Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

What happened to the Republican war on 'woke'  and what we should have learned from it

Pencil erasing the word "woke"
mj0007/Getty Images

Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch

This isn't going to be more musing about whether America has reached "peak woke." But that is part of the story. So let's start there.

About a decade ago, many on the left embraced the word "woke," a term with roots in African American culture and activism. It originally meant staying awake — that is, "woke" — to the dangers facing the Black community. But in the hands of the broader, and whiter, academic and journalistic left, it soon became a kind of cool catchall for progressive politics, alongside other buzzwords like "intersectionality."

The combined effects of the Trump presidency, the death of George Floyd and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed wokeness into overdrive. This was the era of "defund the police" and other radical inanities.


The right soon took up the word, using "woke" as a catchall for everything — woke or not, real or not — it hated about the left. The novelty of wokeness as a concept lent an equal edginess, for a time, to anti-wokeness. It's a familiar tale, really: The same thing happened with "political correctness" in the early '90s.

Republican politicians declared war on wokeness. Erstwhile presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was at the anti-woke vanguard, even pushing the Stop WOKE Act through the state Legislature. It didn't work out too well for DeSantis or his imitators.

And that's the point: Both wokeness and anti-wokeness have lost their transgressive edge. Now they're both kind of "cringe," as the kids say.

And that is a sign of healing.

One of the worst annoyances of polarized politics is the way the fringes symbiotically feed off each other. Like bootleggers and Baptists both benefiting from blue laws, the extreme left and extreme right need each other to justify their catastrophizing. The worst thing that could happen for Republican House fundraising efforts would be for the "Squad" of far-left members of Congress to be replaced by sensible Democrats. And the last thing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wants is for Marjorie Taylor Greene to be primaried by an intelligent Republican who doesn't talk about Jewish space lasers.

So is woke over? Probably not. The term might be in terminal decline as anything other than an epithet, but the ideas are going to be around for a while — as will anti-wokeness — because both are just stand-ins for the culture war's left and right.

But it does seem as if many on the left are starting to realize they went too far. Most Democrats don't talk about "defunding the police" anymore because it is a wildly unpopular idea, including among Black people. Nor do they use the term "Latinx" as much now that they have learned that it repelled more Latinos than it pleased.

It was recently reported that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will no longer require applicants for faculty jobs to submit "diversity statements" confirming their support for "diversity, inclusion and belonging." University President Sally Kornbluth told UnHerd, "We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don't work."

A slew of elite schools have reversed course by requiring standardized tests again. Big corporations are paring back their diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, departments, which surged under Trump.

And, of course, the explosion of lawlessness and antisemitic rhetoric on elite campuses has been a lesson for academia, the left and Democrats. The country isn't that into disorder and bigotry. Polls suggest that the public is siding with police more than protesters.

There's a lesson here for the right too. For a decade, the populist right has been whining about losing every battle in the culture war to rationalize its embrace of radical and authoritarian politics. But the premise is wrong. The right doesn't always lose — or win — any more than the left does.

Trump and his supporters insist that America can't survive without him in the White House. William Barr, who was attorney general under Trump, says his former boss is utterly unfit to be president but that he will still vote for him because a second Biden term would amount to "national suicide" because of wokeness or something. Never mind that wokeness surged under Trump and has been receding under Biden.

Obviously, the right and left still have plenty to complain and worry about. The point is that there's always plenty to complain and worry about. Tides come and go. And people learn, eventually, from their mistakes.

First posted May 7, 2024. (C)2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Read More

From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship
assorted notepads

From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneur John Marks developed a set of eleven working principles that have become his modus operandi and provide the basic framework for his new book, “From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship," from which a series of three articles is adapted. While Marks applied these principles in nonprofit work, he says they are also applicable to social enterprisesand to life, in general.

PART TWO

PRINCIPLE #4: KEEP SHOWING UP. It has been said that 80 percent of success in life is showing up. For social entrepreneurs, this means continuing to stay engaged without dabbling or parachuting. Like a child’s toy windup truck that moves forward until it hits an obstacle and then backs off and finds another way forward, social entrepreneurs should be persistent—and adept at finding work-arounds. They must be willing to commit for the long term. I found that this was particularly important when working with Iranians, who tend to view the world in terms of centuries and millennia.

Keep ReadingShow less
Similarity Hub Shows >700 Instances of Cross-Partisan Common Ground

Two coloured pencils one red and one blue drawing a reef knot on a white paper background.

Getty Images, David Malan

Similarity Hub Shows >700 Instances of Cross-Partisan Common Ground

It is a common refrain to say that Americans need to find common ground across the political spectrum.

Over the past year, AllSides and More Like US found >700 instances of common ground on political topics, revealed in Similarity Hub. It highlights public opinion data from Gallup, Pew Research, YouGov, and many other reputable polling firms.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Responsibility of the First Vote

Primary voting, Michigan

Elaine Cromie/Getty Images

The Responsibility of the First Vote

The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. To learn about the many NextGen initiatives we are leading, click HERE.

We asked Nathaly Suquinagua, a bilingual multimedia journalist with a B.A. in Journalism and a minor in Dance from Temple University, and a cohort member with the Fulcrum Fellowship, to share her thoughts on what democracy means to her and her perspective on its current health.

Keep ReadingShow less
Faith, Democracy, and the Catholic Duty To Stay Involved

Christian cross necklace on American flag.

Getty Images/Stock Photo

Faith, Democracy, and the Catholic Duty To Stay Involved

The Fulcrum is committed to nurturing the next generation of journalists. To learn about the many NextGen initiatives we are leading, click HERE.

We asked Angeles Ponpa, a graduate student at Northwestern Medill in the Politics, Policy, and Foreign Affairs specialization, and a Fulcrum summer intern, to share her thoughts on what democracy means to her and her perspective on its current health.

Keep ReadingShow less