Will Stancil has a long twitter thread that at least indirectly defends wokism. But it’s an odd sort of defense, as he doesn’t actually critically evaluate the ideas advocated by the woke, rather he makes two points.
1. Because the woke often challenge the privileged position of white men in our society, white men might have hidden biases that prevent then from fairly evaluating woke ideas.
2. In Stancil’s experience, almost all of the opposition to woke ideas comes from white men.
Stancil doesn’t seem to be trying to convert anyone, as he’s employing exactly the sort of woke reasoning process that the non-woke find so annoying. He is saying that I’m likely to be wrong because of my white male biases. That is, he’s using woke-style reasoning to attack opposition to wokism:
And that’s why I struggle to see any critique of “wokeness” (or “cancel culture” or “political correctness”) as valid, ESPECIALLY coming from a white man: society is almost perfectly constructed to validate and rationalize these particular biases, to accept and spread them.
To me, point #1 above seems obviously true. I might be wrong about wokeness because woke people attack the comfortable position of white men like me. Yes, that’s true. I might be wrong. Now tell me why I am wrong. Or at least offer some evidence. After all, I hold plenty of political views that are not normally seen as benefiting me.
Instead, Stancil uses a weird sort of “appeal to a lack of authority”. During the Enlightenment, intellectuals began attacking appeals to authority, and tried to replace dogma with reason (not always successfully.) The woke often seem to want to replace (often flawed) reason with an appeal to the views of those lacking authority, the downtrodden. They seem to suggest that we should believe them because they are oppressed. But the woke in America are not typically downtrodden. Almost everyone I’ve ever encountered expressing woke ideas is middle class or higher.
Point #2 above might seem to provide at least implicit evidence of white male bias. But Stancil’s claim that opposition to woke excesses is a white male thing is simply wrong. Almost everyone I know is opposed to extreme wokeness. And I live in Orange County, which is only 20% white male.
So who’s living in the epistemic bubble—Will Stancil or me?
Here are some recent poll results:
[O]nly 6% of respondents favored schools assigning white students the status of “privileged” and non-white students the status of “oppressed” – versus 88% opposed, including 78% strongly opposed.
That’s exactly the sort of woke excess that most of us complain about. Here’s another:
When asked whether teachers should present students with multiple perspectives on contentious political and social issues, 87% agreed, compared to 6% who believe teachers should present one perspective that the school believes is correct.
Unwillingness to entertain non-woke ideas is exactly the sort of cancel culture that most of us complain about.
My sense is that many people in universities, elite media companies and corporate HR divisions live in a sort of bubble, and have no idea that their views are considered absurd by at least 90% of the country
In fairness, polls show much more than 6% support for some of the less contentious ideas of progressives on race, gender, sexual preference, etc. But when people like me complain about the woke, we have precisely two things in mind—excessive focus on identity and excessive cancel culture. That’s it. Unfortunately, progressives who think the woke have occasionally gone too far (such as Matt Yglesias), as well as libertarians like me, are lumped in with extreme right wingers that actually do have appalling views on race and gender. It’s analogous to the 1930s, when anti-communists included both sensible liberals and fascists.
PS. Matt Yglesias is an example of how opposition to wokeness also comes from people who are not white men—from “people of color.” You might reply, “Oh, come on, Yglesias is basically a white man.” But to the woke he’s a Hispanic, er sorry . . . a Latinx. And that’s part of the problem with identity politics—its (unscientific) insistence that gender identity is fluid while racial identity is carved in stone.
PPS. I sometimes wonder if the woke movement is secretly funded by a right wing billionaire, as it’s driving millions of Hispanic and Asian voters into the GOP. “You woke people say it’s simply a question of black and white. OK, well then we’re white.”
READER COMMENTS
Brian
Jun 13 2022 at 9:48am
You wrote that wokeness has an “excessive focus on identity and excessive cancel culture”. Maybe wokeness is like PTSD which has avoidance as the response to the cues of stress. The cancellation is the avoidance. The trauma was caused by the past excessive focus of others on identity of the stressed.
Floccina
Jun 13 2022 at 10:12am
That would have to go both ways. IMHO normal humans (not mental ill) tend to be a bit paranoid and so one would assume that groups that see themselves as separate at all will tend to think things are stacked against them especially if they are a minority. In fact we do see this paranoia among the right also in the fear of being replaced, whatever that means.
Floccina
Jun 13 2022 at 10:15am
Also the very woke ignore all areas where blacks do better than whites.
Kevin
Jun 13 2022 at 12:04pm
I believe that the absurd views put forward by the woke left will come to completely dominate opinion within 2-3 generations. There is very little room for dissent or backlash even now.
What began as a pretentious game to fake ‘allyship’ and win virtue points is going to become the mainstream narrative.
