I think there's a lot of interesting things going on in the merging of corporate culture and woke culture, especially as an 'etiquette' for the professional class – I think a lot of the harm of woke excess comes from that merger. Even before the woke movement, corporate trainings were creepy and humiliating, and the current language policing really reminds me of having to say 'challenges' instead of 'problems' and generally contort my speech in a professional context.
I think a lot of this is out of a corporate desire to ensure obedience in employees to minimise risk for the company, and adding wokeness to it gives it a moral underpinning that is harder to rebel against. I always went for a 'cigarette break' (I don't smoke) during energisers at conferences, but you can't do that at a DEI training. Students protesting professors for ridiculous reasons is nothing new; the dominance of HR risk-aversion in university administrations causes those protests to be threatening.
This kind of corporate-approved woke behaviour is becoming a class marker for professionals, and since upper class markers by definition need to exclude the lower classes, I worry that the excesses will become stronger to keep the class barriers high.
By now there is a lot of research showing diversity trainings don't actually increase diversity in the workplace -- this article is five years old, and the trainings haven't gotten any better in the meantime. https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
Since enough decision-makers read the Harvard Business Review that the reason cannot be lack of awareness, I am forced to come to a more cynical conclusion -- these trainings are an alternative to actually doing anything constructive, like recruiting at HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions. They exist so the institution doesn't get sued -- that is the particular risk that is being minimized -- and can say they "did something." Their effectiveness is entirely irrelevant. The only extent to which they even work as etiquette training is a little bit of language policing, which as Steve points out, can sometimes be useful and even necessary.
HR risk-aversion among university administrators is a direct consequence of thinking of students as "customers." Which in turn is a direct consequence of forcing them to pay so much that they expect luxury treatment and concierge service. Much thornier problem than mere wokeness.
This is an interesting point, about a main driver being corporate culture among professionals. It echoes similar complaints about "political correctness" in the 90s, particularly in an office environment, and campaigns against workplace sexual harassment before and since. That said, another way of describing "the merger of corporate culture and woke culture" might be "actually starting to include black people and poor people in the professional environments that let them have a prosperous and stable career". If this is the price of paying more attention to them - of valuing them - then I hope people are prepared to be accommodating.
It is a need of office environments to be able to (A) hire the best people, (B) make them feel comfortable, and (C) have them collaborate productively. If there are some cultural choices that enhance that, then we should welcome them in general. This is true even if occasionally a guy gets fired for saying "niggardly", at which point his employers get made fun of mercilessly.
I think Noah is right to point out that "in some ways, it's too much", although a lot of his criticisms might boil down to "this is poorly executed" rather than "this began with the wrong motivations". Likewise, I think we can agree that *some* language policing is necessary in any work environment, to keep it from becoming a deeply hostile one (examples should be obvious). So if you occasionally have to stop yourself and consider others' feelings before speaking at work, well, that hardly seems like a huge price to pay. Does it add stress for you? Maybe a little, but that'll go down over time, and meanwhile, it takes away a *huge* amount of stress for those of under-represented backgrounds who will be increasingly working with you. To the extent that the latter effect is bigger than the former, the movement's doing its job well; when the ratio goes way the other way, that's when I'd say we can add another example onto Noah's pile.
Excellent post, as always. My one piece of criticism, though, is about the ACLU bit. Yes, they have had some internal debate about the way forward in an era of wokeness. It’s surely true that “Prominent figures within the organization have argued that the First Amendment is a tool of oppression, since it’s more easily used by the powerful than by the oppressed.” But also, the ACLU literally won the biggest Supreme Court First Amendment case in years yesterday, less than 24 hours before you posted this. Criticisms of the ACLU for going too woke often fail to acknowledge that they are still out there doing great work on the First Amendment every day. That they’re having debate over the scope of their work shouldn’t let us lose sight of the fact that they’re still the most effective defenders of the First Amendment in the courts that we have.
I would add a couple more to your list of sources of effective, constructive anti-overreach pushback:
1. John McWhorter. He seems at times much closer to e.g. IDW types than the folks you name, but I think is clear and fair enough in his thinking to draw good distinctions.
