Deconstructing Wokeness: Five Incompatible Ways We're Thinking About the Same Thing
Currents
The term “wokeism” is thrown around a lot these days, but what exactly does it mean? Merriam-Webster defines “woke” as “Aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” That definition sounds lovely, but it doesn’t say much about the specific nature of that awareness. For one thing, so much hinges upon what we mean by “social justice” because how people think about social justice determines how they perceive “wokeness.” The positive-seeming dictionary definition of “woke” also doesn’t account for the evolution the word has undergone — from a niche term in 20th century black activist circles to a momentarily trendy way to identify with left-wing social justice movements of the 2010s to a political Rorschach test. Today, the term “woke” is used largely as a pejorative by its critics and has all but been abandoned by those who are “Actively attentive to issues of social justice.” To complicate matters further, there are multiple ways to support or oppose social justice based on the different values and motivations of various political factions. What is sorely needed is some clarity.
If we are to make any progress, it would help to first come to a consensus about what we are discussing. In that spirit, it’s important to understand the different perceptions of social justice and, therefore, wokeness.
TWO KINDS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE:
Liberal Social Justice (LSJ) can be summed up as the belief in the equality of individuals: equal treatment under the law, regardless of sex, race, sexuality, gender identity, religion, etc. This is what “social justice” traditionally meant, and it was how most abolitionists, civil rights campaigners, and LGBT rights activists used and understood the term, despite some internal disagreements within these movements. That is, right up until the “Great Awokening” of 2014, when it took on a new meaning, thus requiring a distinction.
Critical Social Justice (CSJ), by contrast, is a far-left ideology aimed at achieving what some call “equity”, or equal outcomes. It confidently views all social and economic disparities between groups as purely the result of discrimination and systemic bigotry. It advocates corrective social engineering policies such as quotas, preferential treatment, and overt government discrimination in favor of certain groups — even though this violates the liberal principle of equal treatment. CSJ also views existing institutions as irredeemably bigoted and therefore in need of dismantling, which it aims to do through relentlessly criticizing, or “problematizing”, virtually every facet of society, with a particular focus on language.
We here at QM support liberal social justice. The critical approach is a threat to equality and human rights, including LGBT rights, because of how it inspires backlashes and undermines the core principles of the Civil Rights movement. CSJ embodies “wokeness” in its negative and correctly pejorative sense. The only consistent and effective way to champion LSJ — actually being “awake” and constructively rectifying injustices — is by opposing CSJ as well. In doing so, it is crucial to persuade other liberals to abandon the critical approach and thus denude it of its influence. We understand that this comes with challenges. Shining a spotlight on CSJ can create confusion, panic, and even resentment, as people reflexively dig in and defend the ideas that have given them a sense of identity, belonging, and pride.
(For more about the difference between LSJ and CSJ, see here.)
FIVE CONCEPTIONS OF “WOKE”:
1. The Liberal Conception: “Wokeness” equals Critical Social Justice.
“Liberal” here refers to those who believe broadly in the foundational principles of philosophical liberalism (not the modern US colloquial version per se, which refers to people left-of-center or aligned with the Democratic Party). Believers in Liberal Social Justice oppose Critical Social Justice because CSJ entails violating the principle of equal treatment in an undemocratic and even authoritarian attempt to dismantle and re-engineer society. Liberals, therefore, tend to use “woke” pejoratively only when referring to CSJ, which serves liberal interests by emphasizing that liberalism is distinct from “wokeism”, thereby distancing it from CSJ’s failings, including its propensity to engender backlash. This liberal conception is the most commonly held conception of wokeness, spanning across the political spectrum. In a 2022 poll, 78% of US respondents expressed agreement with the liberal statement, "We should aim for equality of opportunities, not equality of outcomes."
Despite its popularity, this conception struggles to influence the levers of political power at the moment because its adherents are dispersed across the political landscape and also due to partisan dynamics. In party politics, overall societal attitudes sadly often take a backseat to the will of the mobilized base, from whom most of the money and reliable votes come. In these small circles, the liberal cohort is currently outnumbered.
