The only left-wing hero alive today is Michelle Obama. No one else can unite the left. Once she is the nominee, our left-wing Tower of Babel will collapse and be replaced by ebullient confidence.
7
Let me try again. The woke candidates have already won, because no Democrat can get elected without the strong support of the Warren/Sanders/Sarsour/AOC/Tlaib/Omar anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist, anti-separation-of-powers wing of the party. This is somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of all Democratic likely voters. There is no GOP equivalent to such intra-party radicalism not being derided and denounced by the party mainstream.
6
“Woke” is more like “stuck in a nightmare” of your own making that you can’t wake up from - where no progress has been made in 200 years and we all hate each other with hyper focus on our differences identities.
The new woke is just being stuck. We need rather to stop focusing on differences. yes Appreciate our Diversity, but Celebrate and Focus on our Unity!
16
I see a lot of comments correlating wokeness with political correctness. That is an aberration. Just read Coates or Harriot. Wokeness is the understanding that racism isn't about verbiage, its the bias that is and has been baked into our institutions since they were founded, and continues to oppress people of color even when the faces of those institutions speak in politically correct terms. Thus it is a rejection of political correctness for its own sake and a belief that racism must be rooted out of our institutions where possible, and where it is not those institutions must be rebuilt from the ground up. Redlining did not require the n-word, underfunded schools in poor neighborhoods are not improved by policing language, and liberals and conservatives alike acquit cops and those who "stand their ground" when they shoot unarmed black men.
15
I am skeptical of wokeness, but also skeptical of it being necessarily a candidate breaker.
It seems to me that the Democrats, and Republicans too, have allowed their presidential primaries to be hijacked and turned into a media circus, leaving everyone involved overloaded and burned out. It is beyond stupid that the Democrats set this mess up for themselves for 2020 just four years after the Republicans following the same foolish path ended with the Trump as a candidate!
What is need to give wokeness, not to mention sensible candidates with practical and tangible policy proposals, a better chance, is to return to the relative sanity of '70s and '80s, with three debates run by the League of Women Voters, to get rid of money in politics to the extent possible, reform laughably antiquated and prone-to-abuse voting procedures, and finally open things up more to third parties and independents, with ranked choice voting, for example.
4
Actually the term "awakeness' comes from Buddhism. In Sanskrit it is "bodhi", usually badly translated as "enlightenment". It is a state of being, not a metaphor. "Wokeness" is a conceptual framework which makes it the opposite of "awakeness" because concepts tend to put you to sleep. That's why people got bored with wokeness. I think you should stop talking about it.
12
The Democratic Party is much too "woke" for me to the point of being annoying. I'm getting curmudgeonly in my dotage.
9
Won't I be canceled if I'm not Woke?
12
Democrats are obsessed with rearranging the social justice deckchairs on the climate change Titanic.
In ten years, this will all seem so quaint. We will have forgotten reparations, pronouns, the rainbow of imaginary genders, mass crime/mass incarceration, vilification of males, single payer insurance, etc. etc. because we will be too busy trying to survive as the west burns, the east floods, crops fail on global scale, millions clamoring at our borders, starvation and social meltdown as the Middle East, Africa, India, Bangladesh, Central America become too hot to support life.
In the meantime, I am comfortable with chromosomes defining gender and cops arresting criminals of all identities.
18
The problem with 'woke' is that it tends to ignore, or to even deny, issues that effect everyone regardless of race, gender... There are some who argue that these identity issues must be solved before we address the heart of the problem, that the problem is that we haven't enough POC and LGTBQ people in positions of power in the predatory parasitic class.
Sanders was criticised for not giving attention to Black Lives when the agenda he is proposing would drastically improve the lives of POC.
So the wokeness argument is a red herring. With the Harris dropout I heard one commentator complain that people are turning against women and POC -- a profoundly stupid observation.
15
One word, MONEY!
2
Fringe left solipsistic racists and misogynists have been lecturing everyone since the 1970s. It is the founding pillar of political correctness. That type wore out its welcome long before it was woke.
9
"I want to make a point about the term “woke” itself. These days, it’s a term of abuse — a shorthand for puritanical political correctness, a pejorative wielded against liberal elitism. But its origins are in African-American vernacular, where it referred to a broad awareness of anti-black oppression. ....Like so much other black slang, it’s been borrowed and diluted and worn down, so that the original meaning has faded from view. That meaning, however, is still worthwhile."
Sorry, but it's ridiculed because so many who use it are painfully ignorant. Kind of like the leftwing POC version of the Tea Party. The willingness to allow the movement to be hijacked by virulent bigots, lunatics, extortionists and con artists is what caused the word to sink in meaning. Not it being appropriated by other cultures. But it being misused by the culture that created it to help foster narcissism and delusions of grander.
6
Woke offends a great many people.
The arrogance of the woksters adds insult to injury.
10
I was a conscientious objector during Vietnam, willing to go to prison for my beliefs.
I have little respect for "wokeness" these days, in candidates and in opinion writers for the NYT. They are simply self-aggrandizing scolds.
The Democratic Party had better disavow "wokeness." It turns real people off.
23
If being cognizant of the many inequities in American society and working to change them is being "woke" you have my hearty approval.
If being "woke" is making snarky, ill-mannered and ill-informed comments is spaces like NYT, then I believe you are just being destructive to Democrats chances in 2020.
But if you insist on the snark form of woke what can I say in return but, "wokey dokey". :)
5
"Wokeness" has been appropriated away from it's roots in African-American understanding of the structural inequality by virtue signaling mostly white people.
Locally, two white women dared to open a taco truck, but were accused of cultural appropriation and had to close their business and shut down their social media accounts because of harassment.
Of course, as is so often the case, "wokeness" has been hijacked by Palestinianism. In Representative Tlaib's own district a Lebanese-American(!) man was bankrupted and had his children threatened for daring to open an Israeli Burgerim franchise.
In both cases, "woke" individuals use social media and brownshirt tactics to not just disagree with someone but to financially and personally ruin someone over choices that they don't agree with. In neither case did these actions help a solitary latino or Palestinian. This isn't activism. It's hatred.
23
Woke to me means minorities have given a “license to hate” to themselves. That’s why it’s weak, and why everyone who has half a brain would stay away from it. Hateful ideologies always lose. There is no such thing as a righteous bully.
15
I wonder, cynic that I am, how much of the twitter storm on 'woke' is really woke and how much is 'smoke' from the troll farms.
All rational people recognize the work we as a nation have before to create a truly equal home for all, and I'd say most of us try to move towards that goal.
But, politics should be reality based and as usual, our reality here in the U.S. of A. is more toward the middle--and 'aware and concerned' than 'woke' That does not make us insensitive nor disinterested, it makes us pragmatists --and that's not always a bad thing.
Our first job as Democrats is to win both Chambers and the WH next year, then continue the discussion. Otherwise, no matter who woke we are we're going to be out in the cold.
6
Just being woke isn't enough if you a president to help bring social justice. It takes political savvy, smarts and experience. No-one would have accused the foul mouthed Lyndon Johnson of being the most woke politician but he had the political accumen to enact legislation that fought poverty and enabled civil rights.
6
Being "woke" originated with people of color as an internal conversation about true vs. false consciousness. But it gained traction when white "allies" appropriated it as a postmodernist meme that fundamentally was more about white sibling rivalry than anything else. Left-leaning identity politics has deteriorated to virtue-signaling among the lines of "some of my best friends are [fill in the blank]."
Yet this is also about maintenance of the white power structure, albeit in a different guise. In refusing to talk about how economic privilege involves everyone regardless of race/gender/etc., white woke-folk of a certain socioeconomic status deny their own complicity and neocolonialist motivations and instead position themselves as the sole legitimate emissaries to any and all non-whites. Talk about fragility.
3
Surprise! People don't like being lectured to. Even if they might be inclined to agree, but especially if they don't agree.
16
“Today’s progressivism is more or less a secular form of religion with its own high standards.” Wrong. Progressivism has scientific roots.
3
Jamelle Blouie for President!
2
The 68 year old white lady next door liked to joke how she wished Hillary and Obama could be hanged. When I pushed her on exactly why, she just shrugged and called me a liberal. This means idealism can not beat Trumpism. Most of these people need to simply die out, and rational people need to vote with their mind and not their heart in 2020.
2
@Mixilplix As a Trump voter, I see the attacks are not against Trump. The Democrats want to punish Trump's supporters. However, they have not been able to create a separation between Trump and his voters.
After 4 years of non-stop negative coverage, has anyone ever answered that question?
As for Hillary and Obama, I can answer the why. However, that may exceed my limits of free speech.
7
Once again Mr. Bouie, you knock it out of the park...."But its origins are in African-American vernacular, where it referred to a broad awareness of anti-black oppression''." Like so much other black slang, it’s been borrowed and diluted and worn down"
@Kim
Sorry, but the Alice Walker's of the world are more to blame than anyone. Claiming to be a "woke" anti-racist activist out of one side of her mouth while spewing vitriol about Jews that is as ignorant and hateful as the white racists in 1940 Alabama said about blacks.
7
The real problem is that no candidate is "woke" enough on climate change and its impacts. Only Elizabeth Warren has proposed legislation that offers ideas on the "pay for" along with solutions. No candidate has proposed systematically addressing our rotting education offerings and infrastructure needs.
Some of the stuff seems wrongheaded. Reparations appears just wrong. What we need to do is ensure anyone can get a fully paid education through at least 12th grade plus job training if college is not a desired option. (competent tradesmen and craftsmen will be needed for a very long time--and all of them are candidates to become small business owners)
The other real problem is that Republicans seem focused on corruption enabling, and income transfers from the have nots to the have more than they can spends. They are also profoundly un-serious (for example: "balancing the budget" is utterly unimportant unless a democrat is in power) The fact-free party (or talking points party) today offers no candidate for any statewide or national office who can dare to criticise anything Trump has proposed or done.
Editorials like this "woke" nonsense is like complaining your neighbor's house numbers are not shiny enough and ignoring the fire consuming your own house.
As a left-leaning voter my entire life, I'm disturbed that the woke have hijacked our party. They are dominating the political discourse on the Left. They toil on Twitter. They're alienating their own voters.
As Mr Bouie's columnn suggests, while they are dominating the discussion on the Left, most of us who are Democrats are not obsessed with identity politics, white privilege and micro-aggressions. The candidates should take notice. The wokest among them have all dropped out.
The real Left is not the Twitter Left. I am a white male, by the way. What is most disturbing about wokeness is that it pushes people toward Trumpism. Hardly go a month goes by where I don't get told to check my white privilege or get criticized by woke trolls on social media for not understanding how the patriarchy affects my biases. Barf!
I hope that with this election we repudiate wokeness. Otherwise if we pander to it, we're going to hand Donald Trump four more years.
231
@Troy, I guess there's a fine line between being woke and being an instrument and force for change, yet not too much, so as not to offend ..whoever ...as you might push them to vote for Trump.
The Dems need to stop being puritanical and critical about their own party and stop apologizing for their worthy goals. The Republicans are the primary disseminators of the negative talking points,that we seem to be too eager to embrace and they benefit.
24
@Troy
I fully agree. As for this:
"I hope that with this election we repudiate wokeness."
I have always felt that a Democratic candidate who focuses like a laser beam on middle class economic issues, supports liberal social values and - in the name of liberal values - conspicuously slapped down woke tyrants would be a very real threat to Trump.
35
@Troy
"With all of that said, I want to make a point about the term “woke” itself. These days, it’s a term of abuse — a shorthand for puritanical political correctness, a pejorative wielded against liberal elitism. But its origins are in African-American vernacular, where it referred to a broad awareness of anti-black oppression. The metaphor of being “awake,” for example, drives Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 speech 'Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution.' Like so much other black slang, it’s been borrowed and diluted and worn down, so that the original meaning has faded from view. That meaning, however, is still worthwhile."
I angered and exhausted by people who continually complain about "wokeness" or "political correctness" or SJWs as if it is an annoying mosquito bite that just won't go away. I am a Black, poor, disabled woman and the issues of discrimination, gender bias, and income inequality are issues I have to struggle with DAILY. I appreciate that some (mostly white) people are beginning to recognize that America has not lived up to its professed ideals for a great many of us.
I have a right to demand to be treated with respect no matter my condition.
49
Anyone who is "woke" will be leaving many voters in their wake.
"Woke" is such a annoying and divisive word - like "ok boomer," and "snowflake" - and it should be avoided at all times.
Can't a person be newly aware of sensitive issues without being "woke"?
8
There isn't anyone who can beat Trump. They all have their own theme to push. They are like Hillary who raised her hand high and proclaimed "Now it is my turn." The example in the "Opinion" is a good one. One candidate is going to reach "out to “white women in the suburbs who voted for Trump and explain to them what white privilege actually is.” Say that one out loud and see how that sounds. Biden will wipe himself out. Did he say "Fat" or "Fact."? The others have health plans which are already falling. Trump will be clear. He will repeat his promise. "It is your turn" and then add, "But they want to take it away from you.. We knew the impeachment was going to happen the minute the Democrats won the house. We also know the Senate will throw it into the circular file. Trump will talk about millions of new jobs, wage expansion, and the lowest employment in fifty years and for minorities and women, the lowest ever, The Democrats have pushed for impeachment ever since the inauguration day. They are already saying if this one doesn't work, they will impeach again. Trump will use that to keep the white house keys in his pocket for another four years.
' but they want to take it away from you. He will have millions of new jobs to point to and an unemployment rate the lowest in fifty years
7
As a matter of public policy I agree with many if not most of the positions of people that call themselves 'woke'. The term grates on me because I was never 'asleep' in the first place. However, there are two tendencies I've run across that bug me: first, a tendency to judge others quickly, frequently before they even get to know them; second, the presumption of moral superiority.
To the extent that woke people (or anyone else for that matter) engage in "pre-judging an individual based the presumed characteristics of an entire group of class, [so they embody] the very essence of prejudice." [Justice Sandra Day O'Connor] That doesn't help their cause. Please, talk to people and make sure to listen to their story.
With respect to moral superiority, they may have it, since they deem it of value. Frankly, I've never wanted to be morally superior to anyone. But what I don't understand is that if you start from a presumption of moral superiority, why the need to then prove it? To get your friends to pile on? That just comes across as mean.
5
I would classify Sanders and Warren as "woke" candidates as well. Can anyone fill me in on how they are not?
Or are "self-proclaimed" woke candidates being differentiated by this author as the ones who are struggling to gain traction toward the Primary?
3
"With all of that said, I want to make a point about the term “woke” itself. These days, it’s a term of abuse — a shorthand for puritanical political correctness, a pejorative wielded against liberal elitism."
It's also very commonly used by "woke" people to describe themselves. It almost always comes across as "virtue signaling."
7
"Woke" is actually quite a nice label for the intolerant, self-righteous, largely white, well-off, careerist and elitists but not real knowledgeable elite, obsessed with race and gender and ignoring economic class, Twitter based so-called "social justice" warriors (not to be mistaken with real social justice). @TitaniaMcGrath is a perfect parody of "wokeness" in Universities, media etc.
10
@AG
The woke virtue social justice warrior lecturers are rarely white.
1
Hmmm. When no Democratic candidate will be able to win without the 35% support that Sanders and Warren are polling together, and those campaigns are supported by the Omar/Tlaib/AOC/Pressley anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist, and anti-equality-of-opportunity-as-the-measure-of-equality wing of the party, I'd say the Wokers have already won.
2
@Snowball And lose to Trump. Democrats are not the only party running for president. I do not want the Democrats losing to Trump in 2020.
1
I've been reading The Journal's opinion pages, which always make me feel liberal, just as The Times makes me feel conservative. Aren't corporatist, centrist, establishmentarian, status-quo squishes like me the absolute worst?
If the wokest candidates were the weakest, which isn't evident, it's likely not for the reasons you say. Gillibrand was a centrist-type until 15 seconds ago. Not to burst your bubble, but she was faking it. Didn't you know? However, I suppose faking it is alright with me. The last two paragraphs, I can sympathize with.
Very few people who ruin countries do so on purpose. Can you think of a single socialist revolutionary who didn't want to bring about a better world -- at least in his or her youth? Many young African-American activists have been educated to reinforce their lived experience: that America is a lie. What Martin Luther King said about cashing that check, they don't really believe.
Instead of telling the fairy-tale version -- or, shall we put it, the Sarah Palin version -- of American history, they invert it and tell the equally absurd horror story of, say, a Howard Zinn. "1619" is as much propaganda as was my 5th-grade U.S. history class at the little all-white Christian academy I attended in my nonage.
No, the country doesn't work for many; but we differ as to why. The rage for socialism is worrisome. As Mises put it, "Socialism is the economic policy of the crowd, of the masses, remote from insight into the nature of economic activity."
5
@David L, Jr.
Yeah, but Friedman recalls Mises calling the members of a Mount Pelerin meeting socialists because they were pondering whether there was a moral justification for progressive taxes.
The rage for socialism meets it mirror image in the modern mania for labeling anything other naked klepto-capitalism at its most savage a form of Big Bad Socialism(TM).
2
Not all democrats are zealots. But primary voters and party activists are. And they are driving all candidates to the extreme left.
8
@Liberty hound
Actually, they're driving the candidates to something that resembles the centre in most western countries. Your Democrats are typically quite conservative.
2
Sometimes it's hard to remain a liberal Democrat. This concept of "woke" is a silly generalization that won't remain part of colloquial English in a decade or two. Even worse, we urgently need to win big in 2020 elections, and there is not a single candidate currently running who I think can win. We Democrats have to make some hard choices. We are in so much danger of four more years of Trump that we have to suspend our interest in electing the first woman, gay man, et al. and concentrate solely on electability.
2
The rhetoric and lexicon of the new left - originating in America but exported abroad via pop culture and the internet - is the manifestation of the obsessions of the humanities and social studies academy, and it is profoundly disinterested in material, lived reality. The idea that a political sensibility should focus on measurable, objective vectors - for instance, rates of homelessness across demographics, rates of incarceration, education metrics, life expectancy, etc. - are secondary to ideologically driven knowledge claims, and micromanagement of other people's language.
