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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?

#111
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly offensive. They're projecting how English works on gendered nouns onto other language (Spanish) and then getting worked up over it. It's astounding that the people pushing the term don't see the irony.

I have seen some concern about this issue in El Salvador. But "latinx"? Not once. It's unpronounceable in Spanish. You only see the letter X in indigenous place-names like Mexico or Oaxaca, and there it's pronounced kind of like a fricative version of our H, which can't work at the end of the word. I've heard native English speakers say it's pronounced "lah-TINKS", which is so obviously foreign it's painful. Two solu…

> But "latinx"? Not once. It's unpronounceable in Spanish. You only see the letter X in indigenous place-names like Mexico or Oaxaca, and there it's pronounced kind of like a fricative version of our H, which can't work at the end of the word. I've heard native English speakers say it's pronounced "lah-TINKS", which is so obviously foreign it's painful.

That's pretty ironic. I never made that connection, though I only have a basic familiarity with Spanish phonetics.

My understanding is that "latinx" is pretty much exclusively a performative English-speaking white liberal thing. It's not very pronounceable in English, either. I've never actually heard it spoken, but mentally I read it as "latin-ex." Personally, I don't think I'd ever even try to use "lah-TINKS," since I'd be afraid it'd be interpreted as an ethnic slur.

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

#113
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…

> It might exist in academia or PR departments or journalism or facebook pages and twitter threads but it does very little to affect material relations and power structures, so it's if anything the Left and not anyone else who should be concerned with it.

Are you sure? It feels like it has a much stronger influence, at least in Western Europe.

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

#114
post #25

See "concept creep" - https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-08154-001 Abstract: > Many of psychology's concepts have undergone semantic shifts in recent years. These conceptual changes follow a consistent trend. Concepts that refer to the negative aspects of human experience and behavior have expanded their meanings so that they now encompass a much broader range of phenomena than before. This expansion takes “horizont…

> This expansion takes “horizontal” and “vertical” forms: concepts extend outward to capture qualitatively new phenomena and downward to capture quantitatively less extreme phenomena.... Although conceptual change is inevitable and often well motivated, concept creep runs the risk of pathologizing everyday experience and encouraging a sense of virtuous but impotent victimhood. Also the dilution in the "downward" dire…

And in the meantime it creates injustices in the other direction, e.g. when Julian Assange is accused of "rape" which the public understands to mean a particular very serious thing, but Sweden uses a definition that encompasses much more than that very serious thing. Meanwhile a thousand articles are published containing his name and the word "rape" together in the headline.

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

#116
post #76

I like how after yesterdays Texas law, it is woke that is a threat to freedom. How did fundamentalism jumped to real life?

This is not news in that sense though. This article is from Economist weekly examining “Illeberal left”.

What’s this got to do with Abortion law that Texas passed?

We can talk about X without diverting the conversation to Y - which deserves its own discussion.

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

#117
post #65

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.

Id recommend getting outside of your social circle/geo a bit more. I’ve never once experienced this in Denver, and have only ever seen gender pronouns be a thing on linkedin.

My last job we were all highly encouraged by the CEO to add our preferred pronouns to our profiles. Just another reason I left.

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

#119

More weird is that Merican Wokeness is replacing *ness in other countries. Finnish has only one personal pronoun for all sexes, but Woke Finns add American Pronouns to their twitter pages.

Probably for the same reason that foot biding took off in China

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

#120
post #69
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…

I agree, and I'm concerned about the divide and conquer-type of impact it's having in societal discourse. This effect seems way too convenient (and beneficial) for the ruling class, and in that respect, I'm afraid academia may be inadvertantly working against the common interest of the working classes by pushing these worldviews.

You've nailed it. Analysis of social movements often doesn't take the intent of the ruling class into account nearly enough, and for good reason - part of their program is to deflect attention away from themselves and make it look organic.
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