2. The Dissonant Conception: “Wokeness” doesn’t exist (but it’s good if it does).
Some people who think of themselves as liberal uncritically support both Liberal and Critical Social Justice, even though they are incompatible with one another. In some cases, this is because they don’t understand the difference between the two or are unaware that there is more than one school of thought on social justice to begin with. This is usually born out of a well-intentioned attempt to be “on the right side of history” without having delved very deeply into modern social justice movements and how many of them differ from the version with which they may have grown up. For others, any differences or contradictions between LSJ and CSJ pale in comparison to the need to resist the hard right. To them, the fine print is less important than the primary objective of fighting the right, and they see a blanket advocacy of all versions of social justice as providing a more unified front against it.
As such, the Dissonant Conception either willfully or unconsciously ignores the conflict between the liberal and critical approaches to social justice. Those who hold it are not orthodox believers in all of the doctrines of CSJ, but they nevertheless embody its general “orthopraxy” — its code of conduct. They agreeably go with the flow of CSJ, often without knowing the finer points of what it espouses, either to avoid being perceived as “on the wrong side” and thus shunned by their in-group, or as part of a strategy to oppose the political right. Such people account for a large portion of CSJ advocates. They mistakenly think that any talk of “wokeism” is simply reactionary backlash from right-wing bigots who oppose racial equality, gender equality, or LGBT rights.
The dissonant cohort is drawn predominantly from folks left-of-center, usually partisans of left-aligned political parties, often middle-aged or older, including some self-identified “progressives.” As they are concentrated within a much narrower band of the political spectrum, they have more influence because they make up a large part of those active in organizing left-leaning parties. This group’s conflation of both understandings of social justice defines most of the debate around “wokeness” and feeds red meat to the regressive and Marxist conceptions. Many dissonants set out to oppose the right, but in backing critical social justice, they provide social conservatives with needless ammunition and have invested massive amounts of energy in a political movement at odds with their own core values.
3. The Regressive Conception: “Wokeness” equals any social justice and is always bad.
This group opposes both Liberal and Critical Social Justice. Therefore, they equate both approaches with the pejorative use of “wokeism”, usually without any nuance. The black-and-white rhetoric they employ, which conflates all forms of social justice with the worst excesses of CSJ, serves to feed an engineered backlash that by design sweeps up LSJ along with it. Anti-wokeism, for this group, is a polite cover for old-fashioned bigotry — the perfect opening to reinject the same regressive attacks on liberal pluralism they’ve been harping on for decades. This cohort includes much of the Christian Right, as well as some who see themselves as “true conservatives” or “paleoconservatives” (harkening back to pre-liberal conservatism). Some even identify as theocrats or fascists. As QM’s Jamie Paul noted, “Critical Social Justice is the best thing to happen to the Christian Right since the Cold War, because it has made them relevant again.”
Make no mistake: this group is very different from liberal critics of CSJ. They are often genuinely racist, sexist, and homophobic partisans, feeding off the chaos and confusion of the culture wars, drawn almost exclusively from the hard right and right-wing populism. While they may be greatly outnumbered in society, they enjoy an outsized influence within right-leaning political parties — especially in places where disenfranchised, white, working-class voters dominate elections.
4. The Critical Conception: “Wokeness” is a good thing (but only Critical Social Justice qualifies).
This school of thought opposes Liberal Social Justice and only supports Critical Social Justice. In keeping with the tenets of CSJ, the critical cohort doesn’t believe that objective truth exists (postmodernism), instead favoring narratives of identity, power, domination, and oppressor versus oppressed (standpoint epistemology). CSJ cherry-picks the trendy bits from modern socialism about “eating the rich” and banning billionaires, then mixes and matches them with postmodernism and intersectionality, identity-based thinking, which subordinates the role of class to one of many factors in the oppression Olympics. They explicitly argue that women, POC, and LGBT people must make common cause with the working class by supporting intersectional socialism — with left-thinking white men as dutiful allies, of course. To the critical cohort, any tool for dismantling liberalism will do. They don’t care about logical consistency (which they regard as a tool of “cisheteropatriarchal white supremacy”) because they are utterly convinced that the status quo is rotten to the core and must be completely dismantled by any means. They are much more philosophically literate than the dissonant group, and they tend to proudly identify as “woke” (by which they mean awake to “critical” attitudes toward liberalism). The liberal approach to social justice is disparaged as naïve at best and a cynical distraction from “the work” of critical activism at worst.