Hence, 'wokeness' is not interested in looking at the vectors of minority disadvantage which can be addressed via policy - which any reasonable person would be in favour of, but it IS interested in immeasurable concepts such as 'white privilege', or 'institutional racism'. These are not things that you can measure, and subsequently address via social, economic, or legal interventions. Instead, they are things that you FEEL are true due to your ideological alignment. They are attempts to distill complex problems down into simplistic sloganeering using 'identity' as a cover. Hence, a manager at a business is not personally racist - he is racist because ALL members of his race/class/sex are racist, and therefore, ALL members of his race/class/sex are responsible.
None of this will work electorally. Ever. And, until it is abandoned, conservative governments will continue to dominate elections worldwide.
14
"Woke" needs to be put to bed, put to sleep permanently: it is a wastebasket word that does not help us.
Instead, let us agree to "tell it like it is," take the time and space to use a few words, spell it out in its variations, not hide the actual needs and concerns of our citizens and children under the cloak of another one word "idea" that is supposed to slip us into the land of profound understanding.
We are animals built of trillions of cells and our most fundamental needs are rarely going to be connected with another one word idea.
It makes for headline grabbing, sound bytes, but like the word "politics"--which is most fundamentally about processes which meet the needs of people, the citizens, and not machinations of (the ?woke?) the classes with money.
Can we actually talk about what is really happening, or must we be fashionably woke and slip around the real needs and details with a concise artifice?
3
I cringe every time I hear the term woke. It's means nothing to me, other than more poor grammar by the masses, especially in the context that it is being used. Such absurdity in this country today and so poorly stated, especially for issues that really need to be faced and fixed.
The only word I'll respond to is awakened.
7
Weak because they have not found a way to explain their thoughts and ideas to extend an open armed embrace—ironic. The label 'woke' doesn't help. I have no idea who came up with it, but it sounds judgemental as if everyone who is not in the 'woke' category is somehow brain dead, or asleep at the wheel. Even the sound of it is short, blunt and combative. It smacks of ideology not humanity and worse it has the smell of trends and fads and this does a great disservice to what 'woke' does recognize and embrace, historically and currently.
All these 'new' words/phrases and the need for brevity and eye-catching coolness on social media have reduced the shades of grey - those nuanced spaces where discussion and critical thought can thrive - and that is extremely problematic for tolerance and understanding and the positive evolution of culture, society and humanity and for getting one's message across with clarity instead of exclusion.
9
When you have 20 woke candidates trying to out-woke each other it makes them all sound phony. Be yourself and let the voters decide. But will a moderate once elected even try to undo Donald Trump's damage such as the tax cuts and deregulation and run the risk of slowing down the economy? And what if the courts uphold the current court decision that repeals Obamacare in its entirety, as the current appeals court appears likely to do?
1
The reason 'woke' candidates are weak is because America is really a centrist, economic society in which most voters want a stable, predictable political landscape in which to live their primary economic lives, and less interested in revolutionary policies intended to reshape that landscape to the liking of people for whom politics is primary and economics secondary. To say it another way--leftists (Democrats) are mostly about politics; rightists (Republicans) are mostly about economics. The most ardently 'woke' candidates will be leftist extremists most Americans want nothing to do with--Therefore, they tend not to win elections.
9
Thank you, Mr. Bouille, for a typically incisive reminder to be always vigilant regarding what Max Weber in 1919 termed the “ethic of conviction” and “ethic of responsibility”.
Here is an article from The Economist in September of 2016 -- basically pre-explaining how Trump was elected, and how we can behave differently, with different results.
https://www.economist.com/europe/2016/09/29/a-tale-of-two-ethics
I’m ‘woke’ to the extent that I recognize the injustice in the world, and climate change, and all the bads for the human race that we ought to do something about. But I have no intention of doing much about these bads. A C- morality rating is good enough for me. My primary goal in life is my own convenience and I will not do anything to inconvenience myself or sacrifice to make the world a better place. I’ll give a little, if it isn’t too inconvenient, but not much. And I don’t see why I should do any more given my modest ethical aspirations.
4
Every time another person is called out or canceled or lectured by the virtue police, it makes the rounds on rightwing media. The footage of the Democratic Socialists of America convention was a huge hit among the far right. Check it out. That's the ammo for the propaganda barrage of Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Levin, et al.
6
In the case of Sen. Gillibrand, she cynically exploited the Woke movement to derail the political career of her potential rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Al Franken. She disenfranchised the voters who elected him, and silenced one of the most effective opponents to the excesses of the Trump administration, including its' erosion of the rights of women. Her campaign failed because voters saw through her insincerity.
275
@An informed reader wrote:
"...She disenfranchised the voters who elected him, and silenced one of the most effective opponents to the excesses of the Trump administration..."
Yes, and even more disturbing is her devotion to earning the woke creds, a viable candidate to challenge Trump was neutralized. Cancelled. Erased.
Some of us will never forget, Sen. Gillibrand.
65
@Peggy in NH And not just a viable candidate - an innocent man and a valuable statesman ruined for life by disingenuous "woke" talking points. Schumer was also complicit, or at least too cowardly not to go along with KG. Blood on their hands.
67
@An informed reader
Chuck Schumer is who told Al Franken to resign. Kirsten Gillibrand simply stated she supported and believed the 9 women.
14
"Woke," it has always seemed to me is a self-defeating claim. It's right alongside the claims of holiness religions that we can choose to live sinless lives right here and right now. The trouble with the human species is that we are self narcotizing. We may indeed have an experience that "wakes us up" to the oppression inherent in America's white privileged society. We may even experience the truth of our own participation in that system. Unfortunately, our natural self-defense mechanisms will immediately begin deconstructing our "woke-ness" and return us to our previous easy acceptance of our white status quo in which things work pretty well for us. I've always thought that the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous had a better take on our condition. We admired that we were powerless over our racism-that our lives had become self-destructive and dangerous to others. Rather than claiming that we are "woke," white Americans need to seek out recovery groups to companion them in a lifelong journey of deconstructing the harmful habits of our addiction to racism.
2
Many Unwoke realize that they still have things to learn, a ways yet to travel on the road to enlightenment and justice. Some older Unwoke have been on the road a long while, and some take pride in how far they have come or in having helped others along the path. Some wonder whether, at particular junctions in the road, the Wokerati are headed in the wrong direction. They look for leadership. They get folks honking the horn and telling them to get out of the way.
2
Many become upset at criticisms of wokeness and identity politics because from their perspective, not calling out racism and sexism (as much as possible), defaults judgment to the privileged group, white cis males, who (it is argued) ipso facto defend their privileges by virtue of maintaining the status quo.
There's a big problem that the woke don't understand, which is that Confession and Original Sin aren't ever going to be popular approaches to political conversations, as per Gillibrand's failed example, and something many of us who are surrounded by woke Gen Z's experience constantly. Another problem is the squashing of individuality: are ALL white men more privileged than ALL of some other marginalized group? Why are examples of shooters, pedophiles and corrupt executives painting pictures in the woke imagination?
Here's the issue, I think. The Left are divided in two: the Classic Left believe that economics and class explain society and should be addressed. The New Left believes that sexism and racism are urgent urgent existential problems, and throwing as many spanners into as many works as possible, and ruffling as many feathers and shaking up as many people as possible, will cause thought-provoking change.
This latter group of woke ideologues are creating Trump supporters in the same way that bombing a village in Afghanistan produces new terrorist recruits.
15
I think your argument that the woke candidates were the weakest electorally proves the point Bill Maher and others make. There is a large minority of Democratic voters that threaten to sit out if the candidate of their choice isn't the nominee. Too many people are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. How many sat out in 2016 because Hillary was "too much of a centrist" - even though the Democratic platform was much more progressive than the Republican one?
4
Exactly. It’s not the candidates who are too “woke”, it’s the activists. They draw hard lines in the sand and who obstinately refuse to vote for somebody who doesn’t meet their purity standards. The most extreme of them demonize any democrat who puts their personal preferences behind them and votes for the greater good. Look at Jamie Bouile’s rant about Bloomberg a few weeks back where he ended by claiming effectively that if you would vote for a racist like Bloomberg you are effectively dead to me.
If you need an example of the kind of cultural wokeness that the American people are tiring of you need look no further. I’m taking my ball and going home if the candidate I approve of doesn’t get the party’s nomination. There is simply no way to deal with that kind of extremism. Trying to appeal to those hardline types is a fools errand and it only serves to further alienate a huge chuck of the Democratic party’s voters. That is precisely Bill Mahers point. Cut em loose and go for the center left where the voters live.
1
"Woke" has become pejorative due to the actions of it's proponents - those who claim to be "woke" have turned the term into a nightmare of always rising purity bars that must be met throughout every moment of your life and history.
It's no different than the religious right and holier than thou movements.
Extremist groups always think there are more people on their side than there really are, whether they are right (Moral Majority) or left. That's why these candidates are failing.
15
"..woke Democrats are pushing the Democratic Party away from the voters it needs to beat President Trump in 2020.
If this were actually true, you would expect real traction for the wokest candidates in the Democratic presidential race."
I think you have the logic backward. The woke voters and activists are a small subset of Democratic party. When certain candidates try to "go for woke," they are appealing to that small segment. Is it any wonder then that they got little traction?
5
I would be embarrassed to say to anyone that I am woke. However, I will always say that I am for racial equality, civil rights for all, income equality, education equality, saving our environment, treating others the way I want to be treated,and basic kindness. Also thank you for calling out Bill Maher for trying to play it both ways.
7
Neither political party is as extreme as their opponents thing.
It's the crazies on the edges who garner media attention and easy condemnation from talking heads.
Then we rely on confirmation bias to save the data that conforms to this twisted view of people who think differently than us.
Most Republicans and Democrats aren't the straw men (and women) their opposition claims them to be.
I think most Republicans who center their media focus on Fox news would be shocked that most commenters to NYTimes articles on immigration are very much for border enforcement.
11
I believe the argument isn't about the majority of Democrats today, its about the the majority of Democrats in the future.
In that case, based off of consistent survey data, the party is too woke.
We are talking about people within a party who got angry at AOC for siding with Bernie because he is a "white male". She actually had to justify this. Yes, this party is overly woke.
Cory Booker is currently shaming party members for not having a diverse enough primary anymore. Apparently your race alone should make you worthy of advancing in a primary? Again this parties future is overly woke. Too much caffeine.
9
To this old(ish), white, male, when you wave around the "woke" thing, you are telling me that you are a victim and I, personally, am the perpetrator. That I, personally, owe you.
Good luck with that.
23
@Yellow Dog Democrat
Thank you for your right-on comment. I would add that I have had enough of "white privilege" accusations by people who know absolutely nothing about the lives of the people they brand. This kind of indoctrination has been going on for a very long time. I was forced, in a graduate program, to listen to speakers tell all whites in the captive audience, that they were the recipients of "white privilege." Needless to say, it had the very opposite intended effect--no one bought it. I went on to spend my career working to improve both opportunities and outcomes for minorities. As you say, Yellow Dog Democrat, "Good luck with that."
5
@Yellow Dog Democrat That is not what we are telling you--that is what you choose to hear. Just like the white Trump supporters who have enthusiastically donned the mantel of victimhood because they are terrified they are losing their unearned privilege.
1
As they say: " Go woke, go broke". Too bad liberal elites have culturally appropriated yet another black vernacular and ruined it (just like bae, twerk or swag). Oh the irony.
4
"Fluent in wokeness, Gillibrand hoped to win the most progressive, social justice-minded Democrats"
Silly "woke" ideology didn't sink her; Democrats' Franken memories did.
"Beto O’Rourke, the former Representative of Texas’s 16th congressional district, took a similar approach, barnstorming the country as the wokest of woke Democrats"
Silly "woke" ideology didn't sink him either; it was his shallowness. Heck, I've seen inert gases with more substance than O'Rourke.
11
@Independent Observer
Chuck Schumer is who encouraged Al Franken to resign. Kirsten Gillibrand simply stated she supported the 9 or so women who came forward who accused Franken of unwanted sexual behaviors.
Perhaps the "wokest" candidates are doing poorly because their "woke" politics don't resonate with what either minority or white voters see in the world around them. Certainly discrimination is real but these days being "woke" requires you to exclusively blame racism for any and every ill that besets a minority and similarly "woke" solutions require explicit discrimination on the basis of identity.
There's no better example than the morons here in NYC who complain about the "segregated" school system when a race-blind standardized test is the only admissions criteria.
11
The prob with wokeness is pretty simple, and engrained in the whole concept: nobody ever, ever wakes all the way up, unless you happen to be lucky enough to be Buddha. Yet we still get these lectures from people who think that if we just get Woke, we’ll think just like them and all be Woke together.
A good example: some parts of Wokeland sure get twitchy when it gets mentioned that there seems to be an eensy problem in their approaches to, say, Pete Buttigieg. You know...gay people.
another example: the male aggressivity visible in these scenes of haranguing people who see things differently and are trying to explain why. For professional reasons, I particularly cannot abide the sneering at traditions of open, polite discourse that took centuries to build and are under assault. Not to mention the haste.
Don’t get me wrong: if any time in American history needed some loud protest, this’d be it. But let’s hang up the smug certainty, which has never turned out well.
9
When half my generation, the "baby boomers", awakened to the knowledge that the Earth needed real, serious protection, when we fully realized the true equality of women and people of all ethnic origins and non-binary sexual inclination; when our love of country did not blind us to the need for scathing opposition to our wars and capitalist excess, we did not anoint ourselves the "woke". My parents and people of their generation helped awaken me. This is the perspective of long life and deep experience.
The "wokest" candidates are the weakest because a) they are in general younger and have less experience b) some of them are not white and c) bold, game-changing policies scare the hell out of comfortable Americans, so many of whom would vote for a Trump. Being woke is a tribal cry of the young that thrills me, because it means the fight is still on. I'm with the wokest candidates, it just wouldn't have occurred to me to call them that.
1
Martin Luther King employed correct vocbulary, grammar and syntax. Note, he said "awake," not "woke." What's wrong with "awake"? Too educated?
8
‘… in their zeal, these woke Democrats are pushing the Democratic Party away from the voters it needs to beat President Trump in 2020’.
You’re right. You’re absolutely right.
The average Democrat is not woke.
In fact, the average folk is not woke enough for the left loony bin crazy bin acolytes of purity.
Meaning no left edge crazy diversity inclusivity socialist woke candidate ever had a chance in hell to be competitive. Just look at your boy O’Rourke, or Kamala Harris, or the whole lot of hopefuls that never got above 2.5%
Unfortunately the Democratic Party decided long ago to pander to this 2.5% loony bin bananas crowd that is too woke for the rest of us, the crowd that is smarter than all of us and the only ones aware of things, to whom the rest of us plebes are just dumb insects prime for squashing.
The Democratic Party sold its soul to them.
But changing course now is way too late. The Democratic Candidates are synonymous with wokeness, socialism, and corruption. Remember, in advertisement image is reality, and a political campaign is just that, an advertisement campaign for one person or another.
As I said long ago, might as well begin to work on the next Obama, hoping you are ready by 2024. You blew it for 2020 when you begun to chant ‘not my president’.
4
Seems to me no one cares about "wokeness" as much as they care about beating the pants off the incumbent. That may simply be the metric at play right now. Jussayin'...
Personally, I support just about everything "woke" politicians and activists support. But publicly, I'm also aware of the backlash to advanced liberal thinking. Nick Kristof once wrote a column explaining how things that were once seen as liberal over the centuries became conservative positions. And the conservative positions of the time faded into irrelevancy or were totally sloughed off. The cutting edge is often unspeakable by those who occupy the middle. The middle usually wins presidential elections, but it shifts to the left slowly through time.
1
I have been commenting with these very thoughts in this very newspaper for the past year. Being "woke" is one thing, however applying social justice ideology to perceived injustices is what cause for concern. This type of overly zealousness from the likes of Elizabeth Warren & Bernie Sanders is driving many voters away. Ms. Warren & Mr. Sanders should be finding a way to connect to and embrace those who are less to the left than they are. The last thing anyone wants to be reminded of (over and over) is that they are a "Have Not!" Being "woke" There are simply not enough far left voters out there to elect either of these candidates.
5
This article expresses well the patriarchal response to progress, and very nearly blames women for ideas that make men uncomfortable. But he needs to be aware we are very uncomfortable with lack of action on climate change, hateful traditions that lead to hateful politics, and the ongoing misogyny that poisons work, cultures and relationships, making it damn hard to raise good people. Open your eyes, wake up
39
@Johanna. Jones Not sure how you get that interpretation ... but if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
32
@Johanna. Jones sounds like you are stuck in a nightmare of your own conjuring. Wake up! The world a wonderful place for women and people of all shades of skin. You get what you focus on!
5
@Johanna. Jones Where do you see him even coming close to blaming women?
9
If there is one thing we have learned from the "woke" phenomenon, #metoo, Black Lives, Matter, etc. is that white (and mostly male) fragility is very, very real and cannot be ameliorated. While any social movement will have its share of more ardent supporters (see: MAGA supporters, white nationalists, etc) what the "woke" and others are simply asking for is to be acknowledged for who they are, to be treated fairly, and to call bs when this doesn't happen. Nothing crazy about that. Unless you're threatened by it. Which we most definitely are. Sad.
72
@A. jubatus Those who point out that "woke" culture, virtue signaling, and identity politics are self-defeating for the Left are not fragile. They are exercising their right to express an opinion about a losing strategy. Likewise, when BLM proponents take issue with being informed their platform has elements of antisemitism, they are not being fragile, but rather posing a counter argument. Willingness to debate an issue is not evidence of fragility on one side. Debate should be welcomed, though these days it seldom is by a Left that wants to shut down any form of dissenting discourse.
55
@Tintin It is indeed a losing strategy when an Atlantic piece from October 2018 showed that 80% of Americans are tired of political correctness. The numbers are even higher when you view it by Asian ((82%) and Hispanic communities (87%).
Doubling down on the insults and claiming any disagreement with woke orthodoxy is the result of "white male fragility" is just more the same sanctimonious scolding that turned those people off in the first place. It seems the woke left care more about being right than about being effective.