2. Heterodox Academy and FIRE. Each in their own way helps promote liberal ideals in academe, which is disproportionately prone to illiberal overreach.
McWhorter is a good and very smart guy, but he doesn't have a lot of credibility with woke folks, and so I think he'll be an important source of ideas (like the idea that wokeness is Protestant-derived), but not a voice that actually convinces woke people to chill.
Another important thinker in that category is Glenn Loury. One thing he said about the dangers of the backlash to wokeness really has me worried, and it's far more dangerous than simply getting Republicans elected (which I mostly shrug at, since I live in a red state and am used to it).
His point is that because whiteness has been a sort of default, for American identity, White Americans have not typically thought of themselves as a racial or ethnic group with an agenda. Obviously they thought a lot about other racial and ethnic groups, but their *own* racial identity was typically only explicitly salient for White nationalists. The average White plumber or mail carrier or accountant was more likely to personally identify with their ethnicity or religion or home state than their race.
But when woke culture or diversity trainings or whatever teach all of us to view everything through a racial lens, White identity becomes more salient for the ordinary person who never thought much about it before. And throughout history, nothing good has ever come from a majority group explicitly seeing itself as an interest group with an agenda, and acting accordingly.
I've seen that argument and counter-argument before (that, on one hand, increasing the salience of racial identity can strengthen the power of white racial identity and, on the other hand, that white racial identity clearly exists and influences American politics and it's necessary to talk about that.)
Yesterday I had a related but different thought about the ways in which the rhetoric of partisans on the left and right can combine to weaken American politics. Both sides argue that government privileges certain groups over others. This is factually correct, but I think it creates problems to undermine the idea that government can / should be a neutral force that attempts to apply the same rules to all Americans.
First, it makes it appear normal when politicians are corrupt, secondly it makes each group think, "if government is working on behalf of somebody it should be somebody on my side" and finally it adds to the emotionally charged feeling of unfairness, "I know that somebody is calling the shots; I don't know who it is, but I know I'm getting treated unfairly."
As I say, I'm writing in this thread, because I think it overlaps with much of the discussion about woke overreach, but suggests a slightly different way of looking at the problem.
Joseph Heath has an interesting analysis of a specific illiberal woke tactic: making the claim that certain speech causes harm to my mental health, and should therefore be suppressed.
"It’s not a 'culture of victimhood,' on the contrary, it is more often an act of social aggression, since these performances of injury are typically carried out, not to attract sympathy, but rather punish and control others."
I'm part of the resistance to the excesses of wokeness, and our side is being mischaracterized and stereotyped as Trump-supporting racists and the Fox News crowd. We aren't. We are truly diverse and heterodox, from all backgrounds and political orientations. We have questions, confusions and criticisms that are legitimate to us, and I want to correct the impression that we are all R's and MAGAs. Great article!
I hadn't heard that about James Lindsay. It seems two of the most strident and high-profile anti-woke/IDW activists have gone nuts recently--Bret Weinstein has been spewing COVID conspiracy theories of late. And of course Peterson was never exactly sane. When pushing back is such a social taboo, you're going to get a disproportionate number of disturbing deviants among those who do push back. Pretty sad.
Under #9, I was surprised you didn't mention a far more egregious case of explicit discrimination that happened in the Seattle area: the restriction of vaccine availability by race.
I hope you are right that the overreach can be reined in at the level of mainstream culture, which is finally where that battle is being fought. Unfortunately it's been fought and lost already in a huge number of subcultures, especially online ones. Science fiction and fantasy fandom has been a hardcore woke police state for a decade now (except for a small, and even far more unethical, contingent of alt-right insurgent fans).
"I drew a connection between wokeness and Protestant Christianity, especially the Congregationalist abolitionism of the early 1800s. Seen from this perspective — which others are now picking up on " people have been making this take basically forever! I head it for years! Are you really taking credit for the observation that wokeness is just secularized christianity?
