Is The “Woke” Belief System Racist?

Why My Analysis Says Yes, Plus A “Woke” Definition And Brief History

The other day, while at a restaurant with friends, I mentioned the book I’m writing about how concepts like queer theory are subtly but profoundly changing society for the worse. I used the term “woke.” Most people recognize that as a catchall label for a certain set of beliefs that label everyone either an oppressor or a member of the oppressed.

But one fellow insisted that that was wrong. “Woke” only meant awakened to the problems of the world, he insisted.

I’ve heard and read that claim countless times. And I’ve answered it countless times in a similar way: if that were actually what people meant by “woke” almost no one would have a problem with it.

But he maintained:

A) being woke merely means being aware of injustice;

B) no one who criticizes “woke” can even define what they mean by the term.

So, let me dispense with this for once and for all. The next time someone argues A and/or B, I will simply provide a link to this post. I’ll begin with B, a definition:

Wokeism is an identity-based belief system, camouflaged as a social justice movement. According to adherents, racial and gender identity determines an individual’s character and status; it also informs other believers about how the person is to be treated.

If wokeism is a belief system, what are the key beliefs? Here are the main ones I’ve observed the most committed woke adherents I’ve met treating as unassailable truths:

·      Everyone, by virtue of skin color and gender identity exists somewhere on the oppressed/oppressor hierarchy. There is no off-ramp. You are one or the other.

·      If your skin color or gender expression pegs you as an oppressor, your individual behavior and life experiences have no bearing on how you’re identified. A privileged oppressor is who you are and what you are (even, according to some woke people I’ve heard from, if you’re homeless and living under a tarp). You might be able to temper some of the worst aspects of your essential nature, but since it is your nature, complete salvation is impossible.

·      If, however, you are presumed, due to skin color, gender identity, or both, to be among the oppressed, your individual behavior and “lived experience” are all that matter. You get to identify yourself as you choose. Your interpretation of your own behavior is the correct one. And anyone who says otherwise is a bigot.

·      If you’re an oppressor identity, you need to watch what you say and how you say it because it is often experienced by oppressed identities as violence. You can cause harm, even if you’re just commenting on the weather. Sometimes, your very presence is enough to inflict harm. It’s best if you sit down, shut up, and listen.

·      If, however, you’re in an oppressed identity category, you can say whatever you like. Be as insulting or demeaning to oppressor category people as you choose. You, as a member of the oppressed, can never be a bigot or a racist, and your words can never hurt anyone. At worst, you’re a satirist.

·      None of the above is open to debate. If oppressor identity people question any of it, that shows that oppressors will always oppress, refusing to take responsibility for their despicable nature and ongoing victimization of the marginalized.

As you can see, one key belief underlies all the others: different rules should apply, depending on a person’s identity.

Members of the Ku Klux Klan would, of course, agree (which relates to the question in the title of this post). But the KKK has never claimed, as the woke do, that this is a progressive political position.

So, where did all this come from, and how did so many of us become persuaded that to be woke actually means committed to “social justice?”

What’s now the gender branch of the belief system, queer theory, was primarily inspired by Michel Foucault, a French philosopher. But the document that gave queer theory a foundation and a following was written by an American academic, Gayle Rubin in 1984,  the year Foucault died. Although today, it’s considered mostly to support transgenderism, the founding document of queer theory was actually much more about condoning transgressive sexual behavior than about gender identity. In addition to Foucault, Rubin liberally cited the work of Pat Califia who had argued against laws that restricted adults from having sex with children, and denounced laws that prohibited child porn.

Rubin’s document’s premise was that any legal restrictions on sex acts, of virtually any kind, were acts of oppression. That immediately invited masses of people who’d previously been considered perverts to take their places as virtuous members of the oppressed class.

Some of them—gays and lesbians—were indeed victims of a still strait-laced society at the time Rubin wrote it. But others (fetishists, sadists, pedophiles), who she also fervently defended in the document, were more likely to have victims than be victims.

Critical race theory, the other main branch of the woke ideology, developed from the ideas of Derrick Bell (1930-2011), a Harvard law professor. 

Before taking his position at Harvard, Bell had fought for civil rights as an attorney with the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), an offshoot of the NAACP, from the 1950s through 1966, and had won major cases.

Despite all the marches, the legislation, the court cases fought and won, he didn’t see as much progress as he’d hoped for.

So, beginning in the 1970s, Bell began to theorize that racism and its effects were permanent. And he accused  whites—all whites—of subverting real progress. White people, Bell theorized, only got behind civil rights for blacks when it somehow benefited whites.