49
@Gunnar
I have to feel like a lot of this is a product of the the portrayal of actual human rights issues as "political correctness" or "identity politics". I guess to me I see Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro types go on these long tirades about how the left is obsessed with bathroom bills etc., but the fact is that the left generally didn't care about those things at all until the republicans went out of their way to explicitly prevent trans individuals from using the bathrooms that they had been using without problem for years already. The left tends to rally around vulnerable groups who are attacked. From my perspective at least, I feel like identity politics primarily originates on the right these days and then when the left rallies to protect those vulnerable groups they get attacked as woke snowflake identity politicians.
28
To evaluate whether a person’s “wokeness” is real or manufactured, I think you need to take a close look at their actions, both past and present, not just the verbiage they’re currently espousing. In other words, have they actually walked the walk or are they just now talking the talk?
3
The woke make me glad to be a boomer.
5
With respect, you're missing a key point. The "wokest" (a deplorable concept when "aware" has worked for centuries) will not be running as Democratic candidates, because they'll lose in the primaries. BUT Trump will run against them anyway. They are low hanging fruit whom Trump would devour. But even if they slide into the background Trump will idewntify them as the Democratic party.
The "woke" are "weak" and they're losing me, a long-term liberal. Not to Treump, because nothing coluld make me vote for this deplorable. But I could imagine sitting 2020 out.
5
The devil of wokeness, as usual, is in the details.
To take one example:
I think middle america probably would support many kinds of policies which promote equality of opportunity, ranging from expanded credit availability for small businesses to reducing the school to prison pipeline.
But label those things reparations (even though they certainly would be part of any serious reparations package), and suddenly you have a lot more opposition.
Broadly speaking, people just don't like being blamed for things they feel they have no control over. That may be unsatisfactory tone-policing to people harmed by inaction (as their primary concern is understandably not others' feelings). And don't get me wrong -- there are circumstances where even if current beneficiaries of a legacy system did not create inequities, their continued refusal to address them has ongoing effect, too.
But it's the lay of the land: When your brand of woke-ness has the result of treating people like the enemy, they tend to follow suit. (Think Michael Che's quip: "A feminist is really just someone who believes in equal rights for women, and that's easy to get behind. That is until you see an actual feminist screaming into a cop's face wearing a homemade uterus hat and then you're like, 'Oh there are levels to this.' I just think it's weird to get a special name for just being a reasonable person.")
3
The danger is not that the Democratic Party is already too "woke." The danger comes from the noisy, self-righteous preening of the (relatively small) segment of the party that's "woke"--and quick to demonize, denigrate, and denounce any Democrat who doesn't meet their militant rhetorical standards. They make it easy for Republicans to paint the whole party with the "woke" brush.
There are lots of ways to work for social justice, especially if you realize that progress is most likely to take place one step at a time. Failure to recognize that only helps Trump and his ilk.
6
There is a saying I once heard which is applicable to wokeness: "You're yelling so loudly I can't hear you."
8
Senator Harris was not too "Woke." Senator Harris put kids in jail for smoking marijuana. I don't think you can get less woke.
8
What a great writer.
5
Americans ain't woke and never will be.
3
Well, if the 'woke' element of your party isn't the strongest let's just admit that it is the loudest.
4
I can't stand the term "woke." It is annoying and increasingly used by intolerant people to judge others.
4
"Woke" is about tribalism in the young. If you fail to accept social inclusion, you're not in the tribe. Because they rejected everyone, everyone just waited until they went away, so we could go back to adult conversations.
Now woke was co-opted from the African-American community because it could be broadened in ways that LGBTQ could not. But it tries to say that all oppressed are alike. As Buttigieg has found out, oppression is not one-size-fits-all.
Still, Biden's "No Malarkey" makes everyone gag, and shows Biden's solipsism.
This article should have explored the difference between political correctness and political authority -- between Nixon and MLK. Instead it laments the usual turn to the center that wins elections.
Actually, it's the black vote that wins elections. When blacks vote, Democrats win. Otherwise, Republicans win. The 2016 loss was not due to Russia, but to blacks not voting for Hillary, who was a clear step back from Obama. Promising reparations (and not delivering), or promising a woke society (and not delivering) is simply a recipe for blacks not voting.
Everyone should vote. Not because they're getting something out of it, but because it's a duty to chose our best leaders. Otherwise, vote!
2
There also needs to be an awareness about the difference between say1954 when Brown was decided and today. The insistence on ignoring this is even more problematic than wokeness. The problem with wokeness is its resemblance to Trumpism. It is all about feelings, not facts not reality, Most of what is complained about today is against the law. It wasn't in 1954.
6
It seems this author has absolutely no idea how to identify what being "woke" is. The "wokest" candidates by far are Warren & Bernie. I think the idea that this zeal is devouring itself is absolutely true. Just try to have a disagreement, however subtle, with any of their supporters. Have the same disagreement with a moderate or less left supporter. You'll find out right away which is willing to work towards a common goal.
5
The qualities that are attributed to being "woke" are very off putting. There is nothing wrong with a secular religion but this one just doesn't work on many levels. When applied to legitimate racial issues it seems to focus on fringe issues that pander to the outrage police, cultural appropriation for example.
The worst part about the Woke religion is its lack of any pragmatic motivation to do substantive good. For the woke it is enough to be outraged. It's like an "I support our troops" sticker. It's meaningless.
7
Thank you so much for this article and including the link to MLK's graduation talk. We all lost a great leader when he was cruelly murdered, his eloquence is sorely absent today. Thanks again!!
1
The issue isn't so much whether all Democrats are zealots as whether zealots drive the party and its platform.
To me it is the brand of "zealot" that matters, as well as there has to be something other than just zealotry, there needs to be intelligence, management strategy and prioritizing and communication skill.
I think this is sadly too much to ask or expect from the Democratic party. It breaks my heart.
3
Great definition and analysis of a term that has been vaguely defined. Wokeness is a variant of political correctness which is a race-and-gender-centered egalitarian ideology. And it is, indeed, "puritanical" in punishing dissent and heresy. As the author notes, rank-and-file voters aren't that ideologically orthodox. Elites are.
5
Mr. Bouie you are merely confirming what many of us have said, be they center-left, or center. Those who consider themselves woke are only the digitally loudest, but do not speak for us all. Volume is not numbers, or group sentiment. Claiming to be more woke than someone else (at least on their particular issue) is not a teaching moment, but one of judgement, and arrogance. That is the message of wokeness for the unwoke. If you want support for a cause, group, or position, generate it by understanding, and discussion not a 'takedown tweet.' A tweet never solved a real problem. Were that so, the current occupant of the WH would have solved all our problems long ago.
4
Bouie’s argument rests on his definition of “woke,” which he explains only in rejecting a straw man view on what other’s might be.
However, it might be inferred to be “most socially extreme” based on his examples of Gillibrand, O’Rourke and Harris. O’Rourke’s shock jock attack on guns ended his candidacy. And Gillibrand spent all her political capital on executing Al Franken to make a point. Harris, despite her broad written platform, presented herself as a minority candidate.
Their poor performance rests not on being socially aware, but on willingly defining themselves in ways that most Democrats know made them unelectable in the general, where voters have more varied views on guns, me-too and race.
3
This guy is the best writer they have. Kudos!
1
If wokeness means an understanding of how gender and racial injustice intersect with economic injustice, the genuinely wokest candidate in the race is an old white man named Bernie Sanders. You wouldn't know it from the media which is doing their best to ignore him, but he is polling in second place nationally and is well positioned to win the nomination.
There is nothing actually woke about highly educated and highly paid professionals with close connections to the most powerful interests in the country posing as champions of women and people of color when their actual records are of locking them up or voting for legislation that harms them.
The welcome increase in the diversity of the Democratic field is teaching a whole lot of people real quick just how unreliable individual identity is as a proxy for genuinely progressive politics. Grifters come in all colors and genders and in an increasingly diverse society we should expect the rich and powerful to make full use of every kind to serve their purposes.
Economic class isn't the only thing that matters, but its glaring absence from the political language of virtually the entire field of Democratic candidates except Sanders is the best indicator of the depth of their actual wokeness. Racism and sexism persist chiefly because they are beneficial to the rule of the rich. Any candidate who is unable to speak clearly about the antagonistic interests of the working class & the ruling class is not serious about fighting either.
1
Mr. Bouie is missing the whole point here. The fact that these "woke" candidates got propelled to THIS point, receiving - and using - a lot of corporate funding and party and media establishment backing, yet they could not create any significant groundswell support is PROOF that these candidates and the democratic establishment are, in fact, "too woke for their own good". Mr. Bouie is making the serious mistake of thinking that democrat voters (and potential democrat voters) are the same as the democrat party establishment and their corporate and media affiliates.
5
The final two paragraphs are especially well-said. But "wokeness" as a form of puritanism is not at all an illusion, even if it is relatively unpopular according to more objective (non-Twitterfied) polls. It's an addictive form of moral speech, and equally addictive as a target for reactive moral speech. It, like all the other forms of puritanism, attempts to compel without being compelling. It doesn't seem to be an effective way of addressing the oppression it is awake to.
So what do we do? Might I suggest that more people are awake to these things than are "woke"? And maybe we should recognize more efforts and strategies as legitimate instead of constantly testing them for a wispy, liquid, and impotent form of purity. Language is powerful. That is why it is so hard to manipulate it, even with the best of intentions.
2
It is one thing to be "woke" ... but it is quite a different thing to actually be politically strategic.
To paraphrase ... "to be a woke President, first you have to become President".
Enough of us believe that the system is OK or that change within the system is possible, so until that changes it really doesn't matter what you are, it matters who and what money you have behind you. That should be a 'wake up every morning national problem' and priority ... and in the last decades we have a pile of problems like that.
What we need is not the most woke person, but the best organized and clearest thinking person. I see a lot of hope the way Elizabeth Warren works, talks and thinks. Whether you agree with her or not, a blind man could see real process and deliberation.
The rub is that we need the tools of the businessman ... the project manager ... to bring about change, otherwise we have chaos, and it seems Democrats, and especially Progressives do not see this, and not to mention Progressives are harder to herd than cats.
1
Wokeness has bled over from candidates like Beto and Gillibrand to the rest of the Democratic field, at least as perceived by many. AOC and the squad have had that woke influence as well. By not repudiating the woke views the rest of the Democratic candidates signal tacit approval. People in general do not care to be lectured to on their perceived moral shortcomings. It is not an effective method of garnering votes.
10
Politeness seems very unpopular for a lot of folks here. Too hard to learn and do, I guess.
1
@Jennie Enforced politeness is fascism. Who decides what is and is not "polite"? No one wants their speech policed by the woke, with changing standards every 5 minutes.
2
"...a broad awareness of oppression — of the ways this country does not work for many of its citizens — is vital. To the extent that Democrats have that awareness, they should not shy away from it."
Agreed, but they also should not bash it over people's heads, as many do, It's tiring, annoying and a turn-off. (Yes, yes, I know, I can hear the outrage now... "Equality is a turn-off, etc. etc.?)
"Woke" extremists are self-righteous, condescending and intolerant, everything the Democrat party is NOT supposed to stand for.
Perhaps the woke need to wake up. Even President Obama is trying to awaken them.
7
Some 'woke' ideas that have been rolling around on these very pages, social media and the news:
Gender pay gap is exclusively because of sexism. (Even though men work about 45 minutes longer per day in every industry and consistently CHOOSE higher paying jobs.)
Trans women (former man) can have periods too.
Believe all women. (#metoo)
American culture IS White Supremacy.
Asking a woman on a date is sexual harassment.
It's 'Institutional Racism'.
Active suppression of free speech.
Left Self-segregation. (RE: Purposefully segregating out people from organizations because of their race or gender.)
Virtue signalling.
Call-Out/Cancel Culture.
Wasting time going through American history and destroying great people who did great things because of a common culture at the time (slavery) as if people were never aware of these stains of our country.
Calling detention centers 'concentration camps'.
Museums actively discriminating against people because of their gender. (exclusion of men in exhibitions). (We see you Baltimore Museum, New Britain Museum of Art - both led and run by women.)
The list goes on an on. If you're wondering why Trump is President and why he'll likely get re-elected, refer to this list and more and blame the Democrats (of which I am one) for being taken in by the Far-Left Twitter minority.
If Liberals want inclusion and diversity, they're doing it wrong. I thought they were supposed to be more educated and smarter than the conservatives?
10
I'm stocking up on chop sticks for when wokeness outlaws it for non-Asians.
Whatever the word meant when MLK said it in 1965, it's something else now.
Wokeness isn't an awareness of actual oppression. Wokeness is confirmation bias-- seeing oppression in everything because that is all you are looking for, attributing malign intent to neutral or benign behavior.
Wokeness is cruelly ending careers over things most people consider to be forgivable sins but are too afraid to say so for fear of being cancelled themselves.
It's stupidly cancelling people that are on their side, like Al Franken, for things they did (or didn't do) decades ago in other careers.
Most Democrats don't really support wokeness as it exists today. They pretend to because they are afraid to say otherwise. I know someone in academia that feels pressure to upvote woke posts because he fears that if he doesn't, it will hurt him. He's probably right. He's afraid of upvoting articles he agrees with because he knows someone woke will point that out.
Wokeness is the world wide Stasi-web, with people outing neighbors not because they believe the neighbor did bad but because they want credit for doing so to show their commitment to the cause and because they fear someone else doing it first and then being asked why didn't they.
10
No, candidates shouldn't run from their woke-ness. On the other hand, we're presently living through the Dark Age of American Civilization. Compared to our feckless leader who holds every citizen in contempt who isn't named Donald J. Trump (and never mind our non-citizens!) a hibernating bear is a paradigm of woke-ness. So let's stop splitting hairs by comparing apples with apples; we need to focus instead on getting rid of all those other fruits. The GOP is full of them.
1
(White person:) Perhaps "woke" does NOT mean gaining new conceptual understandings; it's a matter of feeling, of visceral experience. For many years I've "understood" the idea of privilege, but after the 2016 election some kind of visceral awakening occurred, feeling like a loss of innocence. The "nice" people I interact with face to face at the grocery store might also be the same ones that are posting vile, bigoted comments on our community forum—perhaps the same ones who could hear the hateful words of a certain presidential candidate and vote for him because of lower taxes or abortion stance. I feel uneasy. Find it hard to trust smiles and seeming good will. Oh! Is this how it feels to walk around everyday as a brown or black person or member of an other marginalized group?
I would like the "woke" sensibility to focus on white police officers murdering black citizens and on the suppression of black voting instead of on moralistic fabrications like "appropriation," "micro-aggressions," and "privilege."
Maybe it could then (surprise!) actually accomplish something worthwhile.
5
If the new term "woke" should disappear from usage, it would be a great day.
7
The dynamics of the Democrat presidential primaries DOES heavily inform where the party "wants" to be. It's actually a vast, noisy, messy exercise in democratic selection that would have made the ancient Greeks very happy. Everybody is compelled to push for their favorite cause, but it always comes down to what the (mainly white) comfy suburbanites feel the most comfy with. They will "allow" entertaining dalliances with exciting, edgy ideas like reparations and GND, but then end up selecting the strongest centrist. This is actually a tautology, because the center of power is what gets nominated, which then becomes the center of power. The party always collectively acts "for its own good".
White people claiming to be woke is in theory possible but it is kind of like the Stones covering Chuck Berry or Zeppelin just ripping off blues tunes. It’s watered down imitation as Jamelle says and a tad contrived to large amounts of people. It’s better than nothing but still a bit hollow and as you say overzealous.
1
Woke? The democrats are asleep and dreaming of unicorns while this president heads for another term.
8
Woke or comatose, take your choice, folks.
1
This is a warning to all who may tend toward self-righteous indignation and excessive political correctness...
It’s ironic but, in the 2016 election, MOST of my “woke-est” friends chose either not to vote or to vote for someone other than Hillary (yes, some liberals I know actually voted for trump) simply because they thought that their guy, Bernie, got shafted by the DNC. Look where that woke-ness got us. Democrats had better darn well unite this time around or we’re destined to four more years of the inglorious state of mind most antithetical to woke.
Regardless of the nominee and for the sake of our republic...
VOTE DEMOCRAT • VOTE UNITED
Peace
3
Warren is still in the transgender camp, promoting the death of 18 men posing as women over her concern for the daily deaths of hundreds of real women from violence. She doesn't acknowledge that transgender ideology involves the mutilation of children's genitals, the loss of women's privacy, women's sports, etc. If she wins the nomination, you can bet the Republicans will not have forgotten her support of such a dangerous and destructive ideology.
4
Racism grows more pungent. Women's rights are under attack. LGBTQ rights are under steady assault by the administration and courts. Brown children are in cages.
And some "Democrats" think we are too zealous and "woke."
The opposite of "woke" is asleep.
2
this article completely ignores why harris, gillibrand and o'rourke failed
4
I wish we could go back to something more like the original meaning of woke. Because, so for as that meaning could apply to white people, it would be plain then that most white Democrats aren't woke, and that all too many of them aren't close to it.
Politics aside, seeing the word woke used in an incorrect way according to English usage is just tiresome. Woke is the past tense of To wake. The proper term for present tense is Awake. What is the point of continuing to use improper English in this context?
I am Awake. How about you, America?
2
Oh my good I do not believe it. Self reflection from Jamelle! WOW
It might turn out that Trump's presidency won't be a waste after all!
1
I once was woke but went back to sleep, to paraphrase Amazing Grace. Turns out white people can’t ever be woke enough or self effacing enough to actually work as a team in a SJW office. When the shooting part of the race war comes, by default I’m on the white team. The black team wouldn’t have me. I had hoped we’d become Americans United, but that hope looks dimmer and dimmer.
4
Whites feel entitled to appropriate black street culture––hoodies; baseball caps worn backwards; rap––without attribution to its creators. Taking woke is just another theft.
1
"Wokeness" is about seeing yourself as morally superior to others and others as being morally inferior to you. However, true morality is having the humility to recognize that everyone has his or her own life wisdom to teach you. Believing you have the one and only final truth is where good intentions go to die.
