up their completely different types of perceived intersectional disadvantages as if they’ll merely be stacked on high of each other (e.g., ‘As a Latinx, bisexual, neurodivergent lady my perspective is extra legitimate, and my wants extra essential than yours — a white, cisgender, homosexual neurotypical man.’)”
That is precisely the kind of factor that the precise scholarship of intersectionalism says we will’t validly do. For instance, somebody may naively say “On condition that in America, with respect to revenue, whites do higher than Blacks, and natives do higher than immigrants, native whites should do higher than immigrant Blacks.” However intersectional idea tells us that this may be a fallacious inference—and that’s to the credit score of intersectionality, as a result of the conclusion can also be factually false. Immigrant Blacks really are likely to have considerably larger incomes than native-born whites. So, al-Gharbi says, intersectionality is a crucial perception regardless of how it’s misrepresented by the woke:
Nonetheless, the truth that many interact in these sorts of self-serving and facile analyses doesn’t imply intersectionality itself is incorrect or must be discarded. The important parts of the idea appear straightforwardly true and helpful for social evaluation.
One other helpful and true thought related to the woke is about how the impacts of previous racial discrimination can proceed even within the absence of present racial discrimination, because of how previous results will be perpetuated in present establishments:
On this identical interval, following the civil rights motion, prejudice-based discrimination in most job markets declined. Nonetheless, ability – and training – based mostly discrimination elevated dramatically, as did the returns on having the “appropriate” credentials and skills. As a result of training was (and continues to be) erratically distributed throughout racial traces, the sensible results of those new “meritocratic” types of reward and exclusion have been akin to overt racial discrimination in lots of respects. Therefore, racialized socioeconomic gaps persist, largely unchanged, whilst overtly bigoted attitudes and behaviors have grow to be far much less widespread and more and more taboo.
An issue, nevertheless, is that a lot of the “ability – and training – based mostly discrimination” paired with the heavy emphasis on credentials and certifications has itself been actively promoted and upheld by woke progressives. Thus, in apply, the methods the woke “attraction to ‘techniques,’ ‘buildings,’ and ‘establishments’ can function a method to mystify moderately than illuminate social processes. These frameworks will be, and often are, deployed by elites as a way to absolve them of accountability for social issues and to legitimize their inaction to handle these issues. They’re evoked in hand-wavy methods to keep away from stepping into specifics (as a result of the specifics are uncomfortable).” This mystifying (and unclarifying) approach the woke invoke concepts like “systemic racism” can also be mirrored in how they invoke “historic injustices” or “historical past” to explain present outcomes:
In a similar way, many modern symbolic capitalists evoke “historical past” as a chief trigger of up to date injustices. Nonetheless, “historical past” doesn’t do something. The tendency of many symbolic capitalists to research modern injustices in historic phrases usually obscures how and why sure parts of the previous proceed into the current. Discussing the persistence of race ideology, historian Barbara Fields defined, “Nothing handed down from the previous may preserve race alive if we didn’t continuously reinvent and re-ritualize it to suit our personal terrain. If race lives on right now, it may achieve this solely as a result of we proceed to create and re-create it in our social life, proceed to confirm it, and thus proceed to want a social vocabulary that can permit us to make sense, not of what our ancestors did then, however of what we ourselves select to do now.”
However, correctly understood, the concepts are themselves sound and value contemplating:
In the same vein, this chapter spent important time exploring how appeals to “systemic” or “institutionalized” racism or sexism are sometimes used to mystify social processes moderately than illuminate them. Nonetheless, the thought of systemic drawback appears straightforwardly appropriate: historic inequalities, paired with the methods techniques and establishments are organized within the current, can result in conditions the place sure folks face important disadvantages whereas others are strongly advantaged.
One other precious thought related to the woke is the thought of positionality—the concept our social place and id affect how we see and perceive the world. This, too, is a precious and helpful thought, al-Gharbi says. However there’s an issue right here, too: those that mostly evoke positionality fail to use the thought to themselves:
Taking positionality significantly ought to lead of us to interrogate the extent to which their very own ostensibly emancipatory politics (and particularly the homogeneity of those convictions inside a discipline) might undermine their means to grasp sure phenomena, make them ignore key views and inconvenient information within the pursuit of their most well-liked narratives and insurance policies, and drive them to pursue programs of motion that don’t, in reality, empower or serve the folks they’re purported to be empowering or serving, nor mirror others’ personal values and perceived pursuits. Certainly, taking these concepts to their logical endpoint ought to lead extra folks aligned with the Left to query the extent to which their very own “emancipatory politics” might, in reality, be a product of their very own elite place, and should primarily serve elite ends moderately than uplifting the genuinely marginalized and deprived.
General, a parallel is likely to be made with affirmation bias and its use in public discourse. I’ve no formal numbers right here, however my impression is that roughly each single time the thought of affirmation bias is invoked, it’s as an evidence for why these individuals are unable to see why my aspect is definitely appropriate about regardless of the challenge of the second is, and roughly zero level nothing p.c of the time it’s used as a chance to discover why my views is likely to be misinformed and what sort of essential insights I is likely to be overlooking. However this doesn’t invalidate the thought of affirmation bias itself! So, too, al-Gharbi says concerning the concepts related to wokeness:
The very fact so many as a substitute use these frameworks in nonreflexive methods—to strengthen their very own sense of ethical and mental superiority or affirm their prejudices about “these folks” who don’t profess, imagine, or really feel the “appropriate” issues—neither entails nor implies that these modes of study can’t be put to extra productive use.
And that’s al-Gharbi’s general message. His critique isn’t of wokeness per se, however of the behaviors of those that declare to be impressed by woke concepts. When he says “we’ve by no means been woke,” he doesn’t then go on to say “and a great factor too, as a result of these concepts are all horrible!” As an alternative, he sees that as an issue that must be fastened, as a result of behind all of it, there are precious concepts in wokeness that may make the world a greater place – and the truth that progressives have by no means been woke in apply is a failure of progressives, and never of woke concepts. As he sums it up,
To place it merely, the truth that symbolic capitalists have by no means been woke reveals so much about us. It says a lot much less, nevertheless, concerning the frameworks and concepts that we applicable (and sometimes deform) in our energy struggles.
This wraps up my abstract of al-Gharbi’s guide. Within the subsequent few posts, I’ll define what I agree with from his guide in addition to what I’ve realized, what I disagree with or the place I feel he missed the mark, after which summarize my general ideas.
As an Amazon Affiliate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases.
