PODCLUB: The Intellectual Roots of Wokeness

[queenofknives]

Thread to talk about this podcast where Coleman Hughes talks to James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian about the academic and intellectual origins of the woke ideology.

BabyItsAWildWorld I really would suggest getting a copy of Cynical Theories if you want to understand the evolution and practical application of these ideas. It is easy to navigate and understand, even if the underlying philosophies aren’t. I’ve got the Kindle version (the audiobook isn’t out yet on Audible), which is great for being able to highlight key parts.

From what I am starting to understand (I think), Critical Race Theory had its origins in a more materialist application of new Marxism which is still rooted in ideas that there is a ‘truth’ and reality to the world. Because it came to prominence through Law departments, it’s fundamentally clear in meaning and always had actionable outcomes. It also saw ‘race’ as a stable characteristic.

Queer theory, on the other hand, is much more closely derived from postmodernism. It was more concerned with philosophy and critical analysis of the arts and literature. it didn’t start off as a particularly ‘activist’ movement, so wasn’t really concerned with what was real and actionable. It is deeply cynical about modern methods of arriving at truth claims through evidence gathering and data analysis and instead weighs up the cultural position of the ‘speaker’ to determine the validity of a claim.

The issue with the way intersectionality has evolved is that it has integrated postmodernist ideas about how we arrive at truth, settle on stable definitions and weigh up arguments into an otherwise useful concept. If the use of data analysis and the scientific method is ‘problematised’ as white supremacist, how can we accurately determine whether a identity’s perception of being oppressed is true and, if so, why and to what extent. Instead, we are utterly reliant on the ‘authentic voice’ of someone within that identify category which cannot be questioned.

There are countless examples of this everywhere and regarding all identities. Just about anything can be ism-phobic and if it can’t be pinpointed then it’s called a ‘dog whistle’. The person with the identity just ‘knows’ that they are being oppressed and to even question it is to be guilty of the ism-phobia.

The problem is that this movement doesn’t offer any practical solutions to establishing cause/effect/strategies and just involves listening to authoritative voices with the right identity.

It’s working well for Kendi. He’s minting it at the moment.

That's a brilliant summary, thank you TheRealMcKenna

Thanks TheRealMcKenna I'll get Cynical Theories, each time I read or listen I'm finding my understanding is growing and I'm making links.

I feel the issue with intersectionality is that while it can make some useful data observations at a group level, these cannot be applied at an individual level and then assumptions about causation cannot be made e.g. through 'phobias' and 'isms', although they might be factors.

e.g. Black women at GM were obviously experiencing discrimination as a group, probably indirectly, but that does not mean that every black women who may have applied for a job there did not get it due to racism. But given what the data shows this should be considered as a potential cause, but there could be many other reasons in a particular case.

There seems to be a missing link about the intersectionality of every multifactorial individual and circumstance and the group identities to which they belong.
I don't know if that makes any sense?

So relating intersectionality back to theory, it's taking science based material data to make intergroup comparisons, but then applying a critical theory to this that only allows for an oppression/oppressor analysis, and a post modernist stand point that the individual can define and label their own oppression as they wish and it has validity?

I've been listening to this podcast which is really clear and easy to understand - they are talking about critical race theory in very practical terms. I've been finding it really helpful.

I was interested in the analogy for systemic racism used: about avoiding broken glass and falling into the path of a car.

The comparison was that no one was directly to blame, except maybe the person who had historically dropped the broken glass, but that a set of linked circumstances 'a system' was responsible?

What I felt was missing was: what if much more broken glass was found in particular areas of a city where certain groups lived,, so there were many more accidents there?

We'd then have uneven outcomes for a particular group. So we'd be looking for causes which could be historical, or lack of intervention for broken glass in that area of the city.

Isn't this what systemic racism is? Where unequal outcomes can be attributed, at least in part, to unequal treatment in the past impacting on ongoing response cycles (both within the historically oppressed group and the historically oppressive outgroup.)

I guess what I'm not understanding is why this cannot be labelled systemic racism. Yes it's changing the meaning of racism away from meaning direct beliefs and acts of an individual, but doing so overtly and redefining it as something which can be more than that and be connected cycles and interactions which have developed over time.

I don't have a problem with that - I feel I can see that clearly, e.g. in numbers of incarcerations of black men.
My problem is more: what is the solution to this? and this is where no discussion is tolerated apart from acknowledgment of the oppressor/ oppressed dynamic, which cannot be challenged (as material reality not important) but which in itself provides no way forwards apart from division, and destruction of what exists.