4
"Woke"; instead of making up/implying word definitions/usage why not construct you sentences using descriptive words in common use.
1
Can we please lose the word "woke". It's just awful. I promise this is the last opinion I will read that features this apparently, hip to some, redefinition of a word that didn't need re-defining. "Wokest"? The "Great American Woking"? And now a lesson in it's origins and a kind of complaint about it's real meaning being hijacked and misused. Oh my. What a travesty.
3
I think you must be sort of "woke" when you realize, everyday, that there are things about which you were wrong, facts you don't know yet, stuff you must learn. Open your minds, and quit slapping yourselves on your own backs. Listen and learn. Then, act.
2
So no more “woke”. Got it. I guess we’re back to throwing folks under the bus.
What utter stupidity. How awful, in the face of a white nationalist wannabe tyrant tossing red meat at his rallies we would cower and get rattled about strongly advocating for civil rights and civility: because that’s what “woke” is really about.
1
When wokeness becomes sanctimony—that’s the problem.
5
The 'insufferability' of wokeness is not a function of wokeness being insufferable. It's a function of wokeness being uncomfortable. And guess who's not used to being uncomfortable?
For minority folks who wince at the concept of wokeness I hold no judgment. Life has been precarious and stability is precious.
It's the majority culture men and women who don't realize that being uncomfortable is the daily experience of their black and brown brothers and sisters that is worthy of our judgment and collective effort to see and do better.
Centrists are winning not because their message is more right; it's that their message is more comforting.
@Fran
So is the point of wokeness to grow and improve as a society, or to avenge the discomforts of minorities?
1
Isn't it time to put this whole "woke"ness thing in the trash. I remember the similar term "hip." In the beginning, hip actually meant something. But then more and more people caught on until almost everyone thought they were hip, and at times it seemed like almost a contest to see who could outhip each other. At which point, about the only true hip left was to be straight. I see a similar trajectory for woke.
2
I found the last paragraph of this piece to be the most perfect distillation of the social struggle movement. "Wokeness" can be turned to a self-righteous puritanism; that's it weakness. But this should not be used to deny its strength, which is the continuing struggle toward a greater awareness of oppression. If racism is to be overcome and made taboo, then we cannot afford to shy away from truly plumbing its depths.
1
If you want to convince someone of your point of view, you need to speak their language. You need to meet them where they are and use language and motivations that address their thoughts, concerns and fears. Speaking down to anyone will simply raise their hackles. Telling them how right and righteous you are will only alienate them. That is what makes these candidates weak, not their ideas or ideals. Equality and justice are backbones of America, backbones of civilization. It is the ability to communicate those ideals in a way that the "average Joe" who is not "woke" can understand and identify with that separates those who will be good candidates and those who will not. trump won because he used language that spoke to a large enough population to get elected. His ideals - he had none, his ideas - borrowed at best. But he communicated in a way that met enough people where they were and in words they could understand that they voted for him. In my 40 years of voting, it has been the rare Democrat who has been able to cast aside their insistence of speaking how THEY want to speak and spoke in the way their AUDIENCE wanted them to speak.
-
As usual, it is not WHAT you say it is HOW you say it...and the language of "wokefulness" is not language most folks want to hear.
6
An interesting quirk of the woke terminology is that it becomes possible to think of someone like Bernie Sanders, a socialist who refuses to be co-opted by the most powerful people in the country and fashions his campaign as an attack on them, as somehow being less anti-oppression than a former prosecutor who led the race in billionaire contributions at one point and a former blue-god Democrat whose record includes an a A rating from the NRA.
3
Well, golly. Good thing St. Bernie never took no NRA money, ain’t it?
1
Talking about economic inequality, and in particular the ways the odds have been stacked against members of minority communities, as Elizabeth Warren does, is in my mind the most powerful and effective way to do it.
Pointing out systemic, institutional financial biases, and their role in producing the large wealth disparity between white americans and african americans, lays the groundwork for enacting bold initiatives to address it - initiatives that will require financial investments.
25 years after the end of apartheid, South Africa is the most unequal nation. Democracy in and of itself is not sufficient to address economic inequality, which in the case of South Africa and the US is directly related to historic racial inequality.
Let's leave wokeness and what people feel in their hearts to private groups and let the gov't take care of it's obligation to address the historical wrongs that our country has yet to atone for.
2
I’ve found the woke to be so very certain of their own virtue and so very willing to condemn those who don’t match their virtue in every aspect. They’ll certainly win the day at a college faculty senate meeting—and they’ll certainly lose a presidential election. My fear is that another four years of Trump is precisely what the woke want. Then comes the revolution.
5
I never heard of woke until President Obama cautioned against the trend at a speech this fall. It appears woke is synonymous with a single issue voter like zealots for Single Payer or evangelicals who would vote for the devil if she was against abortion. Politics is like making sausage, and only the best ingredients make for hearty fare.
2
It matters little that some woke candidates have drop out, they have already done their work: they have convinced many people that the leaders of the DNC are so far out in left field, that no matter how they try to backtrack now,they have set a radical course and are not to be believed.
9
Being aware of the realities of Americans lives, is better than saying "woke" or any other form of this word. It seems to be a term that Establishment Dems (DNC/DCCC) are using to denigrate all the Progressive candidates, as they did in 2015/2016. The real problem is, is that the DNC/DCCC never learned that it's the Progressive candidates who excite the electorate, not the 'same old, same old' approaches of the Establishment candidates.
3
The Democrats are oblivious to one of the greatest injustices plaguing society- discrimination in the tax code.
Currently about 1% of Americans are forced to pay 37% of all federal income taxes, while about 44% pay $0. To add insult to injury, the most productive members of society after suffering through this shakedown are constantly told they somehow don't pay their "fair share". The reality is that the wealthy pay far MORE than their fair share, since they use fewer government services (Medicaid, foodstamps, etc.)
Everyone should have to pay the same amount of taxes. That's equality and justice.
4
The problem is not wokeness per se, but feigned wokeness for the perceived appeal to voters. Gillebrand, Beto and Harris all adopted stances for their first national election that were significantly more woke than the policies that got them there.
"Authenticity," like "woke," is an overused and misused word in current politics, but a candidate needs to exhibit both together. Their wokeness needs to fit with their history and not feel opportunistic. The best example may be Harris's clash with Biden in the first debate, a moment that first catapulted her to the first tier but in the end may have hurt her. Biden was vulnerable. His claim that he could work across the aisle was unsubstantiated and his evocation of long ago dealings with old school racist Democrats as proof of that ability was misguided. But Harris' (and Booker's) outrage over decades-old compromises was disenguous and and her references to bussing policy proved a bit hypocritical.
As with Gillebrand's pride in her leadership in the effort to drive Al Franken from the Senate, it smacked of self-serving opportunism. A candidate can be as work as they want, but they have to live it full time, not just try it on when it suits them.
3
It's not about who talks the woke talk. It's about who walks the woke walk. And that's why arguably the wokest of the woke (AOC) endorses Bernie Sanders, who's woke in the true, original meaning of woke.
5
I think that Democrats' preferences in the primary is overshadowed by one thing: Trump. Or rather the prologue and epilogue of Trump's complete and utter awfulness and incompetence.
After seeing what has happened to the federal government, the institutions that Americans need to keep us safe, basic human decency, civility, and America's standing abroad, this is what I want to know about the Democratic primary: Who has the surest chance of removing Trump from office?
Woke, not woke, whatever. You could pick someone from the phone book, and if they hired competent people and listened to them, abstained from tweeting juvenile outrages and lies, did not force the taxpayers to foot the bill for their hotels and golf courses, and didn't give jobs to their grifter kids, then the country would be in better shape.
3
It has been very fun to watch from the sidelines as the far left ate their own. It is like the Jacobins following the French Revolution (eventually Robespierre found himself in the guillotine that he had sent so many others too).
Today's guillotine is social media. But it is the fault of the media and its clickbait stories that elevate a non-issue to the headlines.
3
"Wokeness" is a weakness because by its use it's divisive. It sets people against each other. It says, "I'm awake and aware and smart, and you're not". While the assumed purpose of the people who use the term "woke" is to unify and integrate, it does the very opposite.
And this is a problem for much of the "demographic warriors", who are fueled by historical injustices that continue to exist today. They inevitably frame their fight as "Us against Them" - "Us" being the woke, and "Them" being the ignorant. Insulting people, regardless of how right you might feel you are, is not a good recipe for winning friends and influencing people. Sure, some of the "ignorant" will likely remain so, but many could be made open to acceptance and inclusion, if not fully "woke" if not treated as the enemy.
And one does not have to be "woke" to see that our criminal "justice" system needs to be overhauled, with its clear bias of incarcerating and punishing black and brown people, especially men. So does it help to alienate these "un-woke" who would fight with you to end this injustice? This is often the unintended consequence of drawing lines, even for the most just reason.
In the end, if you want to be included, you can't set yourself apart.
2
This opinion piece is very rational, and the problem with Democratic zeal over the last year, is that it isn't.
One of the most important things we can do in America is to fight discrimination against people of color. That does not mean that Kamala Harris had to drop out of the race because she is a black woman.
Claims about a Green New Deal not only saving the planet but also creating millions of high paying jobs without a shred of evidence just turns people off.
And the idea of destroying the private health insurance industry, in the name of providing coverage for all, is a losing strategy.
It's a shame so many Democrats are so irrational.
It's great to be aspirational, but eventually reality has to set in.
2
A candidate whose MAIN appeal is "I'm not racist" is going to lose. This is not to say that racism is no longer a problem. All you have to do is read about all the incidents where police officers shoot or abuse unarmed black, Hispanic, or Native American suspects and make up lame excuses later. And that's just the most obvious symptom of a sickness that pervades this society. Just keep your ears open, and you will hear plenty of racist sentiments, although the specific target group will vary depending on the region of the country you live in.
But to win an election, you have to convince voters that you understand the problems that everyone shares. That's where Trump's con man abilities came into play. He convinced his supporters that his angry persona indicated understanding of their problems and that his (possibly non-existent) billions were a sign that he had the ability to fix those problems.
If the Democrats campaign on "Trump is awful and we're not bigots" in 2020 and don't offer a vision for the future along with a few clearly and consistently stated steps toward fixing our many messed-up systems, they will lose. And sad to say, they will deserve to lose, just as the Whigs deserved to lose for refusing to deal with the question of slavery in the nineteenth century.
1
An idea like "wokeness" may seem like an elitist notion, when in fact it is a matter or life or death.
3
@RCJCHC Trying to cancel people for using the wrong pronoun is definitely an elitist notion. It proves those people have no real problems in their life, and plenty of free time to cut down others.
2
@KM People use "that" instead of "who" all the time, which turns people into things. Most people use the wrong pronoun on trans people because they are just unfamiliar with trans people. It isn't a personal slight, most of the time.
Who pays these people? Who signs the paychecks of those who warn against woke, who warn against Progressives and demand "moderation" and Republican-Lite?
Those doing the signing of those paychecks are themselves all Republicans, or elitist neo-lib Democrats.
They mislead. They serve themselves. Maybe they believe it, but they are just as much misleading.
6
Two points. First, most voters are concerned mainly with what they percieve as the benefit they will derive from a particular candidates policies, Democrats are not an exception to this rule.
Second, most Democrats regardless of race or ethnic origin are left of center not far laft of cenetr.
3
These "woke" candidates weren't woke to class oppression, which might explain why their empty performative wokeness didn't resonate with the voters.
3
@brent
Get some skills, get a job, don't tangle with police, don't make babies before marriage and money in the bank.
That's the woke interwiki secret sauce to not staying in the poor class.
1
How can we dismantle whiteness if we perpetually reinforce it?
Can we dismantle racism if we excuse prejudice in the process?
1
American's whine about a corruption and a rigged system when it doesn't work for some of use. You get government you deserve.
We don't want "woke" candidates, we want political candidates who feed us back our foolishness and ignorance. Forget about going into detail about public policy, our educational system has failed to educated US citizens. To ask a significant percentage of Americans to put pencil to paper to understand or question economic policies or Senator Elizabeth Warrens's healthcare plan, would be a cause for brain damage. Like the President of the United Sates, American's depend on out "gut" not our brains to accept or reject public policy.
Case in point...
Mr. Barak Obama popped up to warn Democratic Presidential candidates they were going too far left. Mr. Obama didn't go into any specific details or critique specific polices. Obama just said, the word left. We've reduced public policy two dumb-down words left and right.
The devil is in the details but when people can't figure out the details, then the look to others to save them. Democracy depends on a well informed, educated society; the alternative is what we have at present, chaos.
1
Surely being awake to the systemic racism and abundant sexism of our society is a good thing, and dismissed out of hand chiefly by the ignorant or vicious. But the failure of Gillibrand's candidacy can hardly be attributed to her somehow being the most vocally "woke." She is a hypocritical corporate lawyer, who, from her Franken-moment forward, rather cynically (in my view) thought she had a good thing going.
I was very sorry to see the failure of Harris' campaign but there, too, it failed because she did not have a narrative, could not stick to a position, nor could she get her staff all on the same page: those are the predominant reasons it failed.
1
The "wokest" candidates are the ones dropping out. Why? Could it be that the majority of Americans, myself included, are not "woke"? Of course, the woke candidates are weak! Americans, myself included, want strong leaders. We do not want Beto and others like him. Beto is the epitome of weakness. Thankfully we a true leader, a strong leader, in the White House now, Donald J. Trump. There has never been a better time to be an American. It does not get any better than this and, wait, the best is yet to come! Cheers!
3
“Woke ideology”, I guess we can call a lot of things ideology, but really all those “ideologies” represent the crazy quilt messy state of politics as usual.
2
We might remember that the Buddha never said that he was ‘enlightened’. He said that he was “awake”. Equally relevant, he pursued the “Middle Way”.
2
The Democrats will not be truly “woke” until they understand that the basic underlying problem in this country is not racism, or lgbtq rights, or glass ceilings, it is the economic insecurity and inequity that underlies everything. The society is made first through economics and once that happens the various other cultural issues of the moment become visible. Economic inequality cannot be legislated away, it has to devolve after the financial under pinnings that support it have been removed. It is a long term process that requires both the strength to make the fundamental changes and the flexibility to manage the individual effects in people’s lives as it is happening. It requires the vision and strength of an FDR along with the popular realization that they are on the right path.
Today only Bernie Sanders has voiced that vision with the strength of a lifetime commitment behind it. He has always been opposed by the woke Democrats who focus on superficialities instead of the underlying financial problems. The Republicans are clear about what they hate and that is the New Deal thinking that gives financial power to the people. They have no problems with the rest of the woke Democrats who are part of their corporate power structure.
Only one Democrat is truly “woke” to our problems and the people are again hearing his voice and remembering the reality that economics has in their lives. “It’s the economics, stupid” should be the New Democratic bumper sticker.
1
Critics of the woke wing of the Democratic party aren't saying that all Democrats are crazy woke. They're saying that the Democratic wokes are not representative of the party as a whole. And the primary is confirming that.
3
Identity politics is a loser.
The democrats who embrace it try to staple together enough identity groups to create a sizable coalition - but its still a minority and it it provokes a reaction. In the instant that reaction is Trump.
Tie economics and values together. Values are a middle class characteristic, the rich don't need them and the poor can't afford them. The rich use their resources to enhance their own bargaining power and undermind everyone else's. So expanding the middle class in both directions is the smart thing to do. Tax the rich and help struggling families so that both groups survive and thrive under a construct that values middle class values.
That's the ticket.
1
@Tim Kane
Identity politics worked for Trump.
1
to me, the word "woke" means someone who whines all the time about every detail of life.
3
I used to be woke, but then I started reading all these articles about how insomnia is a major contributing factor to Alzheimer’s, so I decided to go back to sleep, and am much happier for it.😎
The problem with the Wokish religion is that is that it derives from postmodernism, in which everything is a zero sum game of power struggles between antagonistic identity groups. They view traditionally liberal politicians, who advocate policies benefitting ALL identity groups, suspiciously, because isn’t that just a mask disguising White Privelege?
The Wokish religion has many similarities to the Christian Right: both are intolerant, judgemental, sexually prudish, and quick to cast out apostates from orthodoxy. The Christian Right uses excommunication and shunning; the Wokish use social media cancel culture. But, importantly, the Christian Right allows for forgiveness and redemption. Among the Wokish, if you are cancelled you are a non-person forever.
2
The problem is messaging. A social justice agenda can besold on the basis of economic opportunity for all, a level playing field for all, etc. Social justice can be sold to a broad spectrum of Amercian citizens including those who put economic issues above values.
BTW, funny that you should mention Bill Maher. He is the poster child for smug secularism. He is a total turn-off to non-atheists.
1
Finally an explanation of what “Woke” is. It is another name for old fashion Democratic Party identity politics.
1
The term woke did not originate in the African American community. It’s a Marxist term dating to the late 19th century, which is apt, because the current progressive cause is essentially a Marxist endeavor.
2
Wokeness in the liberal culture extends far beyond electoral politics, and into the fabric of life especially for college and high school students.
Yes, it was annoying to have Kirsten Gillibrand lecture us about "white privilege" -- a loathsome, explicitly racist, dismissive concept that assumes all white people have had an easy time of life. Maybe Gillibrand has, but lots haven't.
More concerning to me is the wokeness of our classrooms, where students can be "cancelled" (shunned and abused online) for voicing an idea or opinion that transgresses the ever-shrinking boundaries of permissible thought, policed by the wokesters.
No wonder our students are more anxious, depressed, and suicidal than ever before. Social-justice bullies tell anyone who is white, male, straight, or "cisgender" that they are privileged, biased, supremacist, reparation-owing persons guilty by virtue of their "identity" -- the color of their skin, the anatomy of their sex organs, and their sexual preferences. Is this how we should be judged? Is this the lesson of Martin Luther King Jr?
What a brutal, harsh, racist, sexist, Puritanical movement wokesterism is. But for those who practice it, they enjoy the supreme privilege of passing judgment and punishment on their fellow citizens.
I'm with Barack: wokesters should get over it, and quick, because they are a social plague.
6
One.