We’ve already reached a point where for most people, it is no longer worth speaking the plain, honest truth about issues relating to race and gender. If people are going to be punished this harshly when only 6% of the population support this nonsense, imagine how bad it is going to get when it’s more like 60%?
The mainstream media, universities, and corporate America seem very likely to have their way on this.
P.S. To further support the 6% claim…about 15 million to 26 million people have participated in BLM protests, according to the New York Times. If we call it 20 million…20 million/330 million is just about 6%.
Scott Sumner
Jun 13 2022 at 12:21pm
Many people in the BLM protests are not even part of the 6%.
Jon Murphy
Jun 13 2022 at 4:34pm
Additionally, there is overlap between BLM protestors and lockdown protestors.
Kevin
Jun 13 2022 at 5:52pm
I suppose the key to all of this is woke vs. woke extremist.
nobody.really
Jun 14 2022 at 11:35pm
Wow–great find, Murphy.
Monte
Jun 14 2022 at 4:29pm
This, too, will pass. The cancel culture movement of today is strikingly similar to the counter culture revolution of the sixties, the latter culminating in an “age of extremes” and a legacy of little social significance. I suspect this revolution, as well, will ultimately fall victim to its own excesses.
Michael Rulle
Jun 13 2022 at 1:15pm
Given that the single-digit minority re: “wokeness” seems to rule in most institutions, it raises the question as to how they do so. Maybe they do not—and it is a myth that they do. I really don’t know.
It is impossible for ideas with less than 10% approval to last very long (well, maybe not impossible–that was the Nazi approval rating in 1927-29). Kevin’s intuition may well be right—-but I don’t think so. Wokeness just seems like random noise to me used by politicians and the polls you quote seem to confirm it.
My observational evidence is watching advertisements—-regardless of the product, there are always whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and many interracial relationships—–and the subliminal message is they are all Americans who should buy the same, cars, investment advisors, toothpaste, insurance, and watch the same sports; etc.
I generally feel optimistic watching America “do its thing” hawking products—-this was Marcuse’s worst nightmare—at least he understood why he would lose.
Rajat
Jun 14 2022 at 2:14am
I’m curious as to why you think that any wokeness in corporate HR departments ends there. In large firms, HR is responsible for screening or signing-off on most lower and mid-level recruitment and in dealing with complaints about staff behaviour. Particularly at a time when staff are hard to find at previous nominal wages, HR departments have a lot of influence on how management presents a firm to potential recruits. Perhaps it depends on what you think of as ‘woke’ or ‘extreme wokeness’. You say for you it’s “excessive focus on identity and excessive cancel culture”. What do you make of the incredibly rapid and now near-ubiquitous adoption of pronouns on corporate signature blocks or the fairly open adoption of affirmative action in especially senior recruitment and promotions as indicators of the importance (and value) of identity? What about the James Damore controversy as an example of cancel culture?
Scott Sumner
Jun 14 2022 at 1:35pm
I didn’t say wokeness ends in HR departments; I said that’s where most of the true believers reside. The rest just sort of play along, but don’t actually believe the nonsense (for the most part.)
I have not followed the pronoun issue, so I cannot comment. What is the debate actually about?
Yes, the Damore case is a good example of cancel culture.
Rajat
Jun 14 2022 at 4:28pm
Scott, you can be so insightful about the human condition and yet your innocence from ‘real life’ sometimes becomes starkly apparent. It may be true that true believers reside in HR departments but plenty outside also believe or credibly pretend to. The pronouns issue, as Jon Murphy indicates, is managers stating up front which pronouns they prefer to be referred to by. Apart from the non-binary, most self-identifying men would list “he/him” on their signature blocks and personal corporate profiles and most self-identifying women would list “she/her”. It’s more or less mandatory now. Check out LinkedIn sometime.
Everett
Jun 15 2022 at 11:31am
There’s some pushback against mandatory pronouns in that it forces closeted non-binary and trans people to potentially out themselves.
Jon Murphy
Jun 14 2022 at 2:31pm
I think that actually support’s Scott’s point of “The rest just sort of play along, but don’t actually believe the nonsense (for the most part.).” It varies from firm to firm, but usually signature block requirements come down from HR or someone else internally. If HR mandates it, then there is nothing one can do. The proliferation says more about the relative power of the woke versus the non-woke, coupled with the costs and benefits of resistance.
Take me, for example. One of my jobs mandates pronouns in signature blocks. So, mine says “him/his/His Imperial Majesty”*. Could I fight this? Yes. But I simply do not care enough. It would be incorrect to lump me in with the woke simply because the costs of resistance far outweigh the benefits to me.
*I believe in malicious compliance. I am waiting for someone to say something, but no one has.
