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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?

#981

Post by pphysch »

ctrlp wrote: post #973
pphysch wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identity politics has virtually nothing to do with Karl Marx's philosophy or political economics.

This is so ignorant I don't even know what to say to you. If you're interested in learning about the connection and evolution you can look into the Marxist Frankfurt school and its influence on modern identity politics.

What makes you think this particular interpretation of "Marxism" invented posthumously by the Weimar bourgeoisie is the One True Marxism?

Sectarian nonsense. I am referring to what Karl Marx actually wrote, not the millions of diverging tangents that each claim to be "Marxism".

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

#982

Post by nutshell89 »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #584
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…

TLDR: Actually address the fundamental problems (spoiler: sexism and racism are not the fundamental problems, they are aggravating factors) that allow sexism and racism to cause issues for disadvantaged groups. Most of the discussions around systemic racism and sexism fundamentally boil down to the topic either poverty or violence from police. Poverty: Specific groups are over-represented in the impoverished populati…

In the case of violence-based examples above, the hypothetical society doesn't address the issue of past harm (decades or centuries of a disadvantaged position in society). It also doesn't address non-economic forms of harm (like media underrepresentation, leadership underrepresentation, etc.)

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

#983

Post by entyphom »

bequanna wrote: post #696
zpeti wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this laissez fair approach is the exact opposite of modern wokeness. It’s their way or it’s attacks and cancellation. If you’re an oppressor class you have almost no way to be forgiven. The easiest way to show this is just ask some woke stars on their views of libertarianism, which is literally to let everyone be themselves.

Indeed. The woke are experts at placing people into endless categories and determining which is “good” or “bad”. Which are the “oppressors” and the “victims”. Listen to their rhetoric, it is pretty much the opposite of live and let live. One of the more ridiculous ideas to come out of this is that “everything is a human construct”. For example, it appears to be a woke idea that mathematics, science is some human (mor…

Just because your bubble exposes you to the craziest people doesn't mean they represent any majority. It's easy to see those screenshots of people being completely unreasonable, but the truth is most people who are "woke" aren't anything like that.

We see the world through the lens of social media optimised to make us angry at other groups of people.

Most of the people I know are queer and extremely leftist, and they're all massively annoyed at some of the bullshit performative wokeness we see. It's only a very very small minority of people who actually behave like that.

It's like what the linked article mentions with only 4% of people actually caring about the use of latinx. You get angry at people pushing for this and think progressives are stupid, but actual progressives are also annoyed at it because they know it's going to be used as an excuse to make their communities look stupid.

Idk what's a good conclusion on all this but I'd just say, keep in mind that extreme stuff you see online is usually not reflective of any sizeable amount of people

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

#984

Post by busymom0 »

notacoward wrote: post #779
busymom0 wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn’t just the media. Here in Canada, the government literally passed the mathematics curriculum which claimed nonsense like “mathematics is subjective” and “mathematics is colonial”. I emailed them a long rant that I would rather ship my future kids to India for a better education instead of the nonsense they are teaching. So no, it isn’t just some media. Nor do I follow corporate news.

No, they didn't. Here's the real thing again. https://www.dcp.edu.gov.on.ca/en/curriculum/secondary-mathem... My (slightly) more detailed response is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28415992 Stop spreading misinformation.

That's not the real original thing. Since you copy pasted the same thing, I will correct you here again.

Here's the archive of that page you linked which I was talking about:

https://archive.is/E3DoZ

It states:

> An equitable mathematics curriculum recognizes that mathematics can be subjective. Mathematics is often positioned as an objective and pure discipline. However, the content and the context in which it is taught, the mathematicians who are celebrated, and the importance that is placed upon mathematics by society are subjective. Mathematics has been used to normalize racism and marginalization of non-Eurocentric mathematical knowledges, and a decolonial, anti-racist approach to mathematics education makes visible its historical roots and social constructions. The Ontario Grade 9 mathematics curriculum emphasizes the need to recognize and challenge systems of power and privilege, both inside and outside the classroom, in order to eliminate systemic barriers and to serve students belonging to groups that have been historically disadvantaged and underserved in mathematics education.

After I along with a bunch of others emailed them, they got rid of it. However no one was fired for writing such nonsense, nor did we figure out how such nonsense got through the top officials in the government. Here's the news on them removing it:

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ford-defends-removing-language-on...

You accuse me of "Stop spreading misinformation." while being misinformed yourself. Before accusing someone of that, please research the topic.

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

#985

Post by imgabe »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #971
imgabe wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous to the point of self-parody coming from the movement that spawned BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, a complete redefinition of the word “privilege“, and which demands the immediate firing and permanent silencing of anyone who has not fully internalized the appropriate “inclusive” language du jour.

Ridiculous how? I don't think you addressed anything in my post. e.g. the notion that simplifying 'VAPA' to 'Arts Department' improves communication, and particularly to certain groups of people who aren't being reached. How is improved communication self-parody? This isn't a law mandating speech, it's an organisation rebranding itself to communicate more clearly what it is. You do ridicule it by comparing it to use…

Was there any evidence that the acronyms were a major cause of people not accessing the programs? Did anyone reach out and ask one of these people from "certain communities" about why they weren't making use of the programs? Did anyone actually look at the people using the program and verify that the "certain communities" were even underrepresented to begin with? Did anyone compare the makeup of people in the program after the name change to see if it increased representation?