Beto was not of the woke. Gun violence is not a woke copyrighted issue. To the contrary the dinosaur democrats think it their safe wedge issue.
Two.
Woke is not intellectual property of african Americans. Awake is long standing. Woke is intimately connected to the intersectionality foolishness.
Stirring out of sleep is an obvious and universal metaphor since humans like, you know, go unconscious by sleeping and the wake to the world or die. As do all mammals and bird dinosaurs.
As the Greta White Father spring of the woke movement and Marx and blah blah blah famously said
“I openly confess, the suggestion of David Hume was the very thing, which many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber, and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction.”
Yes I Kant. Yes I Kant. Yes I Kant.
2
White, upper middle class took a word from the Black community, made it their own to the point of insult, while pushing for something the communities they push for don't actually agree with? Say it isn't so.
1
this is so convoluted. is the democratic party woke or not? should they be less woke?
should the writing be more understandable?
yes.
1
"Woke" is about giving a special preference to those who believe homosexuality is as normal as heterosexuality, that minorities should be favored, and it's "social justice" comes in the flavor of poor mouthing those who founded this country in favor of those who were brought in as slaves, or pushed out as owners of the land. In short, it's the awakening of a Fantasy land which turns the order over the past 250 yrs on it's head. It's the ideology of the losers trying to "restore" something. In this ideology, every white person is suspect if you are "woke".
2
@No big deal
I am an anti woke.
But this has not one word of truth and is the party line of those who are fighting with the woke to be the boss of everyone and to make their lies accepted as the truth.
The “order over the past 250 yrs” is more the order of the “woke” than it is of the right wing Roman Catholics trying to sell the old order. The old order that was decisively rejected in America over two hundred and fifty year ago and over most all of Western Europe within a French decades. Stop touting it.
Woke + pragmatism is good. Woke + fanaticism is bad. Martin Luther King is an example of the former. The Weather Underground was an example of the latter. Barak Obama was anotjer example of fhe former. Edward Snowden and his supporters are example of the latter. (Snowden is an example of an attack from the "left" that helped weaken Obama). So: Let's all get woke. But be reasonable about it.
Woke, I get.
Social Justice Warriors, determined to be the wokest, lecturing others, not so much.
1
Here is my "woke" opinion and how it relates to Trump.
Lots of African Americans love Trump. Look at Rasmussen polling now, he is up to a 32% approval rating.
Just how many African American Americans are falsely accused of crimes every day, they feel for Trump ...who since election day has been falsely attacked by The Press, Democrats, and Liberals . They see it, they feel it , and will support him.
Just saying ...
3
This has always been the case for Democrats. Primary voters demand liberal purity of mind and soul, and the media has bought in to this structure. Republicans only demand candidates reinforce everything Americans need to fear; immigration, minorities, liberals socialists, and the fake news.
Why is the Democratic field composed of only old, rich White men ? What’s wrong with the Democratic Party, it no longer looks like America ?
2
Appealing to cultural liberals goes only so far. For the Democrats to unseat Trump they must return to the sentiments of Bill Clinton: "It's the economy, stupid!" The 2020 election will be decided by which candidate the voters believe will improve their financial lot in life. Any social issues are ancillary. Focus on health care, tax benefits for the middle and working class, and an improved living wage.
1
All well except the human/civil rights of those out of mainstream sexual and gender choice. If compromising on equality of marriage rights and gender expression is what it takes to get a political hack into the white house, you've just lit a fire under 'wokeness' of a sizable portion of our fine country.
Don't compromise my being.
Rich White people talking about prejudice and discrimination is up there with a Catholic Priest talking about sex - it is either philosophical musing, ignorance or hypocrisy.
2
To this 64 year old white male who sometimes feels rubbed the wrong way over “wokeness”...usually taking place in my own household, I will also say that “woke backlash” often reminds me of what I’d been hearing within the Democratic Party “big tent “ for decades...going back to the days when equal civil rights for blacks and opposition to the Vietnam War were far from having widespread acceptance from Americans at large or the rank-and-file of the Party. Enter “women’s rights”, “gay rights”, “AIDS”, “opposition to Cold War covert action in Latin America”, “urban decay”, “anti-business sentiment”, “rust-belt industrial malaise” and on and on and strikingly different positions on these issues within the “big tent”.
1
It's easy for you to oppose a conservative columnist position on wokeness. It is more interesting to hear your thoughts on President Obama's criticism:
(from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/01/opinion/obama-cancel-culture.html)
[Obama] doubled down on his finger-wagging, criticizing college students in particular who, in his view, think, “The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people and that’s enough.”
“That’s not activism,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”
It's Obama who is counseling that wokeness might feel self-gratifying but it is not proving to be a successful way to gather support for progressive causes.
219
@DCfromBoston
I'm not sure you read the article, because Bouies's criticism of the conservative columnist was that the "woke" candidates are not actually the most successful candidates. That was the same point Obama was making.
34
@DCfromBoston "It's Obama who is counseling that wokeness might feel self-gratifying but it is not proving to be a successful way to gather support for progressive cause" positions him as being some ardent "anti-woke" person, when in reality his is a pretty nuanced stance.
16
@DCfromBoston I haven't authorized drone strikes on any Middle Eastern hospitals lately, but once I get to that point I'll be sure to ask Barack what he thinks about my moral compass.
9
Not sure how this column aligns with the fact that Bernie/Warren are still in #2/3 in the race. You could argue that they still trail Biden but together they command an impressive portion of the electorate.
Kamala was relative moderate in the race who changed her positions multiple times, so its a poor example. The others did not have a clear vision of racial and economic justice and seemed to pick at slogans, hence never caught momentum.
2
I would be careful here. The rabidly right wing Tea Party types have not won presidential elections, but that have shifted the debate, gained an out-sized level of control, and consequently had a far reaching impact. Just because the wokest of the candidates did not fare well in the current election does not mean they will not have an impact, and this is regardless of whether or not that is what the Democratic party writ large wants.
1
There's not anything inherently wrong about being conscious of the the injustices in our society; the three politicians discussed by Mr. Bouie here simply committed political mistakes that hurt their campaigns. Nobody is going to vote for someone who seems to not appreciate her own accomplishments, and promises to go around lecturing people as in the case of Senator Gillibrand. Beto O'Rourke destroyed his campaign, and maybe his entire political career by proposing something which is unenforceable, and unconstitutional as well (one of the biggest political mistakes I've seen in my life). That was a lack of judgement. Senator Harris simply ran out of money, which is a management problem not related to any of her campaign positions. The campaigns of all three may be good examples of how not to run a political race, but it says nothing about the depth of any of their commitments.
2
While those who embrace absolute wokeness as a litmus test for candidates do not make up the majority of the Democratic Party, they do, it seems, make up the majority of op-ed writers, social media pundits and activists. This disconnect may not have much affect on Democratic Primary voters but could prove disastrous with low-information swing voters in a general election.
Thousands of words change their meaning every generation, or every century. "Woke," "high", "gay", "clipped", words for dogs, cats, and horses, men and women, buildings and waterways, all have seemed changeable and fluid. One funny thing about the important word "justice" : who is doing the hard work of judging? Do our friends say, "here comes the Judge" when they see us coming? As words change their meanings, we have to make an effort to express ourselves articulately under the new "rules of the road," so to speak. Mr Bouie may or may not have read the speeches of Eugene Victor Debs, America's greatest Socialist (in my opinion.) But Mr Bouie echoes Debs'main point: to be able to do the right thing, we must first see clearly what ought to be done, and That means we need the words accurately to describe what is lacking in our society today. Personally, I experience "woke" as a little remote from "racial justice," but I'm willing to adapt.
1
Both Mr. Bouie and the "woke" critics he refers to are missing possibly the most consequential point of the argument. That is, the media is giving everyone the impression that Democrats are far more radical than they actually are. This publication, while by no means leading the charge, is quite guilty of this. Republicans have been very successful in using this as a talking point and will continue to do so. How I wish all liberals would go to Fox News, just once a week to gain some perspective on what "the other side" is seeing, and how much they often contribute to the mobilization of their adversaries.
3
The fact that the most "woke" candidates are dropping out first and the ones that are leaning the most moderate are doing best in the polls should be a sign to the readers that "wokeness" is not the virtue you believe it to be. The current candidates should veer away from the woke crowd and stop promoting victimization and intersectionality and get back to the fundamentals that drove the Democratic party to success in the past - Unity, pro-America, job creation and the pursuit American Dream.
6
The candidate who emphasizes the long term health of the Social Security and Medicare systems and backs it with thoughtful, practical steps to accomplish this, will win over most people. Many voters don't understand that there are elements of both parties who think privatization or worse is good. By simply increasing the max taxable income for Social Security, we can protect it. Why should a two income family who earns 150,000 pay Social Security taxes on their full earnings, but a one-income family pays less but could in the end receive more benefits over time? It doesn't make sense.
1
Holding the center by demeaning and trying to marginalize the left, is a political tactic. President Obama chiding progressives and "woke" culture (and perhaps this op-ed) is the latest example. It's laughable, bordering on absurd that, in a time when white nationalist are literally working at the highest levels of government, when the social safety net, the environment, and women's reproductive rights are in the most dangerously precarious state in generations, centrists are actually helping the far right marginalize well meaning progressive candidates like Warren, AOC, and Sanders. Remember when Obama warned about the dangers of Democrats turning into a "circular firing squad"? The former President would do well to heed his own warning and stop attacking progressives in order to help another likely compromised centrist candidate. The DNC and the Democratic power brokers in the center seem to have learned nothing from their attempts to tip the electoral scales in 2016. Leave true progressives alone, they may be our last and only hope for the survival of the planet.
6
I don’t think the “woke” candidates failures is representative only of the weakness of wokeness among the party’s base. Rather, especially among my younger lefty friends, there’s a recognition that the struggle for justice for oppressed groups is inextricable from the struggle for economic justice. Warren and Sanders signal a new kind of politics and a new kind of economics as well as sincere commitment to wokeness.
I’m not turned off by the woke candidates’ wokeness, I’m just excited about the more revolutionary candidates.
2
You begin: "Democrats are too 'woke' for their own good, or so goes the argument." I think that's a misstatement of the argument, conflating Democrats with progressives and the "woke." Only the most nearsighted conservatives fail to see the difference between Democratic voters and the most progressive (woke) wing of their party, just as only the most nearsighted liberals fail to see the difference between Trump and traditional conservatives.
A fairer and more accurate first line would have been: Democrats are courting disaster if they yield to the "woke" among them, or so goes the argument.
Ask a rural voter, a poor person, or a woman without adequate childcare how woke a candidate is. Simply being woke doesn’t solve the problem. The awareness of the inequality or injustice doesn’t mean anything without appropriate action.
2
When D candidates have to indicate "their pronouns" like Pete B and Elizabeth W. (both of whom I otherwise like), we've already lost.
6
I think the Puritan example is a great guide to good governance. And I don’t think woke has wide currency in the black community outside a hip woke few.
2
And whose campaign is still very much awake, despite the Times's and other establishment entities' attempts to silence it? Tulsi Gabbard's.
It's hard to be woke when you're dead, and Gabbard is the only candidate wanting to pull our Bush-Trump foreign policy back from the brink of war with Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, or even Russia and China. And as we all know, minorities are disproportionately represented in the enlisted ranks of the military, so war casualties hit communities of color the hardest.
Gabbard has also focused on criminal justice reform (remember her dismantling Kamala Harris's record on the death penalty and small-time drug offenders?) and ending the war on (some) drugs, a priority for many Democrats, Libertarians, Republicans and Independents.
2
Tulsi Gabbards support comes entirely from the alt-right. Only Q, Fox, and Sinclair watchers think she is still in this game. She’s the choice of those who switch parties to vote in primaries
1
High time to 'cancel out' the current 'word du jour' or at least mothball it until cooler heads prevail. For the time being, let's just settle for 'aware' and see what happens. How quickly, how sadly, how ironically woke became a piñata to be poked.
1
I’ll keep the word, confine it to its original meaning and keep trying to be it.
I wonder how much the results were influenced by media & poll reporting that showed the African American in the south vote largely supporting Biden. I won’t vote for a candidate that does not pull all voters off the couch & to the polls. Not just because we need to beat trump but because it’s the right thing from my perspective. It’s the “right” thing and it doesn’t make me “woke”
Being “woke” is a lot harder than that and I’ll keep trying
"But a broad awareness of oppression — of the ways this country does not work for many of its citizens — is vital."
This is how Trump got elected. He appealed to the religious right and to "oppressed whites" - mostly men who felt and feel that blacks, latinos, and women have taken something away from them. And let's not forget the so-called lower middle class whose male and female members feel much the same. Talk to people whose yearly income is less than some of the rich spend on clothes. Clinton lost the election I think largely because she neglected this strange conglomerate of voters. And Trump will win again if the Dems don't turn their attention away from the border troubles and "Dreamers" and work to be sure the neglected in this country, all of them, get attention. Not just medical coverage and minimum wage - get out into the boonies, where we see "Trump" signs - and talk to people. Find out what they need and want.
3
@SFR Many of then need and want a return to the 1950s, when "colored folks" knew their place.
1
@Frank Knarf Sorry, Frank. That is not a "need."
The attention given to "wokeness" in this column, and in our political culture, is a distraction from the problems surrounding "identity politics." The Republicans get a lot of traction out of "single issue" politics, but that is where they are vulnerable. To the extent that any individual or group is focused only on their own identity, they are defining a niche and creating a distraction. Anybody's identity is complicated, and their true interests are served by respecting differences and building coalitions.
1
You are right, Mr. Blow, to point out that the true meaning of being awake has been misused and diluted.
It one thing to be woke and simply call other people out. It's another thing to be woke, politically active, and also sensitive towards others in even the smallest of our daily actions. Criticizing someone for not being woke can be seen as being insensitive and is much less effective than setting a good example.
4
Um this article isn’t by blow. Having trouble telling us apart?
im a progressive but even i am weary ( and wary ) of those who are "woke"
im weary of the constant evangelism with many " woke " people that all others are asleep
im wary that the constant "purity" testing is nothing more than "struggle sessions that occurred in the Great Leap forward in the 50s and 60s , or the Red Scare that occurred in the 50's or the militancy of the Fifth Column and Weather Underground or SLA that occurred in the 70's ...well you get the meaning.
"the converted, are at times the most zealous" ..and a zealot is not generally a good thing....and there are many that seem they are "converted" to being "woke" ...
6
The widest awoke candidates may not have faired well in the primaries but the leadership class of the party is overrepresented by wide awoke ideologues. I’m with Bill Maher on this one.
8
Bouie is looking at this the wrong way. It's not about Woke candidates being strong or weak, it's that they are divisive and divisiveness weakens the Democratic party. Presenting everything in terms of identity, oppressed vs oppressors, privileged vs unprivileged, only pits potential allies against one another. Being woke or awakened about injustice should not be about pointing fingers at someone because they are the wrong skin color, gender, or other identity. That's called discrimination. If there's any hope of defeating Trump, Wokeness, as it's currently presented and practiced, is a losing strategy.
7
Jamelle Bouie is always relevent, always thought-provoking, and always worth my time.
6
Ignore the Left at your peril. Most of us will vote for the eventual nominee, even if we have to hold our nose and pull the lever. But many others, including a large percentage of the youth vote, will not. This puts the Presidential outcome in jeopardy, ad well as loses us the chance of taking the Senate and keeping the house.
3
Bouie seems to be glossing over the reality that whom she identifies as the Wokest are actually just weak candidates generally. In other words, the two aren’t necessarily connected.
Beto’s schtick of jumping on tables was “cool” during the governor’s race, but he didn’t actually bring anything as a presidential candidate. And then when he started talking about taking everyone’s guns, a bunch of Democrats (including a number who would probably like to do so!) realized “yeah... no way this guy wins the general election.”
Harris never presented a clear vision and waffled constantly. She also ran a disastrous joke of a campaign. You can’t survive if your top campaign staff is abysmal.
In contrast, Warren, for example, presents a clear message and has an excellent, well-organized campaign. She comes off as strong, smart, and highly competent. (I say this as a conservative who disagrees with her on most every issue she champions). She also seems like she could go head-to-head with Trump. Can you honestly see table-jumper surviving a bout with Trump?
I’m not saying Wokeness is irrelevant. But you can’t ignore they were fundamentally flawed candidates with bad campaigns in a field of strong candidates (Warren and Pete, especially).
9
Average Democrat is not a woke, it is the social media, and some pundits who are vocal and loud. They are hurting the party and its candidates. So even if we have a reasonably good candidate he/she would be too damaged by media to beat Trump.
9
Democrats still don’t seem to comprehend that the election of Donald Trump is the consequence of their own woke and reverse racism rhetoric, that has been going on long before Trump entered the picture. This fact is further punctuated by their continued actions of chipping away at personal liberties and freedoms. For all of their criticism of rich uncaring conservatives they themselves are a party of elite, smug intellectuals (and rich) who care less about blue collar workers than they let on. Those were the “deplorables” the last time out. For all of their efforts to spin the political landscape as far left as possible, the American people continue to show that they are about to be duped. Thank God.
8
Gillibrand didn’t lose because of her identity politics. We all know why she lost.
5
It's sad how the term "woke" has been twisted to belittle those who prioritize racial injustice issues. It is beautiful word otherwise. lt now has a negative connotation in this country, much like the innocuous words "amnesty" and "liberal."
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@James
Perhaps it would not be so if it wasn't so obviously and stridently shopped around as a simultaneous badge of honor to those who subscribe to it and a badge of shame to those who do not. Winning public support for an idea or concept like this goes much smoother when dissenters aren't labeled racists and bigots by default. All that does is galvanize the opposition and turn the idea into a farce.
40
@James
The people sporting the term gave it a negative connotation by their own obnoxious behavior gleefully transgressing other people’s rights to go about their lives unmolested.
Thanks to the abusive and instrusive behavior of the “woke”, that term and “social justice” make me glad that I own a revolver.
15
@James
I'm a far left liberal (voted for Sanders in the primary, Clinton in the general), and given the way people who characterize themselves as woke act towards those who they see as not woke, the negative connotation is well-deserved.
