Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America
John McWhorter
Today USA is fast becoming an Orwellian dystopia where Mothers are called Birthing Persons and men win women's races by "identifying" as women. A College Women's Swimming team faced this problem and the Twitter mob came out in strength yelling "Transphobic Bigots" which quickly sent the challengers scurrying for cover. Welcome to the Brave New World of Woke America.
John McWhorter is a Professor of Linguistics teaching in an Ivy League University and is Black. Both these details are important as the book under discussion will be trashed by white liberals had it been written by a white person, worse he would have been called racist bigot by a lynch mob of raving wokes. The author prefers to call the new leaders of the emerging socio-political ideology in USA as Elect not woke as the term irritates them no end. Let it be remembered that the term woke first circulated in black communities as a catch all term for a person with a perceived heightened sense of racial justice, a social justice warrior in short.
Is Wokeism a New Religion. The author argues that the new ideology has all the markings of a new religion or cult. Its Bible White Fragility and its priests a whole army of well educated "corporate" "wall street" millennials who imagine that their earrings in six figure salary is the outcome of "white privilege" and made to atone for their success by supporting the Black Lives Matter and other organizations that are in the forefront of this socio-political movement. Arguing that this movement is a religion with the Elect as the a Synod whose members are blessed with the great wisdom of sniffing out systemic racism wherever that ugly beast resides. American Universities, particularly the soft disciplines like the Social Sciences have already embraced the woke ideology without much critical discussion. There can be no discussion as the Commissars of the New Left have already decreed that anyone questioning their statements or opinions is a racist and will face the consequences of his/her actions in the digital public square when the Twitter mob will be incited to "tar and feather" the offending person.
The New cult of Wokeism has created a new crime Thought Crime. We had heard of Thought Crimes only in the dystopia of Orwell's 1984. No. Thought crimes are here and have consequences. The author has discussed a few instances in which journalists and writers, even teachers in schools and universities have faced serious punishment for expressing opinions or dissent against the ruling orthodoxy of the New Left. One unfortunate soul tweeted that All Lives Matter and that was enough to bring the enlightened ones out in all their fiendish hunger. The tweet wad disrespectful to George Floyd was the alleged reason for the collective howl of protest. And like in Orwell's 1984, a new language is slowly being fashioned to condition thought and police the boundaries of the thinkable. In the social practice of Wokeism, accusation is followed by condemnation and cancellation and no one wants to face that. USA is going through a nightmare of guilt and there is no hope of redemption in the Church of Wokedom, as the author repeatedly points. Being white marks you out for eternal damnation. The sins of Slavery rest on the shoulders of the whites as they have inherited country built on "systemic racism".
The over politicisation of American society along racial lines is already eroding civil and constitutional liberties and rights. Though the writer does not discuss it, I would like to point out that the recent threat of the Department of Justice to investigate parents who show dissent about Critical Race Theory will be investigated as "domestic terrorists" under the Patriots Act. A chilling threat but one that the corporate media is quite comfortable with. During the Nazi era in Germany, neighbours were encouraged to spy on each other and we have the American Establishment openly aligning itself with those who want to use state apparatus to stamp down parental concern for a good education for their children.
Critical Race Theory as a pedagogic tool is unfit for a school curriculum as it is based on fake history and false science. Project 1619 which wants to project USA as being tainted by slavery from the very inception tries to argue that the American War of Independence was fought to preserve Slavery. Nothing is further form the truth. As a Historian, I can concede that by winning the war a new lease of life was given to Slavery but the purpose was not to protect the peculiar institution. As the author points out, it is futile to condemn Washington and Jefferson today as "slaveholders" as that was the moral standard of the day. This argument is not quite correct. There were quite a few eighteenth century philosophers and I can name Edmund Burke who had condemned the Atlantic Slave Trade. So the explanation for the institutionalization of Slavery has to be sought in the colonies themselves.
This work is a sensible critique of a growing movement and it seems that the push back against woke thought has begun.
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