Stop pretending you don't know what wokeness is

Abstruse definitions are not necessary for a phenomena we can feel in every arena of society

I saw this recent tweet the other day of someone giving their answer to the question, “What is wokeness?” I guess the brouhaha which popped up a few months ago when Bethany Mandel flubbed her answer is still going on. Like so many other attempts, it’s overly abstract and not very clarifying.

A lot of ink has been spilled attempting to define wokeness (for instance, here, here, here, and here), but as helpful as some of those articles might be, I think treating the question seriously is a mistake. The very question is a deceptive distraction. Even if we struggle to give a precise definition of it, we all know very well what is being referred to. The reason woke defenders are asking their critics to define wokeness is not because they don’t know what it means, but because it allows them to avoid addressing how much we all constantly feel wokeness impacting our lives. Having to abstractly define it avoids getting into specifics.

To explain what wokeness is, I think a more constructive approach is to simply point to the myriad new cultural norms and attitudes that every one of us have felt being imposed upon us the past few years. 

Wokeness is the language police constantly coming up with new words we shouldn't say. Wokeness is replacing equality of opportunity with equality of outcomes. Wokeness is not allowing a white person to write/voice a non-white character, while at the same time celebrating white historical characters in film/TV being played by black actors. It's requiring diversity statements in job applications. It's trigger warnings. It's lowering academic and professional standards so that more POC are granted entrance. It's racial affinity groups. It's "white privilege" discourse. It's claims of "being unsafe" when hearing ideas you disagree with. It's DEI policies increasing the salience of race in society. It's crying about cultural appropriation. It's being tarred as transphobic for asking reasonable questions about trans policies. It's criminal justice reform that cares more about criminals than victims. It's the demand that the phrase "her penis" be accepted as normal. It's blaming anything that blacks don't perform well on as "white supremacy". It's the concerted attacks on merit. It's fostering racial resentment under the duplicitous guise of 'anti-racism'. It's requiring books to be screened by sensitivity readers. It's the elimination of the SATs for college applications. It's the ideological capture of so many once trusted institutions. It's CRT. It's abandoning principles of free speech so as not to cause offense. It's getting rid of honors classes because of racial disparities. It’s the effort to erase every figure from the past because they don’t meet the standards of today. It's corporations virtue signaling their support for gender ideology. It's basing policy on identity characteristics instead of principles like merit and fairness. It's The 1619 Project worldview of America being irredeemably evil. It’s promoting gender ideology in pre-K. It's sports leagues letting males compete against females. It's blaming all disparities on bias or prejudice or 'systemic racism'. It’s the revising of beloved classic books. It's institutions insisting their employees declare their pronouns. It’s tv shows and movies substituting entertainment with moralizing. It's the demonization of male heterosexual desire. It's the efforts to "decolonize" and "queer" educational curricula. It’s the casual normalization of anti-white rhetoric. It's giving preferential treatment based on skin color. It's institutions and the media using the terms "pregnant people and "cervix havers" instead of "women". It’s once revered science outlets telling us sex isn’t binary.

Does that answer the question?