40
The 'wokest' candidates are the weakest not because the Democratic Party "might still be too woke for its own good," but because at this point in time, the majority of even the liberal voters have recognized identity politics and social justice ideology as reductive, simplistic rhetoric that is divorced from the reality in which they live. Good for them. And good for us all.
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On "woke" as a slang term Mr. Bouie points out that "it’s been borrowed and diluted and worn down, so that the original meaning has faded from view. That meaning, however, is still worthwhile." Reverend King's "Remaining Awake" address reminds us that it is important to STAY AWAKE, to keep one's eyes open, to see oppression and injustice where it occurs, and to work together to end it. As sometimes used today, "woke" is a pejorative that seeks to divide rather than unite. One is either "woke" or not, a perspective that misses, I think, Reverend King's larger point.
6
In my view, economics/money is the key to equality in this country. That should be the central theme of "wokeness". It certainly is the most important.
Child care
Healthcare
Education
Fair business practices
Second, we need fair voting rights and a new way to pick our presidents.
Language is important, but with so much else to do, it is almost a distraction and it's certainly a potent talking point for the right.
2
A new way to choose our president. Reminds me of the sentence that Barack Obama spoke just before his first presidential win.... We are about to fundamentally change the United States of America. That was the moment red flags went up for tens of millions of Americans
1
Perhaps the last two paragraphs are the most important. Most democrats know the reality contained in Dr. King's writings and are aware that, progress aside, there is still a chasm between white and black opportunity in this nation. He pushed until the day he died with strength, peace, dignity and determination. Malcolm X had the same goals, but he allowed bitterness (justified though it was) to tinge his message and was less successful. Dr. King's persuasion fueled the legislations of the 1960s.
The anger of the 3 candidates mentioned came through in their message. We have lived with anger for the last 3 years. We need persuasion.
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Thank you for writing this article. I am one of those frustrated by elements of the “woke” crowd in the Democratic Party and the political left. Frustratingly, they seem to attract all the attention from the media as if they speak for most of us who are left of center. The irony is that as we become more secular in the West, the “woke” have created their own new religious cult to fill the void, replete with Puritanical orthodoxy and online Twitter mob cries of “blasphemy!” for those who dare to deviate even the slightest from their creed. Despite all the attention they receive, this article underscores their relative weakness— for now—in the Democratic Party. That is a good thing. Puritanism did not contribute positively to American society. So it will be with its latest woke incarnation.
5
But, I just want to point out here that there is also a politically correct code of speech and conduct, a wokeness, on the Right, and not just the far right. We seem to ignore in these discussions of the Democrat’s cultural purity tests, the Republican politician’s need to uphold the tiki-torch culture, lock-stock-and-barrel, or be banished to a political dust-bin. This Republican code has pushed the Party so far to the right that it resembles a fascist political platform. Yes, there is a strong element of this absolutism in the far left of the Democratic Party, but we continually push back against these purity tests because we are a much more diverse voting block.
2
It feels like the author is equating a candidates 'wokeness' with the lip service they pay to social justice terminology and not actually progressive policy. How are Beto O'Rourke and Kamala Harris 'Woke'? A moderate Texan and a cop?
Why do Bernie Sander's harangues on income inequality not count as a 'woke' stance? Why would Warren's prison reform not be considered a 'woke' policy? When it comes to actually fighting racial/social/economic inequality these are issues with tangible benefits for our country's most marginalized.
This column feels much like right-wing attacks on the concept of 'social justice', where they cherry pick online comments they disagree with and say "this is all social justice is". This equating of twitter mobs of performative SJWs with actual activists who work to bring racial and economic equity to health care, legal systems, voting rights, the housing market, etc is a tried a true mechanism of de-legitimizing any and all progressive policies.
If you disagree I would be happy to have a push-up competition to prove how smart and stable I am.
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Woke black folks have been painfully awars of their fragile physically identifiable minority origins.
First, as the intentionally enslaved African property of the white European American Judeo-Christian Founding Fathers.
Second, their intentionally enforced separate and unequal 3rd class American status travail and tribulation compared to that of the powerful privileged bigoted prejudiced white heirs of the Founders.
Thus the black freedom struggle has always followed a dual complementary track.
Actively demanding that they be finally and fully integrated into every crack and crevice of American civil secular life.
While accepting and making the best of every segregated bar and barrier. And biding their carefully concealed shrewd clever time to keep on moving forward and up until their 'victory is won'.
Neither condescending paternalistic liberal white pity nor condescending conservative white contempt accepts the divine natural equal human person certain unalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness the black Africans in America.
Black Africans are not seen as individual diverse accountable unique human beings by either side.
Nick Cannon said that black folks are expected to be 'grateful, invisible and silent'.
The coopting of black appearance, art and culture is a paradoxical reflection of white envy.
If white folks believed in black inferiority why cheat aka discriminate?
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Jamelle, you are wrong. The entire Democratic party and its mouthpieces fell in love with a dialogue of victimhood, white privilege (whites still represent 70% of the country), that successful people are bad, working class/non workers/criminals are angels who simply are where they are because of the yoke of the white man and a view that Capitalism is the Original Sin. The New Progressive orthodoxy required that each candidate raise their hand and pledge to the god of neo-Progressivism. So, the choice Progressives left for voters was not Trump and an alternative but the Evil, Old, Uncle who plays favorites vs the crazy who wants to burn the house down.
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@Chris : That characterization has a lot more to do with Fox News/AM radio stereotypes of Democrats--based on the antics of a few overly zealous college students--than it has to do with actual rank-and-file Democrats.
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One party is the party of identity politics. Identity politics is code for sanctioned racism/sexism/xenophobism. All of that is now distilled into a single word 'Woke.'
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Don’t forget Marianne Williamson!
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Or perhaps the doom of the "woke" candidates doesn't stem from their wokeness? Maybe they're just not very good as candidates?
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Sadly woke just re-elected Trump.
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The actual reason woke candidates are the weakest is because wokeness doesn't get anything done. People want a president who they believe will solve their most serious problems, not someone who just looks good on Twitter. The reason Trump was elected is because a lot of people who previously voted for Obama thought he would solve their most serious problems. They're wrong of course, but he made them believe it. Trump is a maniac, but you have to admit he commands attention. The Democrats will win with a candidate who has gravitas and proposes solutions to people's actual problems, not someone who spends their time virtue signaling but doesn't seem to have the forcefulness to get things done.
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Most folks don't care as much about being 'woke' - when they are just trying to keep a job, put food on the table and send their kids to a good school. Wokeness is anything but 'pragmatic'....in many ways, it's a high class issue.
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The Democratic Party is too woke - the lefties are dragging the party away from the mores of the majority of Democratic and Independent voters. Most Democrats (I have been a registered Democrat for 40 years) espouse more even-keeled, sensible, fair perspectives.
3
Isn’t it amazing that if someone, white, black or brown is woke in the original sense, you are immediately condemned. Being aware of oppression, and being outraged by oppression, and being mobilized by that outrage is the only way to make change. And of course those who benefit from oppression must maintain the status quo by belittling or mocking the “woke.”
Btw identity politics is used by white men in power to stay in power. First by mocking the woke and second by pushing the narrative that only white men have done anything valuable.
3
I am so glad I never learned the real meaning of the now-obsolete adjective "woke."
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Ultimately it’s money. Money floods our elections and has determined Gorsuch and Kavanaugh onto the Supreme Court. The latest judge approved by the Senate (unanimously voted in by the GOP minus Susan Collins......and don’t doubt that she knew her vote was unnecessary) is rated as unqualified by lawyer groups themselves. McConnel pushed for removal of sanctions against a Russian oligarch, then was “surprised” to find he was majority backer in that new Copper plant in McConnell’s backyard....along with 25% of wifey’s transportation budget.
If money is free speech, it shouts far louder in million dollar quantities than any citizens do. Voting? Just a prequalification for office.
And this sort of money wants to remain hidden, not woke.....but woke? That’s irrelevant other than a signal to keep money away in the darkness.
2
Perhaps the common sense contained in the admonishments of Lewis, Maher, Obama, and others is sinking in.
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What Mr. Bouie fails to acknowledge or perhaps recognize is the transparency of his invented terminology. Wokest, a non-word, is synonymous with narcissism and hypocrisy, more genuine terms to describe the Democrat accordion of candidates. Gillibrand and O’Rourke couldn’t keep the mask on. How many times can one pretend, espouse guilt and falsehoods, and outright lies? It takes a toll and those without the stamina succumb. It is inevitable, but to invent a term of “woke” to clarify the Democrats confusion, merely provides an off ramp to reality and adds to intellectual oppression.
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Great article. The digital age is drowning us with too much information. And since the term woke has been hijacked it appears to serve best falsehoods and myths over truth and facts. Which gives trolls and bots from Russia so much power over a very divided nation. And with sad irony, seems to work best to divide Democrats in spite of self-proclaimed wokeness. Sometimes the enemy is us. Wake up before it is too late. Obama said it best: “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.” In other words right now woke needs to grow a thick skin. Realism over Idealism.
2
The woke liberals are small in number but they are loud, aggressive and increasingly alienating to liberals like me who find their absolutism offensive. There is no room for different opinions or points of view - if you don't agree with their dogma you are bad, evil, racist and every other type of -ist imaginable. They are often intellectually lazy - calling out racism everywhere possible - yet defending liberal anti-Semitism or ignoring it or doing "what-aboutism" to the right (see Bari Weiss's amazing column yesterday). And instead of dedicating some of their fire power to ensure that women, 51% of the population, finally get the ERA passed - and get paid equally, etc - instead they throw their energy into more fringe causes that effect very few people relatively speaking - and if you aren't all in on those causes - again you are bad, evil and stupid. It's exhausting, it's divisive and what literally has me terrified that we will have four more years of Trump.
6
Whatever jargon you use, the powers that be will use it for their own purposes, and they have a bigger megaphone than you do. Their goal is enforcing divisions, not criticizing them. Inclusive & exclusive labels like “woke” just guarantee that there will be no productive dialogue. Politics no longer gives us the opportunity to empower ourselves through government (unless we are very rich), so we express our frustrations by name-calling. This is exactly what Trump and the powerful want us to do: to declare our superiority & throw labels at each other, instead of debating & pursuing our common interests.
Of course race-baiting and tolerance are not morally equivalent, but our corrupt political system uses both to divide & conquer. Trump & the Republicans & Fox don’t succeed just by manipulating racists; they succeed by manipulating everyone. They convince one side that all “liberals” are virtue-signalling snobs and convince the other side that all Republicans are ignorant racists. Both are lies, but as the years go by we all get gradually closer to embodying the parodies, one side wielding a power that does them no good, the other embracing our morally superior impotence.
1
I object to your usage of “Puritanism”. Irony intended.
Self righteous virtue signaling comes from all sides - and is despised by everyone. That is why so many in this country hate Democrats, even though their needs would be better addressed by Democrats.
4
Warren and Sanders are pretty "woke" by the latter definition, and their policies that challenge racism, sexism, AND the neo-liberal capitalism that exacerbates all isms are far "woker" than those of more narrow approaches.
2
Get Woke! No more Boomers! No Trump! No Biden! No Warren! No Sanders! This isn't a black or white or male or female issue. This is a yesteryear versus tomorrow issue.
How could wokeness ever expect survive when released from Twitter into the real world?
The worst part of "insufferable wokeness" is the reduction of a living breathing person to just an avatar of privilege.
It's thrown around in exactly the same way you might say a racial epithet is. Can you imagine telling an IRL person to their face that their perspective and viewpoints don't have merit because they are "privileged"?
4
Woke is a verb, past tense. Using it as a synonym for awake or enlightened is lazy slang.
1
Lecturing white voters on how privileged they all are is a sure-fire recipe for electoral disaster.
6
Kirsten Gillibrand is about white women first, then minorities. I have personal experience with her on this. Of course most white women progressives are the same way, so she is just no exception. Minorities are great as long as there isn't a white woman who wants the opportunity.
2
When "wokeness" is a fad it is hard to avoid the expression: This too shall pass. As a Democrat, I wonder for how long these woke candidates can carry their thoughts and ideas without hitting the proverbial brick wall of reality. They need to learn to "think outside the bubble."
A movement that uses bad English and a word that no one understands except the celebrity types is no movement at all. Name change is necessary to even understand what the heck it is all about an I am not interested enough to find out. This idea will hit the dust bin like all the others of the past. Gillibrand and O Rourke will survive and be seen another time.
1
Far from NOT proving the point that "wokeness," is a double-edged sword, the fact that the wokest candidates are faiing, is proof that wokeness overdone CAN BE a deficit not a bonus.
3
We have been woke since the 60’s bud. The candidates you claim are woke are pretenders, newbies to wokeness. That makes them shallow and annoying.
3
From what I've seen coming from Warren, she is the wokest of all of the candidates. Although liberals will vote for her because 'the lesser of two evils,' she certainly doesn't speak for the majority when she speaks non-stop on the bandwagon of wokeness. I used to really like her; now she looks and sounds unhinged.
I don't think this author has proven any of his theses, but, actually contradicts them. In addition, top candidates are greatly a function of media reporting (or not reporting).
2
Yes, yes, yes, and YES. Thank you for the sanity. Extreme puritanical wokeness is as distasteful as extreme purposeful unwokeness. Neither should ever be the basis for governance.
2
"Woke" is progressive lingo for "I'm smart; you're not."
Here's tip, woke folk: feelings are always mutual.
7
Occasionally I do believe Mr Bouie just makes this stuff up to reflect what he really hopes is true - the origins/etymology of 'woke' are expertly explained by Oxford dictionaries.
https://public.oed.com/appeals/woke/
It had its origins in music and certainly not with Dr. King - except perhaps by those who hope to imbue with some magical mysticism of civil rights.
2
Glad I could finally find something from Bouie I agree with.
1
Bouie's point about "woke" is a good one. Let's ban the use of the word and put a scarlet W on any candidate or pundit who uses it.
1
@Ulysses
This doesn't help. The use of this definitely too unclear word is a lesser problem. Acting "woke" in the actual sense "5.0" - see the recent NYT article of Mr. Young about the history of this term - is the real issue.
@ws I guess you're just too woke for me and for my sarcasm.
The whole notion of ‘woke’ and preaching against ‘white privilege’ or any other ‘wokeism’ is just wearisome. I think I speak for many in saying we’re just tired of being lectured about all things politically correct. This fetish is why the entire slate of Democratic candidates is weak. All they’re doing with their constant finger-wagging is creating more Trump voters.
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@Once. I seriously doubt that candidates who espose Democratic values are creating more Trump voter. Trump voters were always going to be Trump voters.
47
@Once From Rome "The only real problem with racism and sexism is that people have the audacity to point it out." This is what you're arguing.
44
Why do you not care about the 250 year history of slavery, the 100 year history of Jim Crow and the 50 years and counting of mass incarceration and the war on drugs? Literally 400 years of oppression, it dates back beyond the declaration of independence. But somehow mentioning it makes "you" vote for Trump.
35
Seems that Jamelle brought out a lot of sensitivity towards this subject.
1
Can we get back to the new woke version of "Baby it's Cold Outside", and why we haven't addressed the gold digger in "Santa Baby"? This is important stuff.
4
Woke culture sends voters to Trump.
4
Good, being "Woke" has morphed into a silly zealous "holier than thou" mantra to insulate weak ideas and poor execution.
Beto was nothing but a media made sensation and he fell apart like tissue paper in the rain not for his leftist political leanings but for the fact his ideas were not well thought out and his communication to people was insincere and pandering.
Kirsten was also a weak candidate and it remains to be seen how the Democrats will appeal to the centrist and right of center voters who want a change from this kook who currently resides at 1600.
4
I don’t think that Woke Culture can be separated from socialism. In this case the “proletariat” and “rich” got transformed into the “oppressed” and “white”. With this reality Mayor Pete, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren are very much “woke”.
3
For this lefty, Senator Gillibrand's version of #metoo was a step too far. She alienated many, with her purity-test attacks on Senator Franken and showed rigidity that did her in politically IMHO.
379
@Nathan
Expecting a US Senator to refrain from forcibly kissing women and grabbing women's behinds is not a "purity test." It is a basic standard of decency.
"Not as bad as Bill Cosby" should not be the standard we set for men's behavior.
6
@Nathan great leftist and ally you are
1
@Nathan Ask Al Franken what he thinks of Gillbrand...I'm a Conservative and he didn't deserve to be booted from Congress...Gillbrand should be ashamed of her own personal witch-hunt
30
Mr. Bouie; I always enjoy your point of view but I think you need to go full spectrum;
woke,
eyes closed but attentive,
lightly napping,
fitful sleeping,
deep sleep snoring,
comatose,
dead.
We need all to vote against the nightmare.
1
Yes, to be awake to institutionalized racism and sexism is not a burden but a benefit. Those that criticize such a benefit should not concern the Dems. You cannot stop fighting racism, sexism, and xenophobia simply because the Republican Party calls for it.
77
This ain’t wants happening. Atomizing everyone into individuals with no areas of overlap doesn’t help a party coalesce. Cannibalizing everyone who makes a mistake (which is everyone) doesn’t help, either. Your criticism lacks nuance. Not wanting what I mentioned above doesn’t then mean that I don’t want to fight racism or whatever. It just means I want nuanced discussion and an adult approach to solving problems.
19
@X
Well, I would like a nuanced discussion as well, but the reality is that what many people want is to not discuss these things at all. Thus, when they claim to want to stop political correctness or for the Dems to stop discussing important issues in a "woke" fashion, what they are really saying is that they don't want to discuss the issues at all. You are in the minority because you want to truly discuss issues.
7
@Anthony The law of diminishing returns create enemies from authoritarian American Taliban who demand ever more tyranny for it's desire that the least should be treated as if they were the most.
2
Democratic presidential candidates have been zealots in their pursuit of "black votes".
Most Americans view this as patronizing pandering.
Harris, an accomplished attorney, prosecutor, and California Attorney General, tarnished herself by apologizing for prosecuting and convicting criminals.
Other candidates claim that many criminals are the victims of racial injustice, when most Americans consider the victims of crime as the sufferers of injustice.
