Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 1001 posts

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

#141

Post by swarnie »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #135
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To an extent left and right are asymmetrical---leftist groups tend to be groups organized around being leftist as their main purpose, while "rightist" groups (churches, police unions, gun enthusiasts) tend to be rightist incidentally . Neo Nazis feel like the exception that proves the rule.

[flagged]

Maybe we need a new definition for these extreme groups? I've always found using left and right to describe authoritarian hellscapes to be a little off...

And to be honest I've always found using left and right when viewed from an American perspective to not work either. In my country the furthest "right" mainstream party would sit a mile to the left of your democrats while the republicans would be considered "extreme right" bordering on illegal.

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

#142

Post by 7952 »

noptd wrote: post #69
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…

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.

I think people have vastly different work situations and that helps drive the divide. "Woke" ideas are just not that intimidating if you trust your boss and have a sensible employer. Other places it could seem much more of a threat to you personally. This difference in experience is less explicit than in the past when workplaces were more political places. Management can act benevolent whilst subtly gaslighting their people.

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

#143

Post by nindalf »

biswaroop wrote: post #81
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #77

I noticed that when I click the thumbs-up emoji in Slack, I now have to select its skin color. That's fucking dystopian.

Sorry honest question: why is that dystopian? Also :+1: gives me the usual yellowish emoji.

Presumably because yellow should work for everyone. There will always be some people who are offended that a choice exists, even if they don’t plan to take it.

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

#144

Post by nix23 »

burntoutfire wrote: post #136
timonoko wrote: post #112

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.

People have adopted burgers, coca-cola, Hollywood movies etc. from The Current Dominant Culture, why wouldn't they parrot things like woke pronouns.

>The Current Dominant Culture

Haha, travel more buddy, the dominant culture is the country's own culture, not the one from the US.

You know, the US adapted Beer and Sushi too.

BTW: Movies, Games and "Social-media" is NOT Culture but cheap entertainment.

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

#145

Post by foxpurple »

biswaroop wrote: post #100
tazjin wrote: post #14

I recommend anyone who spends a lot of time thinking about this type of thing to take a break for a few months in a country that doesn't indulge it, e.g. Russia.

Interesting you mention Russia. The leadership of Russia spends a lot of time thinking about how to denigrate LGBTQ+ folks. Racism is alive and thriving in Russia. They even recently went through the trouble of decriminalizing first time domestic violence. Could you elaborate on why you think a trip to Russia would be useful to [eta:American] progressives?

Want it even worse than just first time? I seem to remember that Russia now allows one incident of serious domestic violence per year.

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

#146

Post by parineum »

colordrops wrote: post #120
noptd wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> part of their program

Who's they? Name names.

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

#147

Post by hnbad »

SunlightEdge wrote: post #109

On a related point, what I'm uncertain about are the reasons for the increase in transgender kids in the west. I understand there's been a massive increase in cases for transmen in the UK and USA for example. Is this because we can identify these conditions much better now? Maybe. I don't have the background to say for sure. There is a real fear in society though that woke schools of thought are a harmful influence t…

What do you reckon is the reason for the increase in gay kids in the west after the decriminalization of homosexuality in most western countries? Hint: it's the decriminalization and social acceptance allowing gay people to come out of the closet rather than having to pretend they're straight for fear of consequences.

The kids aren't being transed. I know there are several mostly British authors having extremely loud voices spreading FUD about "rapid onset gender dysphoria" but that's not even a thing. It's based on a paper that used answers from parents about trans kids. Follow-up research has demonstrated that to the kids it was anything but rapid. You might as well invent a phenomenon of "rapid onset body size" to explain why grandparents will insist "how can you already be so big, it feels like you were a tiny baby only such a short while ago".

You're overthinking this, but to ease your mind: people aren't undergoing HRT and surgery because all the cool kids are doing it. They might experiment with neopronouns and gender identity labels for a bit but there's literally no demonstrable harm in that.

Also if you think identity politics is a new thing: US politicians literally put God on the dollar bills to appeal to Christian conservatives (prior to that the national motto was always "E pluribus unum", not "In God we trust"). We just don't tend to think of things as identity politics when we take the identity for granted.

EDIT: That you see more trans people is a good thing actually. Visibility is the result of social acceptance. And social acceptance is the biggest contributor to reducing suicidality and improving quality of life. Trans people haven't been killing themselves because they're trans, they've been killing themselves because everyone kept telling them they're not. You can't trans a kid any more than you can make them gay.

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

#148

Post by throwaway6734 »

swarnie wrote: post #139
fridif wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm not sure anyone has a clue what you're on about. Care to expand?

I'm assuming op meant "foot binding". Not sure the relevance though

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

#150

Post by mjburgess »

TameAntelope wrote: post #110
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…

I'm curious what any possible alternatives might be to the practical problems "wokeness" tries to present itself as a solution to. I don't think the problem of racism and sexism (two classic "woke" topics) are "Left" problems, which is why it strikes me as odd that I don't see ideas about how to deal with them coming from everyone, beyond a straight denial they exist, or that it's actually the fault of the folks expe…

The most virulent forms of racism are a symptom of material conditions, eg., that poor black people live uniformly in one area, and rich white people in another. This creates a competition for local resources, including demands on police time and attention. This competition reporduces racism, in that it is very hard not to have racism when "looking out for one's own" is a racial matter.

What we have in Wokeism is a pseudo-politics, in that, it make no material demands. The woke concern is against alleged "implicit" forms of racism which "harm" graduates jockying for position within large corporate structures.

It reads a little like "what happens when the upper middle-class discover that they too may, possibly, have been discriminated against".

Post reply on HN