The Many Crimes of Wokethought
As the mode of ‘woke’ thinking and the blowback to it continue to spread, it might be a valuable exercise to explicitly write out exactly what my concerns about Wokethought actually are. Here, in no particular order except that this was the order they came to me, is that list. I’ll add more if I think of any others.
Note that I don’t include justification here for why I think each is applicable — that’s to come. This is just the list. If you want to know ‘why I care so much,’ this is why. I suspect this is also why other people care so much.
I suggest, when you notice an event in which these crimes are committed, that you respond to it with a link to this article and say which numbers are violated. When people say, “You’re just mad they’re teaching history,” or “You’re just mad they are calling out racism,” call their bluff. Pinpoint exactly what they’re doing that is dangerous.
1). It synecdochizes. It turns groups into individuals and makes individuals stand in for their groups
2). It uses sins and hypocrisies at America’s founding and in early Western thought as reasons to hate or ignore the virtues, while ignoring the sins — often the same ones it highlights in America — of other cultures, nations, and peoples, in order to make America look uniquely evil.
3). It uses lingering effects of historical racism as evidence for present systemic racism — often towards anti-capitalist, collectivist ends.
“Capitalism is essentially racist. Racism is essentially capitalist.”
— Ibram X. Kendi
4). It is collectivist.
5). It is explicitly skeptical of individual rights.
“Crits are also highly suspicious of another liberal mainstay, namely, rights.”
— Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction
6). It gives ideas skin color, and shifts very subtly between the ideas and the people who have that skin-color, while clearly painting certain colors as negative and others positive.
(E.g. “Whiteness,” “politically black”)
By doing so, it gives some ideas protection such that attacking them is racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc., and makes other ideas prima facie wrong for being ‘white’ ideas.
7). It is laden with Kafka traps and brooks no dissent. It is religious and dogmatic. It is censorious.
8). It is unwilling to acknowledge actual or consider possible truths about objective reality.
9). It is, in fact, explicitly skeptical of objectivity — it embraces ‘other ways of knowing’ (but not all other ways of knowing — Christianity is not a source of wisdom or knowledge).
9a). Corollary to 9: It lies. Often.
10). It attributes the sins of humanity throughout history to one race and one people — or heavily implies such a thought.
11). It thinks power deferential is inherently oppressor versus oppressed.
12). It is anti-meritocratic, anti-beauty, and anti-excellence.
13). Many of its precepts harm, and are not wanted by, the people it claims it wants to help.
14). It plays games with ‘maps’ and ‘territories’ (Word games, more or less)
15). It utilizes nuance and ambiguity to form rigid doctrine, and then allows no discussion of nuance and ambiguity. (e.g. “some people have both male and female sexual organs, so, binary sex is a myth and this naturally born male is in fact a woman”)
16). It thinks correcting the sins of history is done by repeating them.
17). It has grown an entire industry that wastes both money and minds on nonsense.
18). Similar to number 1, it racially essentializes people and, per 6, lambasts anyone who breaks proverbial rank.
19). It makes people guilty of or victims of evil by nature of belonging to certain groups. As such, it is divisive.
20). It denies progress and wants to dismantle the very engines that has allowed it (or, a la #6, labels the ideas as “products of White Culture”)
21). It seeks and wields bureaucratic power to its end (e.g., every DEI department in the country; Kendi’s hope for a ‘Department of Anti-racism’)
22). It shares several similarities and tactics to past historical movements that *did not end well* (most notably, Mao’s cultural revolution).
23). It stifles freedom of thought and free inquiry, and accuses those advocating for it as racist/sexist/etc.
24). The speed with which certain ideas and terms have spread makes me think this is not ‘normal.’ Social contagion is at play.
25). It causes a mindset that forces people to err (e.g. vastly overestimating the number of black people killed by police) and be furious or scared about their (wrong) perception.
26). Related to 9, it refuses to acknowledge certain truths for fear of how those truths might be used.
27). It thinks ‘narrative’ or ‘lived experience’ counts as scholarship and data.
28). It catastrophizes. It puts people into a mindset to find harm, everywhere, in so small part by changing what ‘harm’ means.
29). It uses history and cherry picks anecdotes from both the present and the past to breed racial resentment and foment racial guilt, sometimes known as “outrage archaeology.”
29a). It acts like rare events demonstrative of ‘the way things are,’ and often ignores ‘the way things actually are.’
(For example: it discusses George Floyd’s death, tragic and awful though it was, as if it were essentially an accurate demonstration of ‘how things are,’ but in fact it was the unusual awful-ness that made Floyd’s death so poignant. Meanwhile, gang violence kills thousands of black Americans every year).
30). It’s race-Marxism.
“So we gathered at that convent for two and a half days, around a table in an austere room with stained glass windows and crucifixes here and there — an odd place for a bunch of Marxists-and worked out a set of principles…. Most of us who were there have gone on to become prominent critical race theorists.”
— Richard Delgado, Interview for the University of Seattle School of Law
“We’re trained Marxists.”
— Patrisse Cullors, co-founded of BLM
“Critical race theory draws upon several traditions, including poststructuralism, postmodernism, Marxism, feminism, literary criticism, liberalism, and neopragmatism and discourses of self-determination such as Black nationalism and radical pluralism.”
31). It vastly over-uses *disproportion* in its accusations of racism.
Disproportion is worth looking at, but note: no one says “Hitler killed a disproportionate number of Jewish people… or that black people were disproportionately enslaved.
For example, it is often mentioned, and it is true, that black Americans are 2 to 4 times more likely to be killed by cops than white Americans. This is what that data looks like at a population level:
It turns out, ‘2 to 4 times almost 0’ is still ‘almost 0.’ But if you hammer the disproportion, it sure sounds like hell out there for Black Americans doesn’t it?
32). It is utilized and promulgated by our enemies to make us divided and weaker. (Though, to be fair, that’s not fully the woke’s fault).
33). It ignores or outright excuses violence done in its name or for its causes. (More general, it has double standards)
34). It inserts itself where it doesn’t belong (e.g. math class) It parasitizes respected institutions, fields, occupations, media, etc., instead of starting new ones, to get the clout while undermining it.
35). It thinks ‘culture’ is the same as ‘indoctrination’ to justify indoctrinating.
36). It plays ‘motte and bailey,’ all the time
37). It uses a pretty narrow of what ‘power’ is, and abuses the word as such
38). It has an intense focus on equality of outcome (another Marxian ideal).
“Think how our system applauds affording everyone equality of opportunity, but resists programs that assure equality of results.”
— Richard Delgado, Critical Race Theory, An Introduction
“It’s about giving people the resources and support they need so that everyone can be on equal footing, and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up at the same place.”
— Kamala Harris
