The GOP is united in its desire to extirpate “wokeness.” But what, exactly, is it?
I’m not an expert on the writings of such luminaries as Crenshaw and Kendi, so I don’t really have an opinion on its true, original meaning. In any event, it doesn’t matter much; what does matter in the real world is the way the right defines it. That I do understand.
A few years ago, as part of a series on wokeness, I described it as an ideology based on identity determinism which defines straight white American men as oppressors and everyone else as an oppressed group and concludes that everything the first group says or does is presumptively false and even evil. The extreme right has run with this concept and expanded it to issues such as foreign policy, medicine, and income redistribution. As a result, in the eyes of the reactionary base, “wokeness” includes all kinds of ideas that have nothing to do with its original meaning.
I would submit to you that in common reactionary parlance today, “woke” means any person or idea challenging the notion that ordinary (i.e., non-expert) white Christian men are entitled to supremacy in every facet of life in America and, for the most part, throughout the world. I will be addressing this from a variety of angles over the next week.