I'm sympathetic to a number of the examples here, but two in particular seem poorly-chosen:
#6: The ACLU. As a card-carrying member, I LIKE that they occasionally go out of their way to defend a soft target of the left, out of a belief that the politically-neutral principles of civil liberties in one case are what are important to defend, rather than following the ever-shifting sands of political fashions. That goes back to Skokie v Illinois, and probably earlier. They do ALL SORTS of important litigation in women's rights, racial discrimination, everything up and down the politically-charged spectrum from abortion to the "license raj". Forgive me if a quick-hit take by the NYT does not persuade me as much as it persuades you - I actually follow them, because my money goes there. I am as unconcerned about their strategic direction as I was when I first started giving them money as a (poor) college student.
#10: Racial sensitivity training. Merely being asked to read a bestselling book explaining some of the emotional drivers behind some of the ongoing cultural forces preserving white supremacy seems like an extremely reasonable way to use the opportunity of a training course. Such courses are not a place to just feel warm and fuzzy and avoid having your preconceived notions challenged. "They made white people feel awkward!" is not a critique; if anything, it's an argument in favor. It may not be an *optimal* course design, but if every white person in America read some (say) Ta-Nehisi Coates, we'd all be better off.
Moreover, including Jews is arguable both ways, and if the goal is to bring an understanding to everyone about cultural forces we all have a default blindness about, it seems reasonable. To quote a recent JWeekly article from Noah's neck of the woods,
“When we, as Jews, only see ourselves (or Israel) as exclusively powerful, we belittle Israel’s security concerns and disregard the real ways antisemitism manifests across the U.S. political spectrum. And when we see ourselves only as vulnerable, we are blind to the significant ways Jews wield real power both in Israel and the United States, translating into policies that cause real suffering.”
Sensitivity trainings can find this balance without being bad-faith or antisemitic a la James Lindsay. Seems like a poorly-chosen item to make your case with.
I am confused by your response to Noah's #6. It looks to me like his opinion, and that of recent critics of the ACLU, is precisely that it should stick with the tradition of cases like Skokie vs. Illinois. The critics claim that they have recently drifted away from believing "that the politically-neutral principles of civil liberties in one case are what are important to defend" and toward "following the ever-shifting sands of political fashions". I take no stance on either Noah's opinion or the factual basis of this claim, but your comment is phrased as if you disagree on what the ACLU should do, when you do not. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
I see what you're saying. Perhaps I could have been clearer. My position is:
- The ACLU, having pursued both cases like Brown v Board and cases like Skokie, has almost unique credibility in defending freedom-of-expression matters
- It is true that there is currently a re-evaluation of priorities within the ACLU, around the scope of which particular liberties they defend and relative allocation among them
- In particular, I buy that there is something to the argument that defending the scope of the First Amendment ought to be done in ways that reinforce its ability to be used by those with less power and privilege than by those with more, a consideration which has not, historically, been part of their evaluations
- As a donor, I trust them to make those judgments, far more than I do a second-guessing Noah Smith taking a thin-slice of these discussions and rendering a judgment that it's "overly woke", to say nothing of a NYT writer whose grasp of the nuance involved is generally poor.
If Noah wants to make a case that taking societal context into account when deciding where to pursue litigation is a betrayal of the ACLU's history and mission, he's going to need to do more than just gainsay it based on an NYT article. I'm pretty sure if the Biden Administration was sending the FCC to close down Fox News, they'd be right there in court on FNC's side. But FNC has as many lawyers as it wants (arguably too many, if you're a woman who's been sexually harassed there), and frankly doesn't need the ACLU to buttress its defenses. Other causes that intersect with civil liberties often have far less ability to do so, and thus need the ACLU far more - and these are typically causes aligned with the less-powerful and unprivileged.
Compare, for example, the similarly-mission-driven but Libertarian-oriented Institute for Justice. They pursue civil-liberties cases across the political spectrum, and are open about how their libertarian values influence what topics and cases they prioritize. Nobody is up in arms about them. But the ACLU is more influential, so (it seems) everyone who's read a couple of polemical articles thinks themselves an expert.
I think there's a lot of interesting things going on in the merging of corporate culture and woke culture, especially as an 'etiquette' for the professional class – I think a lot of the harm of woke excess comes from that merger. Even before the woke movement, corporate trainings were creepy and humiliating, and the current language policing really reminds me of having to say 'challenges' instead of 'problems' and generally contort my speech in a professional context.