Or maybe people just took a preconceived notion like "people who clean toilets for a living are probably too dumb to look up what an acronym means" and then made a pointless change that affected nothing and patted themselves on the back for how nice and progressive they are.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that if you're working (probably multiple) low wage jobs to support your kids, your biggest hurdle to getting them into an Arts program is probably not that it has a confusing acronym.

I agree that referring to something by an acronym and never explaining what it refers to is bad communication. That's why it is a common practice (and basic common sense) to spell out the acronym the first time it's used in a document. If the website for your organization refers to the name by an acronym only and never says what the full name is, that is a terribly designed website and you should fire whoever wrote it. That is the sort of thing you do when you care about communicating clearly. Changing the names of things every 5 minutes as you denounce the previous name as horribly offensive is not about communicating clearly. It's about moral posturing and virtue signalling.

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

#986

Post by foolinaround »

praestigiare wrote: post #611
foolinaround wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be as if the word "christian" was a word created by athiests specifically to refer to those who did not practice what they preached. May off-topic, but it might be interesting to note that 'christian' was similarly not something the Christians called themselves, but were derisively called that by others as in "followers of Christ or Messiah' alluding to the fact that they followed Jesus who proclaimed hims…

It's a good point, and I did consider noting that at one time this was also true for the word christian. But I think we agree that this is not the case now. There are several considerations that underpin my own thinking on social justice, but perhaps most relevant here is the concept of competing freedoms. It's easy to say that your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, but the debate over hate speech is much mor…

> I also acknowledge the damage that allows, and believe we should consider ways to minimize or compensate for it.

But when the meta-discussion about how to compensate for it gets shut down, then the dialogue simply stops.

No longer is the perpetrator the primary target, but the person who makes a statement questioning some part of it.

Many of those cited in the article are actually on the left, and would generally agree with the broader positions, but now find themselves attacked with no recourse.

--

Even in this imperfect world, the harasser can be put on 'probation' to see if there is a 2nd strike, the 'victim' can have additional monitoring... We need to build systems and processes knowing that we have imperfect people who sometimes make unintentional mistakes, or even if it was intentional, we can have systems that ensure that if they claim repentance, it is genuine

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

#987

Post by ineedasername »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #741
Zababa wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't many groups advocating for quotas? In France, it's a thing now to try to always have as much women as men in groups, especially those with high prestige (government, board of directors, etc). I don't know if it's precisely a few groups advocating for it, but it's now a thing most people expect. That's for me an example of equality of outcomes and not of oppurtunity.

A friend of mine applied to VMWare a year or two ago. They were asking him all sorts of questions about various disabilities; are you deaf? Do you use a wheelchair, etc.. The recruiter told him directly that they were looking for people with disabilities to fill their quota of people with disabilities, necessary because it was a government position. So we're definitely out of the game of recruiting based on merit in…

You generally don't have to ask a person if they're deaf. Unless you mean it was part of the application/submission process? It sounds like a greatly exaggerated version of the truth, which is this:

The actual requirement for government contractors is that they cannot require someone to disclose disability information, but they must give the applicant the opportunity to do so.

Because roughly 10% of the workforce has a disability, and it was found that government contractors appeared to discriminate against people with disabilities that were otherwise qualified for the work. So, large contractors became obligated to have a less-than-representative 7% of their workforce pulled from a pool of candidates with disabilities.

I'm not sure quota systems like this are the best way to handle the problem. However, this approach is hardly the death knell for merit-based hiring.

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

#988

Post by ChainOfFools »

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…

how do you equalize opportunity of, say, getting accepted to medical school without a previous equalization in the outcome of passing the MCAT, or attaining the competitive GPA required for a qualified (or is that now equal-ified?) applicant?

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

#989

Post by zpeti »

entyphom wrote: post #983
bequanna wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The woke are experts at placing people into endless categories and determining which is “good” or “bad”. Which are the “oppressors” and the “victims”. Listen to their rhetoric, it is pretty much the opposite of live and let live. One of the more ridiculous ideas to come out of this is that “everything is a human construct”. For example, it appears to be a woke idea that mathematics, science is some human (mor…

Just because your bubble exposes you to the craziest people doesn't mean they represent any majority. It's easy to see those screenshots of people being completely unreasonable, but the truth is most people who are "woke" aren't anything like that. We see the world through the lens of social media optimised to make us angry at other groups of people. Most of the people I know are queer and extremely leftist, and they…

I agree with you, that the majority are not like this. The trouble is the people setting agendas in culture generally, mostly the media, are basically the extreme woke types you say are the minority.

And these people actually have power, as journalists, film directors, etc. they do set the talking points.

So I think it’s completely fair to react to this in a negative way, because it is actually happening.

It would be great if the normal woke minority would reject these people and stand up against them and say they are too extreme, but they don’t.

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

#990

Post by riffraff »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #224
riffraff wrote: post #193

> acronyms such as vapa (Visual and Performing Arts), on the ground that they are “a symptom of white supremacy”. wait, how? Surely all cultures have at some point embraced visual and performance arts?

It's not that, it's the fact it's an acronym that only certain groups are familiar with. Calling it Visual and Performance Arts is fine, because everyone understands what it means. Calling it VAPA is inferior communication, because it only signals to those already familiar with the acronym, and leaves the rest out. Instead they now just call it the 'Arts Department', so everyone understands what it means. For example…

Thanks for the extensive answer!
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