I know I'm taking this away from the theory, but I'm trying to think through my unease with the current identity politics and ground this in the theory.

They do talk about systemic racism in the podcast I linked to above. The idea of systemic racism is that it's somehow 'in the system' without necessarily any racist individuals or laws perpetuating racism. They are saying there is definitely racism but 'systemic' doesn't mean what ordinary people think it means. They discuss the example of real estate, and also look at the influence of history.

What's the solution - depends on what you think the problem is!

I have heard some pretty ridiculous and nonsensical ideas for getting rid of ‘systemic racism’ in certain areas. For example, one solution I have seen proposed to the fact that African American students perform worse in SATs than other ethnic groups is to abolish the tests. I can’t see how that will do anything to reduce educational disparities, but would be a very appealing policy to propose by someone with an agenda to abolish the tests anyway.

As they say in the Intellectual Roots podcast, the fastest way to equity is for everyone to have nothing.

Ah yes, everyone has equal access to the rubble that was once the house.

Not heard the thing but I thought the intellectual roots of “wokeness” were Hegelian? And then Marx carried it on with the idea of class consciousness? Like ‘waking up’ to realise that you are a part of a greater whole.

I think Marx's writing aimed to turn Hegel on its head. So it was a response to Hegel. But current wokeism isn't a direct descendant of Marxism so there isn't a straight line from Hegel to Kendi as such.

Have a listen to the podcast and see if you can connect it up? Would be interested to know more.

@TheRealMcKenna

I have heard some pretty ridiculous and nonsensical ideas for getting rid of ‘systemic racism’ in certain areas. For example, one solution I have seen proposed to the fact that African American students perform worse in SATs than other ethnic groups is to abolish the tests. I can’t see how that will do anything to reduce educational disparities, but would be a very appealing policy to propose by someone with an agenda to abolish the tests anyway.

The abolition of examinations is emerging as one of the touch points of woke ideology in educational reform; the argument seems to be that disadvantaged people sometimes perform poorly in examinations, so therefore they are a tool of oppression.

Yet this basically ignores how examinations have historically been a tool for liberation. The starting point for the full participation of girls in education in England was, after all, their performance in the College of Preceptors exams in the 1860s; and similar patterns can be seen across other disadvantaged groups, from working-class boys winning scholarships in Victorian England, to the entry of Jewish men into the Anglo-American university system in the 1920s and 1930s, to the successes of the children of Asian immigrants in late twentieth century school systems. The use of education as a way to escape disadvantage has been a constant for nearly two-hundred years.

Part of the reason for this, of course, the fact that examinations have at least some inbound notion of objectivity. They allow the person’s abilities to be compared with the abilities of others. It’s hard to argue that someone is intellectually inferior when they score just as well as you in a set of exams.

But examinations rely on a notion that you both can aspire towards some notion of objectivity, and also have this as a goal in mind. Examinations make it harder to get away with performing competence, and reward work over merely having the right opinions. No wonder the woke dislike examinations.

The tragedy is that most changes in education over the last 35 years have rewarded the privileged over the disadvantaged. Having, for instance, universities as finishing schools for the woke doesn’t help the people who are interested in intellectual development, whilst benefiting those who use higher education as a means of bolstering their political positions. The latter group don’t really want to learn, anyway, so it doesn’t matter to them what goes on in the lecture room. But they don’t like exams, so will fight against them, regardless of the consequences.

Great posts on this thread! James Lindsay has written about the move to abolish tests:

We have this movement in education right now to get rid of standardised tests for college or graduate school admission. This is a terrible idea. You want to have more objective standards and fewer subjective standards because subjective standards lead to disputes that can't be resolved

In terms of 'disputes that can't be resolved ' I wonder if this is the aim of the extremists in the identity politics faction. That and increased polarisation is an inevitable consequence of some of their policy suggestions.

queen
Thank you for the podcast recommendation, another superb listen. I particularly liked Glenn Loury's response to how to respond to the current intolerant age and he advised looking at comparable periods in history.

Glenn Loury discusses 'living within the lie' during Soviet hegemony.