I think a lot of this is out of a corporate desire to ensure obedience in employees to minimise risk for the company, and adding wokeness to it gives it a moral underpinning that is harder to rebel against. I always went for a 'cigarette break' (I don't smoke) during energisers at conferences, but you can't do that at a DEI training. Students protesting professors for ridiculous reasons is nothing new; the dominance of HR risk-aversion in university administrations causes those protests to be threatening.
This kind of corporate-approved woke behaviour is becoming a class marker for professionals, and since upper class markers by definition need to exclude the lower classes, I worry that the excesses will become stronger to keep the class barriers high.
By now there is a lot of research showing diversity trainings don't actually increase diversity in the workplace -- this article is five years old, and the trainings haven't gotten any better in the meantime. https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail
Since enough decision-makers read the Harvard Business Review that the reason cannot be lack of awareness, I am forced to come to a more cynical conclusion -- these trainings are an alternative to actually doing anything constructive, like recruiting at HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions. They exist so the institution doesn't get sued -- that is the particular risk that is being minimized -- and can say they "did something." Their effectiveness is entirely irrelevant. The only extent to which they even work as etiquette training is a little bit of language policing, which as Steve points out, can sometimes be useful and even necessary.
HR risk-aversion among university administrators is a direct consequence of thinking of students as "customers." Which in turn is a direct consequence of forcing them to pay so much that they expect luxury treatment and concierge service. Much thornier problem than mere wokeness.
This is an interesting point, about a main driver being corporate culture among professionals. It echoes similar complaints about "political correctness" in the 90s, particularly in an office environment, and campaigns against workplace sexual harassment before and since. That said, another way of describing "the merger of corporate culture and woke culture" might be "actually starting to include black people and poor people in the professional environments that let them have a prosperous and stable career". If this is the price of paying more attention to them - of valuing them - then I hope people are prepared to be accommodating.
It is a need of office environments to be able to (A) hire the best people, (B) make them feel comfortable, and (C) have them collaborate productively. If there are some cultural choices that enhance that, then we should welcome them in general. This is true even if occasionally a guy gets fired for saying "niggardly", at which point his employers get made fun of mercilessly.
I think Noah is right to point out that "in some ways, it's too much", although a lot of his criticisms might boil down to "this is poorly executed" rather than "this began with the wrong motivations". Likewise, I think we can agree that *some* language policing is necessary in any work environment, to keep it from becoming a deeply hostile one (examples should be obvious). So if you occasionally have to stop yourself and consider others' feelings before speaking at work, well, that hardly seems like a huge price to pay. Does it add stress for you? Maybe a little, but that'll go down over time, and meanwhile, it takes away a *huge* amount of stress for those of under-represented backgrounds who will be increasingly working with you. To the extent that the latter effect is bigger than the former, the movement's doing its job well; when the ratio goes way the other way, that's when I'd say we can add another example onto Noah's pile.
Excellent post, as always. My one piece of criticism, though, is about the ACLU bit. Yes, they have had some internal debate about the way forward in an era of wokeness. It’s surely true that “Prominent figures within the organization have argued that the First Amendment is a tool of oppression, since it’s more easily used by the powerful than by the oppressed.” But also, the ACLU literally won the biggest Supreme Court First Amendment case in years yesterday, less than 24 hours before you posted this. Criticisms of the ACLU for going too woke often fail to acknowledge that they are still out there doing great work on the First Amendment every day. That they’re having debate over the scope of their work shouldn’t let us lose sight of the fact that they’re still the most effective defenders of the First Amendment in the courts that we have.
They ARE still doing great work. Which is why I want them to not start doing bad work. The "unfairly favors the accused" guidance was a low point.
I would add a couple more to your list of sources of effective, constructive anti-overreach pushback:
1. John McWhorter. He seems at times much closer to e.g. IDW types than the folks you name, but I think is clear and fair enough in his thinking to draw good distinctions.
2. Heterodox Academy and FIRE. Each in their own way helps promote liberal ideals in academe, which is disproportionately prone to illiberal overreach.
McWhorter is a good and very smart guy, but he doesn't have a lot of credibility with woke folks, and so I think he'll be an important source of ideas (like the idea that wokeness is Protestant-derived), but not a voice that actually convinces woke people to chill.
