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

181–190 of 1001 posts

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

#181

Post by golergka »

DanBC wrote: post #167
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…

> I understand there's been a massive increase in cases for transmen in the UK No, there hasn't. You've been lied to. There was no treatment for trans children (in the UK). Then a clinic opened up. We went from zero trans boys to some trans boys. Anti trans campaigners misuse percentages to show an "alarming" rise, when in fact we've simply gone from "none" to "some".

That's exactly what the parent comment said, though, isn't it? Increase from none to some is indeed massive.

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

#182

Post by rnd0 »

chakkepolja wrote: post #173
bengold14 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nor is it confined to the Left: neo-Nazi groups offer some of the clearest examples of purity spirals Seems like your own linked article says it's not just a leftist thing?

[flagged]

> But aren't neo Nazi's fringe and rarer than wokies?

Depends on your definition. They may be rare if you only include self-identified Nazis. However, if you expand that to include members of the Far Right and general White Surpemacists then they're not only not fringe but they become as mainstream as Hannity, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and all of the Q-anon grifters.

White supremacists -as in people who believe most of the same thing as actual literal nazis, are by no means rare these days.

But if you mean people traipsing around in black SS uniforms then sure yeah those guys are rare, sure.

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

#183

Post by m0llusk »

nradov wrote: post #15
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…

Leftist movements tend to consume themselves in escalating purity spirals. https://unherd.com/2020/01/cast-out-how-knitting-fell-into-a...

That article goes directly from people complaining about discrimination to Mao's Great Leap Forward, but it seems like wanting to be treated with a reasonable level of dignity at work is unlike causing a major famine that kills millions of people. Politics leads to ideological thinking which generates mostly garbage.

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

#184

Post by nineteen999 »

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.

It's definitely optional. I have yet to have anyone in real life try and pull me up over it, except for my 11 year old daughter. If a virtue signaller tried to give me a hard time about it, they can "talk to the hand".

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

#185

Post by inkblotuniverse »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #106
wisty wrote: 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…

> I contend that the expansion primarily reflects an ever-increasing sensitivity to harm, reflecting a liberal moral agenda. I don't feel comfortable with anyone using the term "liberal moral agenda" unironically because of culture-specific connotations: for starters, it's a very US-specific phrase which will have attached meanings that would be lost or misinterpreted by people unfamiliar with how the term "liberal"…

How would that make conversations impossible to have? Just talk to the reactionary right-wingers about what they see as the liberal moral agenda.

(Of course there's a liberal moral agenda- there's an X moral agenda for every X).

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

#186

Post by Jochim »

luckylion wrote: post #113
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…

> 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.

The influence exerted is usually orthogonal to the traditional goal of improving the conditions of the working class. Instead identity politics focuses on a platform of "more POC female dictators" rather than one that actually fights to make a material difference in people's lives.

It also destroys any form of class consciousness, replacing it with one based on race. The white middle class get the catharsis of flagellating themselves but the people struggling to pay rent or working two jobs are understandably defensive when you try to tell them how privileged they are.

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

#187

Post by pindab0ter »

nix23 wrote: post #144
burntoutfire wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live in the Netherlands and so much of what’s on TV, in cinemas is the games we play are American. It’s really inescapable. I’d easily call America the dominant culture in the west from my experience.

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

#188

Post by golergka »

hnbad wrote: post #172
TameAntelope wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you ignore the American political spectrum for a hot minute and get down to the core of it, a practical definition of "left" and "right" is "no hierarchy" vs "hierarchy". This holds true in economics as well as social issues: Racism is a system of hierarchy where one race is inherently good and normal and others are deviations from that, or at least every race is good or bad in some ways and there is an implied va…

> practical definition of "left" and "right" is "no hierarchy" vs "hierarchy"

Absolutely not: it's the left that's usually the favor of giving more power to the most oppressive and monopolic hierarchy there is, the government, while the right is fighting to dismantle it.

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

#190

Post by geewee »

Epa095 wrote: post #149

This is one of those articles which kind of pretends to be neutral, but are still so oppinionated that I don't know if I ended up smarter or dumber after reading it :-/

I agree. The author obviously considers "wokeness" stupid as hell, but hides with the thinnest veneer of neutrality.
Post reply on HN