>… in the past decade, a form of wokeness has arisen on the illiberal left which is characterised by extreme pessimism about America and its capacity to make progress, especially on race. According to this view, all the country’s problems are systemic or structural, and the solutions to them are illiberal, including censorship and positive discrimination by race. This wokeness defines people as members of groups in a rigid hierarchy of victims and oppressors. Like the Puritans of old, adherents focus less on workable ideas for reducing discrimination than on publicly rooting out sinful attitudes in themselves and others (especially others).
>…The lesson is not that wokeness is over, still less that it achieved nothing good. The cycle of overreaction and counter-reaction can lead to progress. Companies still care about diversity; universities still disdain hateful rhetoric. But as the left and their critics on the right score points off each other, the fight increasingly feels stagey and artificial, like professional wrestling. The hope now is that race and sex will once again be discussed as questions of public policy, where compromise is possible, rather than of identity, where it is not.
No_Aesthetic on
Now we get to engage in new and exciting illiberal ideas like making the lives of trans people even worse! Yay
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>… in the past decade, a form of wokeness has arisen on the illiberal left which is characterised by extreme pessimism about America and its capacity to make progress, especially on race. According to this view, all the country’s problems are systemic or structural, and the solutions to them are illiberal, including censorship and positive discrimination by race. This wokeness defines people as members of groups in a rigid hierarchy of victims and oppressors. Like the Puritans of old, adherents focus less on workable ideas for reducing discrimination than on publicly rooting out sinful attitudes in themselves and others (especially others).
>…The lesson is not that wokeness is over, still less that it achieved nothing good. The cycle of overreaction and counter-reaction can lead to progress. Companies still care about diversity; universities still disdain hateful rhetoric. But as the left and their critics on the right score points off each other, the fight increasingly feels stagey and artificial, like professional wrestling. The hope now is that race and sex will once again be discussed as questions of public policy, where compromise is possible, rather than of identity, where it is not.
Now we get to engage in new and exciting illiberal ideas like making the lives of trans people even worse! Yay