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The Origins of Wokeness

paulgraham.com

471–480 of 1001 posts

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#471

This article never takes up the cause of the minorities who are being harassed and killed on a daily basis, but spends a lot of time whining about having to show even a modicum of empathy by using more inclusive language. For this reason it reeks of self-centered willful ignorance.

> minorities

Ahem! I think you mean People of the global majority? Please consider using more inclusive language in the future.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#472

I sadly suspect we’re going to see some risk adverse hiring of boring white dudes in all positions of leadership. Regardless of competence. We’re already seeing DEI weaponized. Any non white male person in charge of an organization that makes a mistake will be labeled a “DEI Hire” accurately or not. Organizations will be risk adverse and only hire the most boring white dude they can find from central casting. Whateve…

LinkedIn has a DEI jobs category in their Jobs section. How is that a qualification to do a job?

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#473

Really disappointing article, full of disingenuousness and strawmen and a few interesting points as well. For the record, while I'm on the progressive side of things, I certainly do not agree with all of the various viewpoints and practices ascribed to "wokeism." He seems close to misunderstanding a pivotal thing, but glosses over it: [Priggish] was not the original meaning of woke, but it's rarely used in the origin…

There are also some real zingers in his unexplored trains of thought here. He notes that "wokeness" in academia originated in the social sciences and not, say, mathematics or engineering. He then goes on to concoct some explanation based on folks from the Sixties getting into academia and not a far more obvious explanation: our modern understanding of the ills and boons of society originated from the sciences focused on studying society.

(Sure, Paul, the physics department didn't come up with woke. They were too busy overlooking Richard Feynman hitting on every undergrad woman that came through his department).

FWIW, I also saw political correctness "rise." In my experience, it rose in the computer science department discovering that when they adjusted their approach to incoming undergrad students based on observations from the social sciences that systemic sexism was bending the nature of their pre-undergrad education, the women performed better in the computer science undergrad curriculum. There's Paul's missing evidence from the "hard sciences."

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#474
post #38

> Imagine having to explain to a well-meaning visitor from another planet why using the phrase "people of color" is considered particularly enlightened, but saying "colored people" gets you fired. [...] There are no underlying principles. To understand much of our language, Gnorts would have to already be aware that our words and symbols gain meaning from how they're used, and you couldn't, for instance, determine th…

they’re not negroes, they’re colored they’re not colored, they’re African-American they’re not African-American, they’re black they’re not black, they’re Black they’re not Black, they’re People of Color they’re not People of Color, they’re BIPOC I wonder what the next twist of the pretzel will look like

[deleted]

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#475
Reading Paul Graham's musings on "wokeness" is a complete waste of time. Please find the words of other better informed people to read, who have an actual interest in addressing problems like racism and sexism.

Also, for all his complaining about people being performative, he commits the sin himself. He is doing the dance conservative fascists want him to. Paul, do us all a favor, and just skip to the ending we all know you're heading for: fall in line with Trump, lock arms with your fellow oligarchs, and take obvious active measures to suppress any threats your wealth and power.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#476

The article missed the biggest opportunity to be curious by avoiding the question: What if they're right?

[flagged]

> with far left views that in the recent decade have become the loudest voice basically every online platform. > the same toxic far left hub that Reddit has become > shifting away from the far left messaging that has been the default

That entire post has left reality a long time ago. Honestly, this level of resentment can't be healthy.

> angry, myopic, us-vs-them extreme thinking.

You've clearly become what you're (allegedly) so vehemently against.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#478
> Twitter, which was arguably the hub of wokeness, was bought by Elon Musk in order to neutralize it, and he seems to have succeeded — and not, incidentally, by censoring left-wing users the way Twitter used to censor right-wing ones, but without censoring either.

There is nothing that better demonstrates how disconnected your average ivory tower silicon valley elite is than this sentence. You would have to exist in an entirely different reality to believe this is the case.

Re: The Origins of Wokeness

#479
post #94

He is attacking a straw man, by defining "woke" in a far narrower sense than it is actually used. Any objection to any form of prejudice, or any indication that the speaker is aware that members of some groups are better off than others, will be labelled "woke" by many commenters. It's to the point where some bigots say "woke" in the exact same places that their grandparents would say "n***-lover". But instead Graham…

It’s hard to define “woke” as anything other than “something someone politically to the left of me does that I don’t like” as that’s how broadly it’s used.

It’s utterly meaningless.

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