Philo
Jun 14 2022 at 10:47am
I don’t think the woke typically “suggest that we should believe them because they are oppressed.” As you point out, “the woke in America are not typically downtrodden,” and this is so obvious that few of them would pretend otherwise. I think they are suggesting that we should believe them because they are speaking in the interests of the oppressed: they have an opinion, arrived at by (Observation and) Reason, about who is oppressed and where the interests of these people lie and what means would be effective in promoting these interests. (But if we are white men, we probably will not believe them, anyway; and I wonder if white women deserve our confidence. Come to think of it, PoC are often subject to “false consciousness.” Wokesters are a saving remnant, who alone see the light!)
nobody.really
Jun 14 2022 at 3:49pm
Through the process of hierarchical cluster analysis, the “Hidden Tribes of America” study identified seven ideological clusters, or “tribes,” among US citizens. The most liberal tribe, dubbed “Progressive Activist,” represents 8% of the population. They are 80% white, twice as likely to have a college degree than most Americans, disproportionately young, and apparently lack the common human tendency to avoid conflict. (Likewise, 6% of the population are members of the “Devoted Conservatives” tribe. They’re disproportionately old, rich, secure, white, male, and opposed to compromise.)
These findings were largely corroborated by the Pew Research Center and others. The Pew Center went on to note how these tiny outlier groups drive the national narratives about political topics. They’re disproportionately likely to vote and protest—and they’re the majority of people discussing politics on social media.
Thus, this is some degree of symmetry in this dynamic. However, the “Devoted Conservative” tribe tends to express ethno-nationalist views that are self-consciously self-interested. In contrast, the Progressive Activists tend to express views on behalf of groups (ethnic minorities, blue-collar workers, etc.) who are not actually members of their tribe. Famously, Hispanic people don’t care for the term “Latinx.” Black and Hispanic Americans are more religious and less open to LGBT themes than Progressive Activists. Blue-collar people are much more drawn to populist Republican/Trumpian themes than are Progressive Activists. In short, when Progressive Activists promote their preferences over the preferences of ethnic minorities and blue-collar workers, they could be criticized for “asserting their privilege.”
Conversely….
So Sumner thinks that teachers should teach racist and sexist views on par with meritocratic views? Should teach all creation myths on par with the theory of evolution? Should teach the labor theory of value on par with supply and demand? Should teach the theory that Nazi death camps were a myth on par with the theory that Nazi death camps were real? Should teach that Trump won the 2020 election on par with the theory that Biden won? Should teach that horse de-wormer is equally good as vaccines for providing protection against Covid?
In one sense, sure–why not present it all? But here’s why not: Schools do not have infinite resources. Every hour spent presenting “alternative facts” is another hour taken away from the task of presenting actual facts. Surely on an econ-minded blog, people can appreciate the idea of budget constraints and opportunity cost.
So I find the issue “whether teachers should present students with multiple perspectives on contentious political and social issues” under-specified. Perhaps a better question would be, “In a typical 4:22 school day, how many hours of your child’s education should be dedicated to presenting theories that your teacher finds to be a waste of time?”
Henri Hein
Jun 15 2022 at 1:11pm
You are using an unexpected definition of “contentious political and social issues.” Sure, for every issue, we have some crackpot contrarians. That does not make all issues ‘contentious.’ The presence of flat-earthers does not make the theory of gravity ‘contentious.’ I can’t speak for Scott, but I took ‘contentious’ to mean issues where mainstream blocks disagree, including experts. Things like minimum wage or health care reform.
nobody.really
Jun 15 2022 at 2:32pm
So we agree, the question was (and is) under-specified.
More to the point, the question was poorly crafted–or skillfully crafted to produce a pre-determined outcome. When people were asked the question “Should teachers present students with multiple perspectives on contentious political and social issues?” do you imagine they were thinking “Yes–but, of course, not with respect to the crackpot ideas that *I* endorse”? Obviously the question is designed to pander to the respondent’s ego, because nobody regards their own ideas as crackpot ideas.
That said, let’s get down to brass tacks: Most Americans believe in god or some supernatural power, 34% of American adults reject the theory of evolution, and roughly 35% say that to 2020 election was fraudulent. One man’s “crackpot” is another man’s GOP base voter.
Jon Murphy
Jun 15 2022 at 2:52pm
That’s neither what the poll question nor what Scott says. There are many non-woke views that are meritocratic.
Mark Z
Jun 14 2022 at 3:50pm
I think it’s about as likely that epistemic privilege goes in the opposite direction: that the ‘oppressor’ has a more accurate view of oppression than the oppressed. I see no good reason why white people/men would would be less intellectually capable of ascertaining whether or to what extent they’re oppressing others. Certainly, their material interests would bias them against acknowledging it if they were oppressing black people/women (I don’t think they, or I guess, we, are, in 21st century America), but then so to would black people or women’s interests bias them in favor claiming to be victims of white/make oppression whether they are or not. The bias is symmetric.