Another important thinker in that category is Glenn Loury. One thing he said about the dangers of the backlash to wokeness really has me worried, and it's far more dangerous than simply getting Republicans elected (which I mostly shrug at, since I live in a red state and am used to it).
His point is that because whiteness has been a sort of default, for American identity, White Americans have not typically thought of themselves as a racial or ethnic group with an agenda. Obviously they thought a lot about other racial and ethnic groups, but their *own* racial identity was typically only explicitly salient for White nationalists. The average White plumber or mail carrier or accountant was more likely to personally identify with their ethnicity or religion or home state than their race.
But when woke culture or diversity trainings or whatever teach all of us to view everything through a racial lens, White identity becomes more salient for the ordinary person who never thought much about it before. And throughout history, nothing good has ever come from a majority group explicitly seeing itself as an interest group with an agenda, and acting accordingly.
I think that's clearly correct...
I've seen that argument and counter-argument before (that, on one hand, increasing the salience of racial identity can strengthen the power of white racial identity and, on the other hand, that white racial identity clearly exists and influences American politics and it's necessary to talk about that.)
Yesterday I had a related but different thought about the ways in which the rhetoric of partisans on the left and right can combine to weaken American politics. Both sides argue that government privileges certain groups over others. This is factually correct, but I think it creates problems to undermine the idea that government can / should be a neutral force that attempts to apply the same rules to all Americans.
First, it makes it appear normal when politicians are corrupt, secondly it makes each group think, "if government is working on behalf of somebody it should be somebody on my side" and finally it adds to the emotionally charged feeling of unfairness, "I know that somebody is calling the shots; I don't know who it is, but I know I'm getting treated unfairly."
As I say, I'm writing in this thread, because I think it overlaps with much of the discussion about woke overreach, but suggests a slightly different way of looking at the problem.
Good article on an issue it’s hard to write a nuanced article on.
Thanks!!
Joseph Heath has an interesting analysis of a specific illiberal woke tactic: making the claim that certain speech causes harm to my mental health, and should therefore be suppressed.
"It’s not a 'culture of victimhood,' on the contrary, it is more often an act of social aggression, since these performances of injury are typically carried out, not to attract sympathy, but rather punish and control others."
https://theline.substack.com/p/joseph-heath-woke-tactics-are-as
I think language policing is often simply a power flex.
I'm part of the resistance to the excesses of wokeness, and our side is being mischaracterized and stereotyped as Trump-supporting racists and the Fox News crowd. We aren't. We are truly diverse and heterodox, from all backgrounds and political orientations. We have questions, confusions and criticisms that are legitimate to us, and I want to correct the impression that we are all R's and MAGAs. Great article!
I want to share this article, but… paywall. Please could we get a way to share paywalled articles? Perhaps a “pay per share” feature?
I hadn't heard that about James Lindsay. It seems two of the most strident and high-profile anti-woke/IDW activists have gone nuts recently--Bret Weinstein has been spewing COVID conspiracy theories of late. And of course Peterson was never exactly sane. When pushing back is such a social taboo, you're going to get a disproportionate number of disturbing deviants among those who do push back. Pretty sad.
Under #9, I was surprised you didn't mention a far more egregious case of explicit discrimination that happened in the Seattle area: the restriction of vaccine availability by race.
I hope you are right that the overreach can be reined in at the level of mainstream culture, which is finally where that battle is being fought. Unfortunately it's been fought and lost already in a huge number of subcultures, especially online ones. Science fiction and fantasy fandom has been a hardcore woke police state for a decade now (except for a small, and even far more unethical, contingent of alt-right insurgent fans).
"I drew a connection between wokeness and Protestant Christianity, especially the Congregationalist abolitionism of the early 1800s. Seen from this perspective — which others are now picking up on " people have been making this take basically forever! I head it for years! Are you really taking credit for the observation that wokeness is just secularized christianity?
