How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life? • Hacker News Board

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

#601

Post by shadowgovt » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

frankbreetz wrote: post #589

shadowgovt wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the objections to this sort of teaching?

Parent said in his comment, the teachings made his brown skinned child feel inferior, and he didn't feel this way as a child with the old way of teaching.

I see. The pedagogy is flawed if it's raising that question without answering it, but not for raising the question at all; the unfortunate truth of at least living in the US is she's going to deal with a lot of assholes who believe those sorts of things. It's not at all inappropriate to prepare students for that by arming them with better answers.

I also went to school in Virginia. The old way of teaching (at least in our school) was to pretend these factors didn't exist at all. This was incongruous with the way people were treated outside school, and led some to wonder what the school was hiding. Kids are perceptive, and they notice if there's a giant hole in what you're allowed to talk about.

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

#602

Post by mkr-hn » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

Applejinx wrote: post #562

UK-Al05 wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'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…

Karma's for spending. Once I accepted that, my posts got way better, and the number still goes up.

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

#603

Post by amanaplanacanal » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

a-saleh wrote: post #403

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 think it is just about growing knowledge and acceptance on one side and growing need to demarcate yourself on the other. Everything is a spectrum, right? I remember ~20 years ago, when I knew nothing of being trans-gender as a concept, and I bearly heard of some people being trans-sexuals. These days I am fairly on board with the concept of gender as being a role in society you choose to play, that is often informe…

I suspect your last sentence is going to offend some people.

There are a lot of people who don’t feel strongly gendered, I’m one of them, and I suspect you are too from that sentence. Seeing gender as a social role makes sense to us.

However, there are other people who do feel strongly gendered, and for them gender isn’t just a social role but part of their core identity. I suspect at least half of cis folks and nearly all trans folks fit into that group.

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

#604

Post by CryptoPunk » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

ggggoz wrote: post #533

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a researcher who lost his job for publishing research that violence on black lives by police was only covered by the media when the media understood them as sympathetic victims and so a successful strategy is to intentionally play up the helplessness of being violenced upon as opposed to militant resistance and cooperative resistance. I believe the rage about it at the time was more or less how dare this per…

David Shor? It seems he was sacked for reducing black grief and anger to nothing more than a bad campaign strategy for the democrats in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. It wasn’t a smart thing to tweet, given that he worked for a political org. Should he have been sacked? I don’t know.

No, he shouldn't have been sacked. That the acceptability of this is even contemplated shows the extremism of woke moral elitism.

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

#605

Post by mjburgess » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #278

mjburgess wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

> What we have in Wokeism is a pseudo-politics, in that, it make no material demands. That’s because “Wokeism” doesn’t exist. Being “woke”, was never a descriptor of a politics but of the state of being aware of and engaged in social and political issues affecting a disadvantaged (originally, specifically Black American) community. It’s now morphed into a label assigned by outside group to anyone whose politics the s…

Wokeism has come to refer to a type of (basically religious) revival which is happening across the western middle class. it sometimes includes a political project of 'equality'.

Whether you like the term or not, it is very hard to simply deny the revolution in identity construction currently taking place.

Watch the latest CIA advert which emphasises neauvox-oppressed identity markers over. It emphases how the CIA allows you to 'be yourself' qua how you are a member of an oppressed group.

Whatever you want to call /that/, this is what I am talking about.

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

#606

Post by luckylion » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

chrisan wrote: post #333

luckylion wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be happy that you don't have to prove your skin color to Slack yet. You're currently still able to appropriate minority skin colors, but I guess we're just one white guy using a brown-skin thumbs-up ("it's literally the brown thumbs, it's the modern brown shirts") before Slack mandates skin color tests.

Do you honestly believe what you type?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_appropriation

Have fun.

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

#607

Post by elzbardico » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #444

FinanceAnon wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me doubts that it's a permanent shift. There was a hippie movement in the 60s and 70s in the US, but conservatives are still going strong 50 years later.

I think it's permanent, it will just change shape and be less radical. The hippies are still a bit hippies deep down inside, and their main objective has been achieved. People know they can be hippies and it will be fine. I am more unsure as to why subcultures have been ostracized in the first place if they do no harm to others. When I lived in a huge city for the first time, i realized how unimportant all that was,…

Let's not forget that most Jack-Welch yuppie downsizing acolytes were hippies in a former life. Kind of scary when you think about it.

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

#608

Post by abvdasker » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

> When invited speeches from people such as Christine Lagarde, then head of the International Monetary Fund, were cancelled after student activists accused her of complicity in “imperialist and patriarchal systems”, the response was a collective shrug.

This is a straw man. People have been protesting the IMF nonstop since the 90s and I guarantee patriarchy is not the main thing they complain about.

Arguably the entire article is a straw man. Also where is the byline? Who wrote this?

The piece is too dumbed down to really touch on the most interesting aspect of academic identity politics, which is the quite intricate system of post-structuralist theory from which it emerged. The question of why this form of theory osmosed into the public sphere but not some of its competitors did not is more interesting.

Funny how as soon as an idea critical of the US and the mostly white mostly male people who have held power here gains prominence the Economist and its ilk seem to change their tune about the “marketplace of ideas”.

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

#609

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #223

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…

> I'm curious what any possible alternatives might be to the practical problems "wokeness" tries to present itself as a solution to. The obvious solution is meritocracy and race/sex blindness. That's the world I wish to live in - non-discrimination & equality of opportunity, not "positive" discrimination (it's always positive for someone ) and (enforced) equality of outcome. But the Woke Left has been quite hostile t…

[deleted]

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

#610

Post by trident5000 » Sat, Sep 04, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #549

Our political and cultural institutions are dominated by people who attended those elite schools. This is the next batch of folks who will be doing your IPO paperwork: https://freebeacon.com/campus/northwestern-law-administrator... Now it’s making the jump to K-12. My second grader is apparently learning how to develop an “identity” around her “skin tone” (according to an email from her teacher). This has had the pre…

IPO's will go extinct with crypto. People are not going to pay a bunch of bloated banker fees when they can just mint equity share coins (ICO) and get an accountant to do the paper work. Road show? The internet does it better and listings/information will be transparent and easily accessible. Not here to promote crypto just saying the IPO process seems like its days are numbered.

edit: HN fights any mention of crypto so hard because they cant control it and it disrupts their jobs. Good luck with that.