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How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

economist.com

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Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#41

Post by [deleted] »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #35
spamizbad wrote: post #13

It didn't. It lives entirely in elite society. If you aren't a member of an elite social strata it doesn't impact you and nobody gives a damn.

From the article: "What links these developments is a loose constellation of ideas that is changing the way that mostly white, educated, left-leaning Americans view the world." It's moved from academic circles to "regular" middle-to-upper-middle class society for sure. You can argue that they're "elite" in some respects, but at the same time you're looking at an "elite" 30-40% of the population compared to the single…

[deleted]

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#42

Post by newacct583 »

spamizbad wrote: post #13

It didn't. It lives entirely in elite society. If you aren't a member of an elite social strata it doesn't impact you and nobody gives a damn.

> It didn't. It lives entirely in elite society. If you aren't a member of an elite social strata it doesn't impact you and nobody gives a damn.

That seems to be a highly reductive concept you're using for "elite", basically meaning "people you imagine who you don't agree with". What constitutes "elite", to you?

How about the row after row of suburban homes in Livermore with BLM signs? Those are all median income neighborhoods, but I'm guessing you'd call them "elite"?

How about an expensive golf club in Little Rock filled with upper income, mostly white, mostly male players working the local social environment? Not "elite", I'm guessing?

I'll note that the linked article doesn't engage in this kind of tribalism or reductionism, and is actually pretty clear about what it means by things like "woke". That's something you added to the discussion, and I don't think it works well.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#43

Post by quotemstr »

serverholic wrote: post #38
quotemstr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now it's spread to the point that they feel the need to invent words like Latinx just in case a couple of latinos feel left out. It's worse than that: surveys of actual Hispanic people report support for the word "latinx" in the single-digit percentages. The word is solely about making the moral crusaders themselves feel holier. No actual social problem is solved by shoving this word into our lexicon.

Yep, which goes to show that it's not even about making things better for others.

Just another instance of a decade-long line of little examples of petty linguistic tyranny that don't solve any problems but that do make activists feel righteous and help them signal holiness to each other.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#44

Post by buu700 »

dragontamer wrote: post #26
chmod775 wrote: post #6

Fundamentally languages have been evolving in a reductive manner, which is why adding syllables to terms like in "Latino/Latina -> Latin-x -> Latinx+" won't last. People will quickly eschew these terms for things that are easier to pronounce. There's no malice in this - just a natural evolution of language towards efficiency. As such its an endless cycle: new stuff is introduced to everyday language then reduced to s…

People have been trying to change gender terms forever. It's nothing recent. I recall discussions about the use of the non gendered pronoun 'e' years ago. To replace she vs he.

I remember learning about Spivak pronouns from (I believe) reddit some time in the late 00s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun

As far as I'm aware, the motivation behind this had nothing to do with social justice for trans people, but more as a potential alternative to the awkward/ambiguous singular they. (Or at least that's how I would've interpreted it back then, having been a teenager with no real concept of or experience with LGBT issues.)

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#45

Post by belltaco »

rvz wrote: post #9

Well given that they have to redefine terms under new names and to create a newspeak for all of this, it was not long until it had spread unchallenged from the social-sciences classrooms in universities to the workplace and we now see rejected concepts that were left in the past to later resurface under a redefinition under newspeak. A great way to confuse the general public and push an agenda to create a culture of…

>A great way to confuse the general public and push an agenda to create a culture of silencing anyone opposed to view points someone disagrees with.

Can you give me some examples of the viewpoints you're referring to here?

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#46

Post by newacct583 »

babyshake wrote: post #28

It definitely seems as though specifying your preferred gender pronouns is no longer optional. This is required "in solidarity". Being an otherwise progressive person, I don't feel great about this and how quickly it happened.

Can you elaborate? Pronouns have never been "optional" for casual conversation. You're saying you now feel, I guess, compelled to declare them or something? Or are you mad that people expect you to use pronouns they want you to use? What's the beef here?

This kinda sounds like knee-jerk conservatism. It's different and new and forces you to learn new habits (true), and therefore it's bad and an erosion of civil society (false). This kind of skew has happened REPEATEDLY in society in the past, you just didn't notice.

To be glib: how many times have you used the word "negro" in the past year?

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#48

Post by enkid »

Barrin92 wrote: post #7

I'm glad that the Economist points out at the end that 'wokeness' has become a favorite of business, and the reason is pretty obvious, as a movement it's self-defeating because all identitarian politics eventually ends in infighting, with its subjective, choice and preference based worldview it's actually ill-equipped to move anything. It might exist in academia or PR departments or journalism or facebook pages and t…

Identitarian does not mean what you think it means. In fact, it's basically the exact opposite. I also have no idea what you mean when you say it has no ability to change anything. Are you talking about identity politics? Politics that specifically aim to better the position of people in certain subgroups? Because there are many political movements that have been wildly successful in doing that, women's suffrage, the US civil rights movement, universal male suffrage, the LGBTQ movement. There's a lot of politics based on group identity that has been successful.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#49

Post by pseudalopex »

serverholic wrote: post #10

I think this is the result of the gradual femininization of our culture. It started with the feminist/gender-studies types and slowly caught on. Not because people necessarily wanted to change, but cancel culture makes it so that you can't risk nonconforming. At first it was little things like switching to softer language and giving kids participation trophies so that they don't feel bad. Now it's spread to the point…

Hispanic people who felt left out invented Latinx. Other people thought they had a point.

Re: How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?

#50

Post by wumpus »

quotemstr wrote: post #43
serverholic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, which goes to show that it's not even about making things better for others.

Just another instance of a decade-long line of little examples of petty linguistic tyranny that don't solve any problems but that do make activists feel righteous and help them signal holiness to each other.

... like using Ms instead of Mrs. or Miss.

Tyranny! Blame the activists!

Oh, wait, we almost all use Ms. now.

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