I'm sympathetic to a number of the examples here, but two in particular seem poorly-chosen:
#6: The ACLU. As a card-carrying member, I LIKE that they occasionally go out of their way to defend a soft target of the left, out of a belief that the politically-neutral principles of civil liberties in one case are what are important to defend, rather than following the ever-shifting sands of political fashions. That goes back to Skokie v Illinois, and probably earlier. They do ALL SORTS of important litigation in women's rights, racial discrimination, everything up and down the politically-charged spectrum from abortion to the "license raj". Forgive me if a quick-hit take by the NYT does not persuade me as much as it persuades you - I actually follow them, because my money goes there. I am as unconcerned about their strategic direction as I was when I first started giving them money as a (poor) college student.
#10: Racial sensitivity training. Merely being asked to read a bestselling book explaining some of the emotional drivers behind some of the ongoing cultural forces preserving white supremacy seems like an extremely reasonable way to use the opportunity of a training course. Such courses are not a place to just feel warm and fuzzy and avoid having your preconceived notions challenged. "They made white people feel awkward!" is not a critique; if anything, it's an argument in favor. It may not be an *optimal* course design, but if every white person in America read some (say) Ta-Nehisi Coates, we'd all be better off.
Moreover, including Jews is arguable both ways, and if the goal is to bring an understanding to everyone about cultural forces we all have a default blindness about, it seems reasonable. To quote a recent JWeekly article from Noah's neck of the woods,
“When we, as Jews, only see ourselves (or Israel) as exclusively powerful, we belittle Israel’s security concerns and disregard the real ways antisemitism manifests across the U.S. political spectrum. And when we see ourselves only as vulnerable, we are blind to the significant ways Jews wield real power both in Israel and the United States, translating into policies that cause real suffering.”
https://www.jweekly.com/2021/06/21/berkeleys-housing-crisis-has-nothing-to-do-with-israel/
Sensitivity trainings can find this balance without being bad-faith or antisemitic a la James Lindsay. Seems like a poorly-chosen item to make your case with.
I am confused by your response to Noah's #6. It looks to me like his opinion, and that of recent critics of the ACLU, is precisely that it should stick with the tradition of cases like Skokie vs. Illinois. The critics claim that they have recently drifted away from believing "that the politically-neutral principles of civil liberties in one case are what are important to defend" and toward "following the ever-shifting sands of political fashions". I take no stance on either Noah's opinion or the factual basis of this claim, but your comment is phrased as if you disagree on what the ACLU should do, when you do not. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
I see what you're saying. Perhaps I could have been clearer. My position is:
- The ACLU, having pursued both cases like Brown v Board and cases like Skokie, has almost unique credibility in defending freedom-of-expression matters
- It is true that there is currently a re-evaluation of priorities within the ACLU, around the scope of which particular liberties they defend and relative allocation among them
- In particular, I buy that there is something to the argument that defending the scope of the First Amendment ought to be done in ways that reinforce its ability to be used by those with less power and privilege than by those with more, a consideration which has not, historically, been part of their evaluations
- As a donor, I trust them to make those judgments, far more than I do a second-guessing Noah Smith taking a thin-slice of these discussions and rendering a judgment that it's "overly woke", to say nothing of a NYT writer whose grasp of the nuance involved is generally poor.
If Noah wants to make a case that taking societal context into account when deciding where to pursue litigation is a betrayal of the ACLU's history and mission, he's going to need to do more than just gainsay it based on an NYT article. I'm pretty sure if the Biden Administration was sending the FCC to close down Fox News, they'd be right there in court on FNC's side. But FNC has as many lawyers as it wants (arguably too many, if you're a woman who's been sexually harassed there), and frankly doesn't need the ACLU to buttress its defenses. Other causes that intersect with civil liberties often have far less ability to do so, and thus need the ACLU far more - and these are typically causes aligned with the less-powerful and unprivileged.
Compare, for example, the similarly-mission-driven but Libertarian-oriented Institute for Justice. They pursue civil-liberties cases across the political spectrum, and are open about how their libertarian values influence what topics and cases they prioritize. Nobody is up in arms about them. But the ACLU is more influential, so (it seems) everyone who's read a couple of polemical articles thinks themselves an expert.
I thought that the issue with racial sensitivity trainings is that they don't work and can even make things worse: https://heterodoxacademy.org/blog/diversity-training-doesnt-work-this-might/