People who say woke is meaningless are evasive about this intra-Left conflict. They point to people such as Robert Tombs and David Abulafia, who will gladly write columns for the Telegraph excoriating the woke Left. Tombs will (falsely) claim in the Times that Churchill was not a racist. But where are the academics who will argue that Churchill was a racist but also a great man? When is the Guardian going to publish that?
Such people do exist, but if they think any criticism of woke politics will put them in the same camp as people like Tombs, they’ll prefer to stew away quietly. Many of the same people who bemoan the divisive nature of the culture wars are doing absolutely nothing to make it more nuanced. Claiming that certain figures from the past who were racist were not in fact racist is an extreme view; but so is denying that some of these racist people should not be considered heroic or virtuous or praiseworthy in other respects.
In English departments, many academics do not want to be labelled as racists, so they publicly acquiesce to calls to decolonise the curriculum, but many of them are, again, quietly sceptical. They value the principle of diversity; they also subscribe to a humanist approach to literature that affirms great books can’t be wholly reduced to politics. They love equality. But they also love pluralism and honest intellectual discussion.
They know these things should not conflict with each other — we can consider the politics of a text without viewing that text entirely through the lens of politics; we can value both diversity and frank intellectual debate. But they live in an atmosphere in which they are in conflict. And so they do nothing about it because they don’t want to face a backlash.
This is why saying and using ‘woke’ is important. It brings what is obscure into the open. It allows the debate to be had within the liberal-Left, where it needs to be had. It is clarifying.
But many (here, here, here, here, here, and here) argue that cancel culture doesn’t really exist. It’s just a Right-wing talking point. To which I would respond: how do you know? There is so much self-censorship going on that people are not being honest about what they believe about certain sensitive issues. They don’t have the wealth or power of J.K. Rowling; they are scared of losing their jobs. That is cancel culture.
In another liberal-Left organisation, the Labour Party, the tensions are revealed by a poll last year which found that only 25% of Labour Party voters support defunding the police — one key policy of woke ideology. Even among 18-24 year olds, the wokest demographic, it is only 44%. When asked whether we should view society’s problems through the lens of white privilege, the poll also found that only 29% of Labour voters agreed. More than half think “woke practices” have gone too far.
Of course, people have complex views. One might support taking the knee, believe statues of certain slave traders like Edward Colston should be taken down, and believe that we should learn more about slavery and colonialism at school, but such people might still be critical of other aspects of woke ideology. This is why they would be reluctant to describe themselves as anti-woke. To do so might imply opposition to all those things. But they could also describe themselves as non-woke or woke-sceptical; the fact that wokeness can be ambiguous does not mean it is a meaningless term. It just means it can be ambiguous.
Wokeness has a family resemblance to other progressive ideologies — but it is also distinct. Many socialists are non-woke; their analysis is rooted in class politics rather than identity. I also think it’s lazy to simply describe wokeness as liberalism. It is often profoundly illiberal. If woke-deniers think the Right is often misusing the term, they should take ownership of it. Simply saying ‘woke’ is a meaningless term, without offering a more attractive alternative, is a form of evasion.
One reason why this matters on the liberal-Left is because the vast majority of 18-24 year olds now back liberal-Left parties. There is an old adage that people become more conservative as they get older. But if the changes in people’s lives which lead them to become conservative, such as owning property and having kids, are becoming increasingly rare, then that transition to conservatism might not come to pass for many young people. This is why the battle between the woke Left and the non-woke or woke-sceptical Left is especially salient. It has repercussions for all of us.
Questions such as: what is a woman, how should we examine our past, how we should think about race in an increasingly diverse society, and how we should think about free speech and tolerance are all absolutely key for trying to make sense of the nature of public discourse today and in the future. They ultimately boil down to the question of who we are, and what we should do about it.
This conflict will not disappear. Woke is here to stay; even if you flinch at using the word. We have to adjust ourselves to this reality.
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