8
Personally, I strongly support progressive economic policies. I support very very high taxes on the wealthy, breaking up Big Tech and Big Banks, universal health care, and a strong safety net to support the working class and middle class in general. My favorite candidates are Sanders, Yang, and Warren. I also support things like legalizing same-sex marriage and marijuana. However, I do not at all support social justice and identity politics. I strongly suspect there are many other voters who share my point of view.
I think much of the social justice movement is an artifact of social media as well as the news media and Hollywood. It's a fake alternative reality that has very little to do with how most people see the world.
Regarding the term 'woke', I hear there is more to it. Something along the lines of not only awareness of racism but watching one's back when it comes to subtle racism. In any case, the term certainly has changed meaning. You know watered down the term 'woke'? "Woke" white liberals. I honestly think these "woke" white "allies" are incredibly racist. Figures that those shaming others for cultural appropriation would appropriate black slang.
2
Sigh! Woke or asleep, all this reminds me of 1972. George McGovern was the woke peace candidate of the moment. I had just turned 21, and could at last vote. George it was. Sigh! Nixon won. Lesson learned. Sigh again!
2
The Right is not going to change.
The Left is not going to change.
Moderates have to choose a side.
Polling in this country is a disaster. It polls landlines. Who has a landline? Older people who lean conservative.
Young people, who lean left, are not being polled (except in self selecting online "polls" that are easily manipulated).
Young activists who the Democratic Party needs to go door to door are far more interested in social justice than the majority of older Democratic Party regulars. If older Democratic Party regulars think the way to beat Trump is to tell the young left they not moderate enough, you will alienate them. If you want to spend 2021 scolding the young for not voting, spend 2020 telling them that what they care about doesn't matter.
I'm not saying the Democratic Party should become social justice warriors. I am saying that they should respect the base of their own party and attack the values and policies of the Right, which are against the Constitution.
"Identity politics" was invented by the Right, which seeks to divide workers and divide our Union, so they can manipulate us for their gain.
Most "identities" were invented by racist, homophobic white supremacists who want to be "more equal" than everyone else. That is why they love Trump.
Those that fight against their institutional racism are not creating the problem, but trying to solve it, peacefully, while the Right literally shoots up places of worship.
JUSTICE MAKES OUR UNION MORE PERFECT
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Ask me to decide between someone who is going to tell me what white privilege is and someone who is waging a fight against the inequality and corruption which perpetuates it.
Give me a millisecond.
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Woke has become a term used to belittle by those with a vested interest in the real injustices of the status qou; a mechanism to devide. Of course there is more to liberalism than social justice issues, but the Right likes to amplify and caricature the Left's critique as a defense.
2
@Al and those inequities are not only growing and swallowing those who think themselves clever in their attacks using terms like "woke", they are at the heart of the murder of the American Dream.
Sorry, but I'd rather be "woke" and working on the real root causes of most problems in our society than pretend that neoliberalism and capitalism are anything but morally bankrupt.
“woke”: (I hate that word in the context of it being a consciousness of something that shouldn’t need a tag but is an obvious truism.
Great. We have now let the conservatives destroy the word Woke. We can add that word to the words Feminist, Socialist, Liberal, and Union on the trash heap of useful descriptions that we have allowed them to debase.
You know what being woke is? It is explaining to a white suburbanite exactly why black kids walk in the middle of the street. (They do it because if you grow up in neighborhoods filled with abandoned houses and overgrown hedges that are right next to broken sidewalks, it is much safer to walk in the street. It's called situation awareness.)
Once I lay down that knowledge, people's eyes tend to get wide and they say, "I never thought of that, but it makes perfect sense."
So doesn't that mean they are a little bit Woke now, too?
@Walter Bruckner Woke people destroyed the word themselves when everyone saw what vicious puritanical hypocrites they were. Look up the Atlantic article, the only people who like political correctness are online activists. Everyone else, including most minorities, hates it.
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The extreme wokeness of Democrats is real as far as its most visible activists on social media are concerned, especially on Twitter. There, extreme liberals, most of them white, dominate.
This is, as the primary campaign proves, not the reality of the party and its voters as a whole. But at the same time it's very real and damaging, because the social media presence shapes the Democrat's public image.
This in turn is because while Twitter is useless filth and has no relevance for most people, it occupies an outsize role in the mind of journalists, most of whom somehow believe it to be important, probably because all their peers believe the same thing.
"Wokeness" is a race to be the least popular. So, of course, it fails at electoral politics.
Think about it: every supposedly "woke" position is vulnerable to an attack that says "The problem is that you make too many generalizations. You don't account for this marginalized group, or this element of history, so X percentage of your support is based on false perceptions. We need to talk more about this subset of your position's supporters (and that makes you racist, sexist, etc.)." And, of course, there will always be someone ready and willing to offer that critique.
And on it goes, carving us up into ever-smaller factions. "Wokeness" only divides people; it doesn't unite them. It's all well and good to be be critical, but if no trust is present between the critic and the object of criticism, then there's no "coming together" and learning. Instead, you have the following:
"Oh, you say I'm a racist? Well, I know I'm not, and you wouldn't say that if you knew me or respected me. You don't know what you're talking about, and you don't care about me, so I don't care what you think about me."
Not a recipe for building coalitions. Why do you think far-left movements are so notoriously fractious?
2
Great article...thanks!
Democrats are in great danger of losing to Trump because the Republicans have one characteristic they don’t: blind, cult-like, allegiance to the Party’s hate-filled, theocratic, pro-big money agenda. As Mr. Bouie points out, the big diversity within the party is its worst enemy.
If the far left woke contingent decides that a moderate candidate is anathema to their ideals and stays home on Election Day, the nation will be plunged further into Trumpism, a dictatorship that will take generations to recover from, if at all.
Sadly it appears we’re headed that way, and Bloomberg’s entry is making the chances higher. If, for example, woke Democrats decide that stop and frisk stained Bloomberg to much, they will allow Trump and his long list of hatred, discrimination, anti democracy actions win over their disgust over Bloomberg’s one sin. Or Biden’s more moderate to right leaning days decades ago will be rejected so we can watch Trump dictatorship take the country down roads we never thought possible.
Dems, hold your nose and vote Democratic, or keep holding your nose as we all drown in a swamp unlike any this country has ever seen.
1
I'd wish the "woke" well to do middle aged liberal PC portion of my party would be woke enough to consider the concrete things other than words that might do something to reverse the terrible crushing impoverishment and destitution of such large portions of our society of all colors. Wealthy Woke Foke are killing us with poverty and virtue signalling.
1
"woke"..."hero"..."organic"..."gluten free"...all buzz words now that inspires deep sleep as the words are descriptive of nothing. Especially if the words come from the mouth of a news talker on a major network.
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I agree that the desire to defeat Trump--a desire I share, intensely--tends to pull the party to the middle in pursuit of the votes of folks with a lingering racist, sexist, homophobic bent. This is another of the gross distortions Trump has foisted on us. But "wokeness" loses me in its identity politics, which, whatever its alleged philosophical merits, plays into the hands of white nationalists/supremacists. They too have an identity. But that identity adds nothing to their position, which like the positions of other identities must stand on its broader humanistic merits. Through identity politics "wokeness" becomes tribalism. We don't need another GOP on the left.
The commentary following the first debate about the unattractiveness of Woke positions (including in the NYT) seemed to push Wokeness back into the Democratic closet.
Why have the moderators not raised reparations since? Because they know it makes the candidates look bad to the general populace and wants to help keep the candidate’s positions out of sight.
Why no more discussions of border policy and health care for illegal immigrants? Same. Keep positions out of the news and shield candidates from general election attacks.
1
One problem is that the vast majority of voters (and would-be voters) are not only not on twitter, they are barely tuned in to politics at all. Having so many candidates who seem obsessed with "identity" issues being in the field to begin with tends to tar them all with the same impractical agenda.
Another problem is the Democratic Party seeming to give the reigns of leadership to the "woke" and the strident. The feeling from them is that all must kiss "the ring "of (their myopic idea of) social justice.
Nothing in the progressive agenda will actually happen. That's what most people realize. And, they know that if it did, it would not be beneficial to the very people who the "woke" have been trying to guilt into voting their way.
The fact that most adults of every ethnicity don't trust"woke" candidates to represent them is a healthy sign. The majority of black voters have rejected these particular black candidates and back a guy who they know will work for them, who happens to have white skin. Deal with it.
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I don't really know what woke means, but when I asked rhetorically to a column of Charles Blow describing the horrors of Thanksgiving, if Lincoln might not have cleansed some of those horrors when he made it a legal holiday during the civil war, a commenter blasted me. Lincoln was not woke enough. He thought blacks should have their own homeland in Liberia.
I conceded that was once Lincoln's position but after several private dinners with Fredrick Douglass, he had developed a completely woke view.
There is no more useless word in the English language than woke. The sooner it becomes archaic the better, in my view.
1
If the "woke" were truly "woke," they would banish the word from their lexicon as its wider use is cultural appropriation.
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Let's not draw any strong conclusions when the data are so sparse and weak. Hardly anyone is paying real attention to politics at this point as they have their hands full dealing with the economic disasters their lives have increasingly become. The working middle class, i.e. those without marketable college degrees, have seen their incomes stagnate and the cost of housing, healthcare, and education for their children explode over the past four decades. Black reparations or free gender reassignment surgery for prison inmates doesn't really resonate with them. And they're smart enough to know that Elizabeth Warren's grab bag of free goodies is not affordable without huge tax increases that will eventually hit them squarely in their pocketbook. The first Democratic candidate that leaves Wokeville and does a Jay Bullworth by telling America what's wrong and how to fix it (spoiler alert: it will take a lot of blood, toil, tears and sweat) will take a commanding lead in the primaries and then will become the next U.S. president.
1
The phenomenon of "wokeness" has to do with our need to wake up. We all know that we are on the brink of Earthly peril due to climate change (which should be called climate disaster). It has nothing to do with being politically correct. It is about the urgency of our current predicament. We don't need sleeping people. We need everyone awake. Unfortunately inside of capitalism and commerce uber alles, we are taught to compete and push and are stressed out to the maximum. So an idea like "wokeness" seems like a luxury when in fact it is a matter or life or death.
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@RCJCHC The point is that wokeness, in the original notion, is about highlighting life and death concerns. The backlash involves the racial majority disregarding these concerns as less important than their own.
Knock Knock
Sanders is polling very well -- ahead of most if not all. The fact that he is ignored by the media which pushes hit pieces like this tells us much about the corporate press and why he is so popular.
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Formerly identifying myself here as “Unwoke,” this and other writing on the topic have persuaded me that I have been misled by Bill-Maher-esque ironic posturing. I’ve always been skeptical of his and others’ faux knowingness with respect to so-called “political correctness,” yet blind to my own similar attitude toward wokeness.
I would also note, apropos of this piece, that the term “Puritan” was not originally derogatory. Indeed, like the woke, late sixteenth-century Puritans were conscientious dissenters who thought of themselves as speaking truth to power. Shakespeare, among others, was responsible for popularizing the mocking usage that is now customary. Such satire concentrated on Puritans’ supposedly self-conscious religiosity and a certain platitudinous way of speaking. Though in some measure justified, this criticism (like all satire) was also in part caricature.
Let’s hope that “woke” does not suffer from the same historical distortion that transformed the meaning of “Puritanism”—from vital sociopolitical movement, to the merely fashionable stance of self-important do-gooders.
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Of course it's not "wokeness" per se that's the problem.
Becoming woke (to every nearly pervasive crime that you're oblivious to) is something we should all hope to achieve.
It's our reactions to wokeness that needs managing.
Too often too many people feel threatened by an awakened wokeness, not because they "did it" but because they may have (unintentionally, hopefully) sanctioned it.
Rather everyone should feel comfortable announcing their gratitude that they can now work to live as a more enlightened and less ignorant human.
Someday we'll also feel comfortable voting for such people, we'll become woke to the value of wokeness and to intolerant reactions we sometimes harbor.
1
The pedal to the metal woke crowd are not going away, but will they show up and vote for the Democratic candidate in 2020?
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"Like so much other black slang, it’s been borrowed and diluted and worn down, so that the original meaning has faded from view."
That's true for words generally. Etymologies in dictionaries usually show how meanings have changed.
"Puritanism is not useful for politics or governing."
"Puritanism" originally meant "the beliefs and practices characteristic of the Puritans"*.
Now it means "strictness and austerity especially in matters of religion or conduct"*.
And with more strictness in immigration enforcement in the past, the US would not be experiencing the current immigration crisis. Likewise for the control of prescription opioids.
So Puritanism is indeed "useful" in some cases.
* Merriam-Webster online dictionary.
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The Democratic Party is following in the footsteps of the Republican Party. The Tea Partiers came in and hijacked it, splitting the party in two. The same thing is happening in the Democratic Party with those that have shifted to the extreme left as a reaction to the Trump Administration. This won’t end well. Our country will continue to divide. And our predominant political parties will broken up. Governing is about compromise and leading is about leading all the people, not just your tribe.
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Conservative marketing strategies have always impressed me: Not only has the term ‘feminist’ gone out of favor, since the late 80’s and early 90’s its connotation has gone from positive and a sense of empowerment to negative and marginalization making for paradoxical statements like “I’m for gender equality, but please do like me because I’m not a feminist!” It seems to me that ‘woke’ is experiencing a similar fate. If ‘woke’ describes a sincere awareness of and effort against anti-black oppression, then we shouldn’t allow for this term to become smeared and discredited. ‘Woke’, its history and what it stands for, cannot be allowed to become a shorthand for ‘unlikeable’!
Writing like this is what made the NY Times great. Mr. Bouie is smart and honest. He doesn't mind that some might not know the origin of "woke" and assumes we'll pay attention to his explanation. We need more like him.
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Awareness is one thing. But I'll be danged if I'm going to talk about Latinx people or refer to myself in the third person plural.
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The fact that the ‘wokest candidates are electorally the weakest” proves the point that the Dems are too woke for thier own good. The further the Dems dive into identity politics the less electable they become.
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When women challenge men, it's "identity politics."
When women don't challenge men, it's more inequality and tolerance for white men in charge of everyone — and our bodies.
If we need to have identity politics in order to gain equality — to have woman as electable as men — then bring it on.
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@Ames
Yes, the very fact that a cis white man advocating for his own interest is accepted while anyone else doing the same is silenced with these derogatory terms is proof of how much we need to be doing it. We need to be able to talk about problems in order to fix them. The right and even mainstream media like NYT exaggerate the number of progressives who are rigid and intolerant. That immature attitude exists mostly on college campuses as it always has. The former does it in an effort to discredit progressives as a whole and the latter does it because it's sensationalist click bait. Let's get real, most progressives aren't crying about their victimhood 24/7. Look at Elizabeth Warren, 99% of what comes out of her mouth is about economic issues, but anytime she mentions something like her personal experience with pregnancy discrimination everyone jumps to write an article on it.
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@florence The 2018 election is THE best test of woke vs pragmatic. Many of the winners in House lessons were not woke but instead addressed bread & butter issues. Racism, sexism are by definition issues that Democrats must & DO care about and act on. But don’t go wonk- crazy. It drives away the allies you Democrats need.
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@Ames
You did have identity politics, with HRC's "I'm with her" slogan.
You did bring it on. And you got Trump.
Ready for some more?
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I'm not even sure what "woke" means. As soon as you put labels on politics, you stereotype.
The late Anthony de Mello had a better term: Awareness. And he was funnier than Maher.
When Mr. Bouie moved over to the Times from Slate my eyebrows went up. I'm pleased to acknowledge I was was making a grave error -- less pleased by he sinking feeling that just maybe my feelings were an expression of unacknowledged racism. Thanks for this column, Mr. Bouie. Perhaps the puritanical "progressives" should reflect on their self-congratulatory pronouncements and learn to listen a little. And yes, I mean me too.
1
This is one of those topics where people think they are talking about the same thing when they are usually talking about very different things.
One person thinks woke means recognizing that white people have it easier in America. Another person remembers it as that time when they got dog-piled on Twitter for saying they didn’t like “Black Panther.”
As someone who lives in San Francisco, I come across some very, very woke people, and yes, it’s a thing, and yes it’s exhausting.
3
If this analysis holds up, Bernie’s chances may have died when he accepted AOC’s endorsement.
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If this analysis holds up, Bernie’s chances may have died when he accepted AOC’s endorsement.
There is a big difference between being "woke" and having a party that bases policy on identity politics. It is not only good, but necessary to be aware of the privileges of certain members of our society and disadvantages of others. At the same time, it is a disaster to base any political policy on identity politics rather than sound tax policy, fair and universal health care, infrastructure renewal, fair voting practices, solid defense without "all-war-all-the-time" foreign policy, care for our environment, separation of church and state, and similar issues that affect all Americans. The problem with today's Democratic party is not "wokeness", it is identity politics.
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Excellent column, rivht on the money. It's time to retire that expression: condescending, misleading, and fodder for Republicans.
But wait---is it Republicans who use it? To belittle people who want things to change for the better? Who threaten their white, male, well-off minority hold on power?
Then no wonder we keep hearing it all the time!
2
Woke is not just a word of abuse - it describes something specific - political correctness taken to an extreme. Beyond woke is a real historical threat, a mirror to fascism on the left, viz Pol Pot and Robespierre. ‘Woke’ is warning to those who desire the power of the state to change the minds and behavior of civilians too aggressively. It’s also rude, pompous and judgmental without self-reflection. The Democrats must vocally repudiate it.
4
Woke is a Joke. Most people don't take them seriously. I don't.
7
Sez Asian man, who very well might have ended up in an internment camp in this country as recently as 75 years ago. But I know, we don’t do stuff like putting people in camps any more. Oh, wait....
3
The thing with woke people is, they’re not wrong. It is important to be more sensitive to people not like us and so on.
But if you want to win elections you have to know the territory. And right now, most of America isn’t tuned in to “wokeness.”
You can’t make changes if you don’t have power. And you don’t have power if you can’t win elections.
Progressives don’t have to sell their souls. But a little hard political reality would help.