The odd thing is, no one seems to believe in the epistemic advantage of victimhood outside of race/gender politics. I’ve never seen anyone argue that we should stack juries with people who have been (or claim to have been) victims of the crime of which the defendant is accused. Their victimhood would be seen as conferring bias rather a better overall understanding of issue, just as stacking juries with people previously accused of the crime would.
Everett
Jun 15 2022 at 11:42am
Empathy biases are well known, and at least somewhat researched. They’re also made fun of. I recall at least a couple of comedies where a bully indicates that their bullying made the victim stronger or more resilient.
Aren’t victim statements at least somewhat considered in legal judgements? I recall this being the case in the Netflix series Unbelievable.
Everett
Jun 15 2022 at 3:19pm
And the most salient, and often overlooked point, is that biases aren’t one-party-to-one-party. The so-called ‘institutional biases’ are typically a third party preferencing between two other parties. This grants a privilege to one of the parties, and a detriment to the other party, with neither of those two parties directly interacting.
Mark Z
Jun 16 2022 at 4:27pm
Victim’s statements – beyond factual things like their ability to identify their attacker – really shouldn’t be considered in assessing guilt or innocence, only perhaps sentencing once guilt is established.
nobody.really
Jun 15 2022 at 1:58pm
Did you ever read the Declaration of Independence? The bulk of the document consists of the framers complaining about how the Crown has victimized them.
Mark Z
Jun 16 2022 at 4:16pm
Claiming to be a victim of a transgression does not mean claiming one’s purported victimhood confers authority. The framers laid out their case that the colonies were victims of British oppression under the belief that such oppression would be readily visible to anyone with sound judgment, irrespective of whether they too were victims of British oppression.
“You’re oppressing me, here’s how, and here’s my evidence” is one thing. “You’re oppressing me, but only I can see it because oppressors are blind to their own oppression, so you’ll have to take my word for it and defer to me here” is quite another.
anon/portly
Jun 15 2022 at 7:23pm
This is an insightful post, but I would argue that maybe Stancil is being given too much credit.
Notice how throughout the thread Stancil uses the words “us” or “our” a lot – he is talking about white men and, as he acknowledges, he is a white man.
But I think he’s being dishonest. Consider tweet 7:
White men have tended to see talk of race and gender as threatening, and have wanted to rule it out or find ways to minimize this talk.
That’s not necessarily because of rank sexism or misogyny but because pointing out our social position clouds our claim to “reason.”
In the second part, when he says “pointing out our social position clouds our claim to reason,” I think it is fair to believe that, as he claims, he is discussing a group (white men) he is part of. But in the first sentence he is discussing a group (white men who want to “rule out” or “minimize” talk of race and gender) he is not part of. This is dishonest (or maybe, to be fair, poorly thought out) rhetoric.
This switch goes on throughout the thread – sometimes he’s talking about white men in general, but sometimes about a specific subgroup of white men. Notice in that second sentence he doesn’t say “some white men see” (which is his real argument), he says “white men have tended to see” which essentially elides the underlying dispute at issue between the white men who exhibit this tendency (the non-woke) and the white men who don’t (like himself).
I think it’s this dishonest argumentation early on that lets him reward himself later, like this (Tweet 22):
As someone who is a member of the group and who also feels that intuitive “You know what I’m talking about” pull, let me suggest this: it’s a phantom. What we feel is not a real trend; it’s the siren call of our own social position biases, embedded deep in our psyches.
Stancil is not just explaining why the views of his ideological opponents are wrong, he’s also wrong! (Except that he’s right that he and you are wrong about wokeness, while you’re wrong about wokeness and you’re also wrong in not realizing that he’s right that you and he are wrong about wokeness).
It gets worse, I think – tweet 25:
And that’s why I struggle to see any critique of “wokeness” (or “cancel culture” or “political correctness”) as valid, ESPECIALLY coming from a white man: society is almost perfectly constructed to validate and rationalize these particular biases, to accept and spread them.
After 24 tweets about a special attribute that explains why white men are mistaken about woke ideas, suddenly it doesn’t really matter if you’re a white man or not. Such is the overwhelming might of this or that “tendency” of white men.
Scott Sumner
Jun 16 2022 at 2:33pm
Yes, the argument “other white people are irrational but I am not” requires a lot more evidence than he provides.
Steve
Jun 16 2022 at 2:43am
Scott, you are in denial. The poll results you link to are scary.
How about this:
25% said it was somewhat or very important for schools to “teach students that their race is the most important thing about them”.
That is huge, and this is a national poll. These racists (for that is what the wokes are) are clearly in majority in key coastal areas, school, colleges and institutions. They will shape the future.
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