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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?

#561

Post by angelzen »

karmelapple wrote: post #488
FiberBundle wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some, even most, of the goals of that movement are commendable, with the exception of the more idealistic goals such as equality of outcome. What I find worrying, however, are the tactics that are used to accomplish those goals. I find it hard to understand how people do not see how discriminating against other people because of their views is not the right approach to solve discrimination.

Do you have a few concrete examples of large groups strongly advocating for equality of outcomes? I’ve had discussions about “equality” with folks aligned across the political spectrum, and most everyone agrees they want equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. I’m confused about who or what group is speaking about people desiring equality of outcome. And discriminating against other people because of their…

Ibram X. Kendi: Any disparity in group outcomes is proof of a deeply flawed and malicious system. The darling of American academia and corporate. You can either have equality of opportunity and accept that the outcomes will be disparate, or have equality of (group) outcome. You can't have both. Your friends have not thought through the consequences of the current dominant ideology.

> 'When I See Racial Disparities, I See Racism.'

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/27/upshot/reader...

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

#562

Post by Applejinx »

UK-Al05 wrote: post #391
yawaworht1978 wrote: post #327

It's just a shift from older, less flexible values like family, church etc to the more open minded approach, "do as you like". Nothing wrong with people having tattoos everywhere, green or violet hair, non conformist clothing and views. Let them be, let them express and find themselves. I am the shave every day suit kinda guy and will remain so, but if someone chooses to be different or wants to complain about new wo…

'Woke' is illiberal. A lot of the ideas behind it attack liberalism as they see at enabling the status quo as opposed to action for change. Edit: Why are people down voting me? Critical theories are very open about their critique of liberalism and rationality? And how they've led to lack of change. It's not some weird conspiracy. I personally think it's not worth it to abandon liberal ideas. As suddenly you validate…

People are downvoting you because they don't trust that your argument is in good faith. It's a foundational argument for manipulatively moving goalposts, and sketchy as far as redefining commonly accepted words. No, 'woke' and 'liberal' don't make sense to paint as opposite ideologies, much less set up straw-men for trying to plant the idea that 'woke is abandoning liberal ideas, you wouldn't do THAT, would you?'

And that is why you're earning downvotes :)

This is honestly a great HN thread for wilfully burning karma in fires of brigading. I know my own interaction with it, is in the full knowledge that if I do correctly identify and explore ideas, I'll be massively downvoted for sheerly tactical and ideological reasons. You could hardly have a thread less conducive to the stated aims of HN discussion.

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

#563

Post by kazen44 »

fridif wrote: post #119
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.

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

hasn't foot binding been dropped thanks to ruthless supression of the practice during maoist china?

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

#564

Post by andrew_ »

rayiner wrote: post #553
christophilus wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that teaching kids to be critical of one sliver of reality, while uncritically absorbing anything from another sliver is a pedagogical crime. What we ought to be teaching is critical thinking.

Kids need to be socialized in the ideas and values that make their civilization successful. Critical thinking is one piece of that, but we focus too much on it in elite environs. We also need to teach kids to tend to the edifice of civilization we’ve built, not just how to tear pieces of it down.

This really struck a chord with me as a parent of two toddlers.

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

#565

Post by civilized »

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.

I am calling for a Finnish dictatorship until we have abolished gendered pronouns.

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

#566

Post by Layke1123 »

notanzaiiswear wrote: post #102
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…

People are getting fired over those things, it is not just mindspace of silly people.

As they should. People get fired for being racist. People should get fired for being homophobic.

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

#567

Post by [deleted] »

kybernetyk wrote: post #325
hnbad wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> And social acceptance is the biggest contributor to reducing suicidality That’s not the proper way to treat depression. No amount of social acceptance will lower the suicide rates of people with mis/untreated depression.

[deleted]

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

#568

Post by FiberBundle »

UncleMeat wrote: post #510
FiberBundle wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a good first step would be to accept that societal changes take time to develop. We have made huge progress in areas such as women's rights. Asian immigrants, which were severely discriminated against in the past, have achieved tremendous upward mobility in our society. There are many other areas in which our society has progressed. All of this progress has occurred without any of the radical discrimatory tactic…

> We have made huge progress in areas such as women's rights. And suffragettes put bombs in mailboxes and threw their bodies under horses. 2nd wave feminists were far more "anti-man" than modern feminists (there aren't too many political lesbians nowadays). The "peaceful protest" that people recall so fondly rarely was so peaceful but is instead used as a cudgel to resist all change today by claiming that activists a…

> And suffragettes put bombs in mailboxes and threw their bodies under horses

And you think that had a positive effect on women's suffrage?

> 2nd wave feminists were far more "anti-man" than modern feminists

Well so what? Was suppressing men an actual tactic that contributed to progress?

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

#569

Post by pseudalopex »

newsclues wrote: post #380
pjc50 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous; I've known people through their transition. It is not a fad. Has everyone forgotten famous hacker Sophie Wilson?

How do you explain groups or clusters of young children suddenly becoming trans?

What's the evidence it's sudden? Everyone cites a single study by Lisa Littman. She didn't ask any trans children. Just their parents. And she selected for parents who didn't accept their children coming out as trans. Children don't tell their parents everything. And parents don't hear things they don't want to sometimes.

Imagine you're afraid to do something. Someone else does it. Nothing too bad happens. Wouldn't it encourage you?

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

#570

Post by Glide »

netrus wrote: post #328
tablespoon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. I've started…

I would love to have more pronouns in signatures. I cannot count the times I used Google picture search to figure out the gender of students from cultures I am not well educated about (Chinese, Indian, Arabic, Vietnamese ...). Many foreign students adopted a western name to mitigate such problems. Yikes!

The western name thing is all about pronunciation. It also helps when you realize all other personal information on a candidate might be redacted, except for a name. It predates the current cultural climate by decades.
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