The New Shame: Anti-Woke

I’m woke. I can say that because the word “woke,” like so many words these days, has no parameters, no definition. Those who believe in it believe there’s a definition, filled with fuzzy words of goodness and even fuzzier words of badness. After all, i’m against racism and sexism, even if those words, too, no longer have a cognizable meaning. But then, I’m for equality rather than equity, so maybe I’m not woke. Oh no, does that make me . . . anti-woke?

Anti-woke is the new characterization of people to be demonized. To the extent it means anything, it appears to be a play off Ibram Kendi’s anti-racist, which separates the world into two camps, those who adhere to critical race theory, believe everything is about race and that one either dedicates one’s life to fighting “systemic racism” or is a racist. You’re either with them or against them, and if you’re not with them, you’re racist.

It’s a trap, of course. If you believe in equality and hate racism, then you are likely to be subject to pressure when ten thousand random unduly passionate people attack you for any heretical expression that fails to conform to their ideology. So you are left with two choices, either say nothing to avoid the conflict or conform. There is no argument to be made that you’re not racist, but also not a believer in critical race theory and believe that if you try hard enough, racism answers everything. There is racism. Everything is not racism.

The problem is that by being anti-woke, meaning that you are unwilling to subjugate your beliefs, or at least say nothing to upset the angry children of all ages, you give comfort to the enemy.

I'm not anti woke.
I'm not anti-anti-racist.

I'm an individualist. I'm a universalist. I believe in the principle of equality under the law. I don't believe vigorously defending these values is done at anyone's expense. Period.

If you don't get that, you do not *understand*. https://t.co/YcAWSS9lvi

— Kmele (@kmele) February 3, 2021

Kmele Foster is a black guy. Like Thomas Chatterton Williams, John McWhorter and others, Foster is also smart, thoughtful and independent, unwilling to follow the orthodoxy. This, apparently, makes him an “anti-wokeness warrior,” which involves another trick of adding “warrior” to the back end of a word to trade off the social justice warrior meme. Is he? Of course and of course not, since the words are meaningless and thus subject to the millions of interpretations which every individual who uses it believes to be conclusively correct, even if every other usage means something different.

There are racists. There are white supremacists who believe that people of other races, ethnicities or religions are inferior human beings. Clearly, Foster is not such a person. Quite the opposite.

Make no mistake. The belief that students of a particular race, cannot or should not, be held to the same standard as their classmates is objectively racist.

Motives aren't irrelevant. Obviously some context omitted. But this is outrageous + toxic in nearly any imaginable frame. https://t.co/2cVWuL4AFZ

— Kmele (@kmele) February 3, 2021

Allison Collins is a member of the San Francisco Board of Education, the one that removed the names of Washington and Lincoln, plus 42 others, from their schools because they were problematic. The Board that voted to ironically eliminate acronyms because they symbolize white supremacy. And here, she minces no words: merit is racist. Foster replies that presuming black students can’t success in a merit-based system is racist.

Who’s woke?

For quite a while now, I’ve drawn the distinction between liberalism, the support of equality, freedom and civil rights for all, from the ideology of progressives, identitarianism, cancellation, equity and prohibiting freedom when it’s “wrong,” when it allows words and ideas that fail to adhere to its dogma. I’ve been properly chastised for using labels, although they are often a necessary shorthand for broader concepts, since they tend to be as meaningless as the other words thrown about these days.

And it’s true that as one tribe comes up with a weapon, it’s fairly swiftly adopted by the other, effectively making any effort to criticize it appear tribal in itself. Yes, the left and right are doing everything possible to cancel each other, and accusing the other of cancellation when it serves their ends. Even for those who raise the argument, they will be castigated as a hypocrite by hypocrites if they fail to come out in strident support of every complaint of a tribe.

Whether this new smear of being “anti-woke” gains traction is unclear. The purpose may be to demonize non-believers as white supremacists, perhaps as defined by the Frisco BOE, which puts one in the pretty good company of George Washington and Abe Lincoln, not to mention acronyms like the ACLU and the NAACP, but if it means that you get to hang out with guys like Foster, I’m good with that. He seems like a pretty cool guy.

More seriously, I am anti-woke if that means that I reject the illiberalism of silencing speech because it expresses ideas that some complain hurts theirs or someone else’s feelings. I am anti-woke if it means that we don’t divvy up opportunity based on race, sex, victim points, to the exclusion of anyone based on irrelevant characteristics. And I am definitely anti-woke if it means I can disagree with the great many simplistic “reforms” being promoted that will be ineffective, doomed to fail and counterproductive.

And before anyone accuses me of being right wing, or worse, I am anti-woke because I am liberal and believe in equality, freedom and civil rights. People like me didn’t spend the last 50 years fighting for equality just so we could trade one racism for another, one sexism for another and invent a new laundry list of grievances to justify the delusion that we’re the good guys doing the same things as the bad guys, but with good intentions.

At the top, I declare “I’m woke,” because anyone can claim to be anything they want. And if woke means aware of and sensitive to the problems caused by racism and sexism, I am woke indeed. Just not your kind of woke, because, like Kmele Foster, I refuse to indulge in your racism and sexism and whatever phobias you want to heap on top when they’re nonsense. If someone calls you anti-woke, maybe they’re paying you a compliment by saying you’re not a blind adherent of the orthodoxy. If it makes you feel better, you will eventually end up being sacrificed to the woke gods no matter what.