Bell called this “interest convergence.” In 1991, he published a paper that articulated his viewpoint:

“Even those herculean efforts we hail as successful will produce no more than temporary ‘peaks of progress,’ short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance as racial patterns adapt in ways that maintain white dominance.”

But, despite progress being slow, things had been changing for decades. Incremental change might not look like much while it’s happening but gazing back at what was, versus what is today, profound change is evident. When Bell was working with the LDF in 1959, fifty-five percent of blacks lived in poverty. When he wrote the above, the poverty statistic for blacks had dropped to about thirty-three percent. Today, it’s seventeen percent, and falling comparatively rapidly. It’s impossible to say when we’ll erase racial economic disparities but we’re on that trajectory and have been for decades.

There are no more segregated lunch counters. No more legally segregated anything (although, ironically, proponents of CRT are demanding and getting newly segregated spaces by race). A simple check of all the differences in our society from one decade to the next proves Bell’s beliefs inaccurate. These are not “short-lived victories that slide into irrelevance.” This has been and is our society’s path forward.

Apparently recognizing that there was more to inequality than being black, Kimberlé Crenshaw, another academic and legal scholar, came up with the concept of intersectionality. And intersectionality is probably most responsible for weaving the presumed eternally oppressed classes defined by queer theory and CRT together.

Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory, written in 1989, initially noted that black women could face double discrimination, due to both skin color and sex. Soon, intersectionality was expanded to include other identities that faced discrimination. The more of those extra “identities” someone had, the more oppressed they were presumed to be: disabled, gay, trans, obese, non-Christian, immigrant. And 35 years ago, when she published the concept, that was probably an accurate snapshot.

But, again, society has changed and is continuing to change. The way intersectionality is applied today assumes that nothing has changed. Nothing could. And nothing ever would. The presumed-oppressed by identity are considered permanently oppressed, even if everything about their circumstances is more positive than the circumstances of the average presumed-oppressor identity person.

Whatever an individual might have gained over time in an increasingly open-minded society in economic status or rights is dismissed. Grievance is a permanent feature of identity. The woke actively search for justification for their insistence on being aggrieved, whether on their own behalf or, if they’re presumed-oppressor identity people (which they quite often are), on behalf of those whose aggrieved status they prop up.

It’s peculiar that this is happening today, when society is more tolerant than it’s ever been, but there it is.

Of course, we are never going to see everyone as equal in every way (what the woke call “equity”). Humans being human, we will always judge one another, and we will often do it unfairly.

And we’ll be judged unfairly by other humans in return.

What we can strive for, and in theory already have, is equality of opportunity: a system where merit overcomes ordinary human prejudices in work and educational situations; where housing and public accommodations must follow the same rules for all; and where there are legal remedies when someone breaks these rules.

An interesting aside: although Crenshaw couldn’t have predicted it, intersectionality helps drives the trans craze among woke-indoctrinated kids who have been shamed by their “oppressor” identities. Claiming to be trans is a quick way, and really, one of the only ways a kid who believes she or he has a white oppressor identity can escape it. Adopt a presumed-oppressed identity. Problem solved.

Aside from the obvious (and obviously bigoted) error of assuming skin color or some other identity factor dictates an individual’s character, clinging to these concepts persuades people to ignore some very real problems of inequality that we face today that are different from those the country dealt with in the past.

Working people, whatever their perceived identities, have been losing economic ground for decades. Good jobs have disappeared as companies automated or moved production overseas. Wages have stagnated, relative to inflation, for everyone except the highest earners (whose wealth has skyrocketed). Rents have risen dramatically. In most places in the country, inequality is no longer a black or white matter. Inequality in the United States is at least as much about economic class as about identity.

As of 2024, about thirty-eight million people in the US were living in poverty. Almost eighteen million of those below the poverty line are white. In raw numbers, that’s the largest poverty-stricken group—about forty-four percent of the total. We often hear that a greater percentage of blacks and Hispanics live in poverty. That’s true. But when you look at the raw numbers, the typical American living in poverty is white. The fact that the highest earners are also typically white doesn’t do a thing for all the whites barely scraping by.

No matter the “identity,” those with money worries in this nation have more in common with each other than they do with the ultra-wealthy ones who are running things. And I’ve often wondered whether certain economic elites are happy to drive the woke narrative.

As long as economic have-nots snipe at each other, we’ll be too busy to turn our attention to those hoarding all the wealth.