The party lies constantly, the official ideology of the state is bankrupt, yet this goes on for decades of people reproducing and reinforcing the idea. Some intellectuals see the imperative of living within the truth and this is a kind of heroism, some of these people paid with their lives

He says that he is not comparison the totalitarian state of 1960s Soviet satellites with the US, but that the cancel culture of this time encourages silence, collusion in the lie:

the personal challenge of do I adhere to my convictions and live within the truth or do I by degree submit myself to a kind of tyrannical domination?

not comparing

Glenn Loury and Heather Heying have now both talked about Vaclev Havel and his grocer.

the personal challenge of do I adhere to my convictions and live within the truth or do I by degree submit myself to a kind of tyrannical domination?
This is the question for everyone now, whether they know it or not.

queen
Yes, it's interesting that Vaclev Havel is often cited. I think this snippet from a James Lindsay link is also relevant:

By pivoting from standards of discourse that are universally and independently accountable to our senses and reason, to standards of discourse in which the conclusions that are rendered are not open to challenge or confrontation from the outside, Woke Folk aim to introduce ideas that are effectively immune from criticism. Under a paradigm that values reason and evidence, an interlocutor is welcomed to challenge ideas in a fashion that allows anyone from any walk of life to evaluate concepts. But under a paradigm in which “Lived Experiences,” which are the subjective interpretations of events from one’s demographically-dependent base of “knowledge,” are held as immutable and not open to discussion or debate, all interlocutors are obligated to listen and believe

One reason I feel very cynical when I hear the word ‘system racism’ brought up is that I get the impression that those most keen to use the term have the least interest in actually solving the problems that lead to unequal outcomes. The term is always used by those with a political agenda to bring about revolutionary change of a political level and never by those wishing to improve the system we currently have.

Take, for example, the criminal justice system. We know that there are fundamental problems with the system that lead to unequal outcomes. It is clear that there are problems within the system itself, but also fundamental problems in communities that feed into the criminal justice system (illiteracy, drug use, domestic abuse, mental health). These are massive issues that need to be addressed. However, the solution that seems to be being offered up by CRT ‘activists’ is to abolish prisons or decriminalise certain offences. The former is a particularly stupid idea which should be called out as such by anyone who wishes to be taken seriously. The latter may initially appear to be more ‘equitable’ as certain ethnic groups are much more likely to be incarcerated than others, but in reality does little to solve problems within the communities themselves.

Anyone who thinks this is a good idea should really spend some time in San Francisco. A superficially beautiful city is a shithole where petty crime is just..... tolerated. The ‘progressive’ politicians and academics responsible for the mess don’t have to live in the communities they help to destroy.

I can't help feeling that seeking equity or 'equality of outcomes' is where this has all gone wrong. It feels very illogical but I can see the appeal, I guess. Decriminalising offences that certain groups are more likely to be penalised for is a good example of that. I was thinking of marijuana which is legal in some US states now but many black people are apparently in prison because of marijuana possession. That is clearly unfair and needs to be dealt with in a careful way to restore justice - abolishing prisons is probably not a good answer, although it does solve that problem and many others.

Did anyone see James Lindsay talking to Benjamin Boyce about critical race theory? They connected up some of these dots too.

We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.

C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

We are building this vision whilst thinking we are building a more tolerant world.

@Emeeno1

We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.

C S Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

We are building this vision whilst thinking we are building a more tolerant world.

Yes. What a great quote. Thank god CS Lewis never had to hear of people "queering" Narnia.

Did anyone see James Lindsay talking to Benjamin Boyce about critical race theory? They connected up some of these dots too.

I listened to that podcast and thought it was excellent.

Without a doubt there are serious issues in the American criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to access to defence. I’ve watched many Louis Theroux documentaries over the years that are horrific, as was Making a Murderer on Netflix. I don’t understand exactly how the system works, but it seems really clear that anyone unable to pay for decent legal defence is left with totally inadequate provision. Given the fact that there is a provable and real wealth gap between African Americans and other racial groups, it would be very surprising if there wasn’t an unequal outcome of any system whose outcomes are determined by the wealth of the individual accessing it.

How to solve the problem is the big question, and there are no quick fixes.

I will listen to the James Lindsay one. I am up to the Queer Theory chapter of Cynical Theories, so haven’t got to the part about race yet.

There was also a Netflix documentary about the number of black men in prison. Particularly horrifying was the pressure to plead guilty to get out of jail quickly rather than have to stay in because you couldn’t make bail. Effectively innocent people would end up in prison for longer than guilty ones. It all seemed like something that should be dealt with through a human rights focus.

So so very happy to have found these discussions. Imagine "waking up" after a 5 year kid rearing focus. Thinking the world has gone bonkers, where emotional manipulation and guilt tripping is now the current way of communicating.
But digging a little shows that ofcourse they have to communicate like that as there is so little foundation to their knowledge.
Really liked the BB and JL talk, it is just more and more dots connecting together.
I'd also definitely recommend the book "how to have impossible conversations"