This group makes up less than 10% of society, comprised mostly of the far-left or “progressive” wings of left-leaning political parties. They leverage the more numerous unwitting advocates of the dissonant conception, though if history is any guide, these extremists will turn on their confused liberal allies at the first opportunity.
5. The Marxist Conception: “Wokeness” is capitalist propaganda.
To traditional Marxists, “wokeism” is the specific version of Critical Social Justice supported by the dissonant cohort. Marxist antipathy for CSJ is directed only at the dissonant conception, which they deride as “woke capitalism.” The Marxist attitude toward the critical cohort is entirely different. While they have much in common in economics, traditional Marxists diverge from the critical conception on matters of priorities. For traditional Marxists, the road to progress always runs through class-based thinking — economic justice is social justice, and class equity is equity. Nevertheless, the critical faction are still socialists of a kind, or close enough, so traditional Marxists generally don’t make major adversaries of them. The dissonants, however, are capitalists, a sin that Marxists cannot tolerate.
Some self-identified “conservatives” (of the regressive conception) also invoke “woke capitalism” because they share Marxism’s hatred of classical liberalism and its anti-elite populism, albeit for different reasons. Most traditional Marxists regard liberalism, with its emphasis on individual rights, as the enemy of their vision for the collective good, which requires greater subordination of the individual to the group.
Traditional Marxists are minuscule in numbers but overrepresented and very noisy on social media. They generally hate all major political parties. Many don’t vote at all, and they seem to have virtually zero governmental power. Their online influence, however, can exaggerate the popularity of their views and influence the conversation more than it should.
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So what does this all mean, exactly? Are we doomed to speak past one another on this subject? Is there any hope of finding common ground? Yes, there absolutely is. Despite being at odds with one another (for the time being) about the trendy “critical” approach to social justice, both the liberal and dissonant cohorts support the more moderate Liberal Social Justice. Together, this liberal coalition is both large and powerful, as evidenced by the simple fact of how much progress we have made on issues such as same-sex marriage, LGBT acceptance, attitudes about interracial marriage, and civil protections from discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexuality, or gender identity. Liberal social justice won these victories, and it’s how we will preserve and expand our freedoms as well.
To these ends, it is imperative that the dissonant group be persuaded to abandon critical social justice, not only because they are an indispensable part of the liberal coalition but because they are the only cohort in need of persuading who are actually persuadable, as they already have a foot in the liberal door, so to speak. In doing so, we must address both their concerns and motivations. We must clearly communicate the problems of the critical approach and its incompatibility with liberalism without being perceived as right-wingers. We must make the case that, in fact, CSJ ultimately serves only to weaken LSJ and empower the far-right. We must spell out the ways in which CSJ works against the stated liberal values held by the dissonant faction.
The cohorts who support critical social justice, as well as those who reject all forms of social justice, are small. CSJ is not popular. Regressive social conservatism is not popular. And Marxism is not popular. It is only by conflating liberal and critical social justice as the same thing that the far-right can muster the support necessary to deal serious damage to human, civil, and LGBT rights in the West. By shoring up the liberal coalition and jettisoning CSJ, we can take a potent rallying cry away from our opponents and strip CSJ of the bulk of its adherents in a single stroke. There may be little point in trying to persuade dyed-in-the-wool extremists to abandon their illiberal dogmas, but we don’t have to. Liberal Social Justice has prevailed without them before, and it can do so again. With the detour of CSJ behind us, we can resume the work of preserving and expanding liberty at home, as well as spreading it to less liberal parts of the world where people still suffer under far worse oppression. Then, and only then, can we accurately and honestly call ourselves “woke” in the positive, liberal sense.
Published Mar 2, 2023
Updated Mar 5, 2023