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@Hugh CC To a point. But as Bouie Sanders and Warren, who both have progressive platforms, are using decidedly "non-woke" language in their campaigns. They are still tagged as leftist radicals. At some point, there is value in just saying what you mean and having faith that Americans in general are better than the man currently in the Oval Office.
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@Hugh CC: "The thing with woke people is, they’re not wrong."
No they're not. They just have a marketing problem, a similar problem as many religions have when they lay claim to truth and justice and morality: it ultimately turns into a put-down of those who don't entirely agree. To be woke, just like to be deeply devout, is the ultimate abandonment of humility: the woke and the devout are absolutely convinced of their righteousness.
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@Hugh CC
Absolutely! As an article from October 2018 in the Atlantic pointed out recent polls show that 80% of the entire country believes political correctness is a problem in the US. Those numbers are even higher in the Asian (82%) and Hispanic (87%) populations. That means a whole lot left leaning and centrist voters are included in those numbers and are not going to respond well to any candidate who makes identity politics their big issue.
And Bouie is correct when he said the term "woke" comes from a noble place... to be aware of one's own advantages and others disadvantages and how structural racism, sexism, etc hide in plain view is a GOOD thing for us all to be mindful of and push back against. But when you lose sight of the bigger picture and make identity politics your only issue, you push potential allies away.
How you craft your message matters. You can be "right" and pure and alienate more people or you can be effective and acknowledge that compromise is always needed to move society forward.
24
I have yet to meet a “woke” person that I didn’t think was pompous, condescending, off putting and alienating.
Making “woke-ness” a central component of a political party is a sure fire way to only one thing: defeat.
Good luck with that Dems.
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@Norville T. Johnstone To me, this is where the GOP displays its genius for creating fake news. Any critique of current systems is made out to be PC or "wokeness." The Democrats don't make their arguments well. To me, a more fair society could be an even wealthier one for everyone. The glass is not just half-full, as they say, it can be refilled! Democrats need a more uplifting message AND to argue more effectively against GOP narrow views of the world.
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@Norville T. Johnstone Nobody could be more pompous, condescending, off putting and alienating President Trump, who leads this party.
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@Norville T. Johnstone: You haven’t met me. I am awake to the injustices and inconsistencies in our culture and country and have been since I was a child growing up in Oklahoma.
I would never call myself “woke” because it grates on my English major/professional copyeditor ears. Still, I get it. Sorry you don’t, and that you let some unfortunate encounters affect your conscious presence in the world. I just want to bless your heart.
26
Whatever its origins, "woke" is now a white, trying-to-be-cool thing. And it is a swindle, a reversal of the genuine Liberal struggles over race, gender, and sexual orientation of the last fifty-plus years.
From these struggles, first for tolerance, then for inclusion, then for equality, "woke" now wants to take us to a Brave New World of superiority and intolerance. With people again sorted and rated according to skin color and gender, etc., all under the rubric of "diversity."
Black voters are roughly 13% of all registered voters, about the same as the percentage of the general population. And the majority of them are bypassing two "woke" candidates to vote for the candidate they find credible in relation to their best interests--who, this time around, happens to be white. And male. And heterosexual.
White voters, half of whom voted for Obama (twice) aren't being cowed by this attempt at replacing one bias with another, and will also vote for the candidate who speaks to their best interests.
This is an indication of the real progress that so many of us worked and hoped for over the last decades. It was not achieved by government fiat, or by some factional ideology that puts itself above the people. Television had more to do with it than political machinations. It was guided by the awareness of inequality, certainly, but it has been achieved by the consistent march toward an awareness of ourselves as one people.
8
Why focus on meaningless labels like "woke" that can't be consistently defined let alone appropriately assigned.
Weak candidates that cannot connect with voters drop out. They can't stand out in a pack. That happened in 1976 as well, with 20 candidates winnowed down ultimately to Carter and Brown. Neither of them were safe bet establishment candidates. At this point in the cycle Brown wasn't running yet and Carter was seen as a light weight far down in the polls. It is far too early days to call which candidate will emerge as the strongest.
2
Not really sure what 'woke' means, but awake means understanding reality, to the best of our abilities.
The climatic catastrophe and the criminal concentrations of wealth and poverty are the top two issues today. This is the awakening, moving into the reckoning, moving into the revolution, moving into the (hopefully) 'more perfect Union', humanity, compassion and real community.
We must face what we are doing to the planet, our home. We must change our lives, in fairly drastic ways, to try and calm the coming storms and destructions. And, concurrently (which actually may be a blessing) we must realize that community is 'one' and the idea that 'getting rich' is a selfish, immoral way of life that has taken us to this precipice.
Only love for our planet and love for each other can realize the eden we were all born into. That's awake.
1
@ttrumbo
Well said. This country is mostly centrist, and prefers evolution over revolution in most issues. For example, to
immediately replace our present system of health care, not really a system at all, for Medicare for All, while well-intended, will not fly. Addition of a Medicare option will. Making it mandatory that all Democratic candidates endorse "choice" in the abortion controversy won't fly, as there are many practicing Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and orthodox Jews who are opposed to this and will vote against any candidate espousing such a view. They might well vote for someone recognizing possible justification in the case of rape, incest, and a real threat to the life of the mother, and indeed aid to mothers who have opted for the life of the child and need help with the child after she or he is born. Many Americans, reflecting the characteristics of our immigrant ancestors, do not like to have political correctness crammed down our throats. The first priority should be to replace an incompetent erratic, climate change-denying president with strong autocratic tendencies with a person who treats all with respect, especially those who base their decisions on evidence and moves to confront the major problems which human beings and other life forms on our earth really face at this time.
@John Paar Yes, and we need to promote education, contraception, better jobs for women and other ideas that have helped lower the rate of abortions. We should focus more on stopping unwanted pregnancies.
Guns should be allowed but regulated and within reason (not automatic weapons). Immigration should be allowed but within reason (let's focus more on housing and caring for those already here; we're not doing a good job on that, how can we ask others to come in?).
And, you are right: climatic catastrophe is the biggest issue of all.
Why would you allow a political rival, in this case a conservative commentator, to define the meaning of a term of accolade for the left? By leading with a right-wing definition of "woke-ness", the author is doing exactly what he laments in the closing paragraph: misappropriating a term that originated in African-American culture to use as a political cudgel against enemies of the mainstream.
Ask any BreadTube creator who the most "woke" candidate is, and the unanimous response will be Sanders. Then ask who the most fake-woke candidates have been, and likely the responses will include Gillibrand, Beto, and Harris.
Being woke is NOT about advancing identity politics agendas. Woke-ness is realizing that systemic discrimination plays out through establishment economics. Woke-ness is about the 99% united, without identity-politics divisions. Gillibrand, Beto, and Harris had little to no interest in taking on corporate interests. They may have pandered to the "woke" crowd, but they were largely viewed as frauds.
Now that Sanders is leading in California, I'd say its a bit premature to declare the failure of the "woke".
2
I can't be the only person to notice that the three "wokest" Democratic candidates also all came from decidedly elite backgrounds:
Kamala, we're told, is "the daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica." And that's of course true: Her mother was a Brahmin, and her father was the child of an elite Jamaican family. They were both professors, and they met as graduate students at Berkeley.
Beto is a boarding school brat from a wealthy and politically -connected El Paso family. When he got tired of trying to make it as a musician in New York, he returned to El Paso, where his business success seems to derive entirely from his family's connections.
And of course Gillibrand comes from a well-connected Albany family. She was basically gifted her congressional seat when she got tired of being a law firm attorney representing tobacco companies.
It is getting harder and harder for me to see the Democratic Party as anything other than a cartel for the continued enrichment and aggrandizement of the same few thousand rich families.
9
@RC This comment makes no sense. You rely on the examples of three candidates who dropped out early to establish your argument about the Democratic Party as a whole. And, of course, you don't address policy or otherwise explain how the party supposedly functions to perpetuate this "enrichment and aggrandizement."
I'll do you the courtesy of assuming you'd make the same point about the Republicans, whose last four Presidential candidates were Trump, Romney, McCain, and Bush (no, not the first Bush president, the second one)...
@RC BINGO - 'wokrness' is rather a 'high class' issue....for the entitled and foe the folks with extra cash in their pockets.
4
@Jonathan My three examples are the candidates described in the article as the "wokest" Democratic candidate. And my point is that "'wokeism" is an elite ideology, which is subscribed to most zealously by the managerial-professional class that currently dominates the Democratic Party.
And I certainly would make the same point about Republicans. As a country that shuffled off a monarchy, it should rather trouble Americans that the country went two decades with presidents from the same two families. It says something about American society, and about the concentration of power in a tiny elite.
2
The culture wars of wokeness or "identity politics," much like the binary choices our two-party system offers us, successfully divide the multicultural--and far from exclusively white--working class to the benefit of the corporate ruling class. Institutionalized racism, sexism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia and myriad other prejudices prevalent in our communities are all problems that urgently need to be addressed, but any focus on these problems by a Democratic candidate without properly contextualizing them within an overarching and unifying struggle against plutocracy will fail at the ultimate goal of defeating Trump in 2020.
6
The Buddha explained that every person suffered and were therefore deserving of compassion. He also said that everyone thought that their own individual lives were the dearest to them so we should treat others as dearly as we would want to be treated. This idea of awareness, empathy, interbeing, equality and love underpinned being "woke". It is an ancient idea that has always been vehemently resisted because it would mean than none of us is superior in value as humans - a prospect that many find terrifying.
6
@Anam Cara That might be the underlying motivation, but what drives people away is the fact that the means chosen are the opposite of "awareness, empathy, interbeing, and love" See the comment just below from Y.N. about the woke 'grabbing their cybertorches' when someone dared to quote Churchill.
The woke may preach empathy and love, but they don't manifest it.
2
@Anam Cara Except that as the comments show, encounters with the "woke" in the real world show them to have no empathy or love for anyone outside their cult.
2
The woke movement may not be affecting the primary, but that doesn't mean it won't impact the general. Democrats can't win with Democratic votes alone, and most independents find the Draconian purity of woke Twitter offputting. Remember when Scott Kelly quoted Winston Churchill, and the wokest corners of the web grabbed their cyber torches and demanded an apology? That's the kind of thing that drives away crucial centrist voters. Besides, like Obama said, online shaming is not activism.
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@Y.N.
Particularly because most Americans recognize Churchill as the hero of the 20th Century.
3
@Jonathan Katz he was both a hero and a murderer. Most have difficulty with understanding that.
1
It's ironic that the same Republicans who rail against "political correctness" turn around and bemoan "lack of civility." Both are about showing basic empathy and respect for your fellow humans, but one of them includes marginalized people in that human category and is therefore suspect.
Instead of "wokeness" the word to capture is "prudence".
Over 100M will vote in 2020. Climate change, transgender rights, gun control, cultural appropriations, and rogue cops, as important as some of these issues are, will not determine whether Trump gets 4 more years.
Healthcare (MFA not the answer) and economic inequality are the only two issues to champion.
3
No one claimed that the woke were the majority of the Democratic party. The.problem is that they get the most attention and most of it is negative. Aas Bill Maher pointed out, political correctness is unpopular with all segments of society including minorities. Microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings all have negative connotations for most Americans and give Democrats a bad name. Trumpism is in part a reaction to political correctness and wokeness. It is a good thing that most Democrats are rejecting woke candidates and identity politics for a winning strategy that encompasses all middle class and working class people.
19
@ron l
The Left is a response to actual Right-wing terrorism that committed 15,000 hate CRIMES in 2017 alone and 70% of mass murders.
Trumpism is ten thousand years old.
The opposite of Trumpism is democracy.
Choose a side.
1
I will point out, as I often do, that Republicans win elections by splitting the majority, those that are not in the upper economic tiers, on "social" issues. This distracts from major economic problems, especially the way that inequality continues to increase, as well as global warming, which is an economic problem. Democrats should not give up their commitment to liberal social values, but they should not take the bait that Republicans hold out to intensify the culture war. There is a tendency on some issues, particularly immigration, for some on the left to oppose in a non-rational partisan way anything that the right proposes. People naturally want to express personal commitment to particular liberal values but trying to force others to do so is not constructive politically. Those opposed to liberal social values will not be persuaded by vilification, but they should be susceptible to arguments based on their own economic welfare. Certainly fake rightist "populists" should not be allowed to appropriate the economic values that belong to the left.
6
@skeptonomist
I am so tired of the narrative that Democrats are just such big meanies that people just have to vote their hurt feelings instead of their economic interests. It's especially ridiculous given that Trump supporters are treated with kid gloves and given hundreds of long, sympathetic articles about how economically-anxious rural white folks are. We mustn't anger the Trump voters, we are told over and over, lest we suffer their wrath. Meanwhile, people who have been "economically anxious" for far longer are told to be nice or no one will care about them.
1
Nearly every Republican supports the president. Even when the Democrats are in power, the same does not hold. There are disadvantages to being the party of diversity.
Perhaps there are now fewer Republicans, but for every one who has left the party, there are probably several who were unsure about DJT in 2016 who now like the economy, getting rid of regulations, going after China, conservative judges, and don't think there is anything wrong with the climate.
The Democrats have a lot of heavy lifting ahead: They need to try to get all the Democrats on one page and they need to appeal to many independents.
I have eight indoor cats, and I don't ever herd them. If I offer something good in the kitchen, they all come voluntarily. When I require something that I think they need, like put them in a carrier to go to the vet, they usually fight back or run away.
11
Nice article.
> The woke candidates have been the weakest, electorally speaking, and the defining attribute of the Democratic primary has been a preoccupation with the voters that put Trump in the White House.
It seems like ( maybe I am just paranoid ) Republicans and Democrats are being choreographed in a kind of fake dance, the purpose of which is to marginalize the Left. It has been working great since the 70's. Our whole popular culture was changed at that time, and it was pushed towards everything being about money, capitalism, a lot of words with associations that we are prohibited from questioning.
It's not just "wokefulness? though, whatever that really means, it is that how we know about what is going on has been corrupted. Though every once in a while something happens, like Wikileaks, or the Panama Papers happens and American are starting to understand how "mushroomed" they are.
The problem is that either we are being manipulated or both sides are voting for marginal issues. For example I can understand both sides of the immigration debate, but today immigration is a minor issue compared to living wage, health care, ... basic survival issues for the American people. Instead we have people voting over abortion, or it seems to look that way; and many just uninterested in the system unless it is about their pet issue, so they do not vote.
2
@Bruce
A lot of truth in your comment.
In short, the "left" used to be about dealing with reality, changing reality. Every social advancement, every step closer to full realization of the Bill of Rights has come from the left side of the political spectrum.
Now, today, the "left" does not address reality, the left complains about it, loudly and obnoxiously.
To suggest this has been a purposeful course puppeteered from the top is perfectly reasonable.
2
@AT3
Thanks. I'd say the Left has been muffled and repressed using every dirty trick in the book that has been around since the age of the Pharaohs on how to manipulate people.
The "woke", wake-up analogy is a good one, but our institutions are more and more taken over and devoted to putting us to sleep ... and other sad analogy that is reasonable.
1
Good article. We have a lot of issues in our society and identity politics really does nothing much more than exacerbate them. Political correctness to my mind is really nothing much more than a kind of socially enforced politeness, but we can't force people to express respect they don't feel.
In the end, identity politics demands a kind of eating of our own. In the end, no one can measure up to the purity test. Better a big political tent. We don't need to like each other, but we do need to treat each other with the compassion our humanity cries out for.
Clearly this current government has abandoned basic humanism. Let's fix that together.
3
Excellent column. Awareness of oppression: Yes! Making an appeal on behalf of every oppressed person or group the theme of a political campaign: No! Politicians in a two-party system must broadly appeal to tens of millions of voters. This is tricky stuff. Many of those who use the term "woke" are often confusing it with matters that are cultural---and with a country as diverse as the U.S., candidates have to watch their words. What do most voters have in common? They go to work to support themselves and their families. Build a campaign around issues involving work: Win. Talk about the rights of 450 federal transgender inmates to have transition surgery while in Federal prisons: Lose. Not all ideas of "fairness" are universal. In a Presidential campaign there is a need for broad appeal. That's probably why Biden hasn't fallen out of favor despite all the efforts on the Left to bring him down. There's no perfect candidates. Democracy is a compromise. Let's not make perfection the enemy of the good.
8
The causes of each candidate's demise so early in the race is too difficult to correlate with any one cause. I was, however, glad to hear of the genesis of the term woke, and I regret that a term used by Dr. King, an orator and writer who chose his words precisely, has become so overused that it is now diluted and almost snarky.
3
I think what moderates and some left-leaning Democrats, like Maher, are saying is that the party (meaning they voters that make up the D party) are not as “woke” as twitter/social media make it seem, so politicians shouldn’t cater exclusively to this sliver of the party. And they certainly shouldn’t tear each other down based on social media outrage.
If one were to only look at the online mobs, cancel culture, and the twitter- verse, they’d be forgiven for thinking that “woke” is the new religion of the left. However, as pointed out in this piece, that likely isn’t true among a significant majority of the voting populace and even a majority of the Democratic Party. Though I certainly think the vast majority of liberals do agree that we should all be aware of past and current injustices and work diligently to end them.
3
Maybe a better goal would be to redefine wakefulness along the lines of its being a higher level of consciousness, whereby we demonstrate discernment about what constitutes injustice and oppression and threats to our survival, AND remain aware of how we as individuals contribute to it. It's called recognizing your own shadow and keeps us from the kind of projection of our dark traits that Trump always engages in.
The reason the term has deteriorated into a pejorative is that those who espouse it are looked at as self-righteous hypocrites, pointing accusatory fingers and taking down those who "transgress."
A truly "woke' person would see the dangers of climate change, work vigorously for policies that would adequately address it, AND admit to being complicit in adding to the problem (e.g.,liberals who fill up the tanks of their SUV's while decrying climate change). They would then refrain from wasting energy calling out and crucifying others on platforms such as Twitter.
If you take Kamala Harris's campaign as an example, her attack on Biden was eventually revealed as a cynical pre-planned volley that reflected a desire for a sound bite, with accompanying tee shirts available the following day. Self-righteous and phony. Her campaign lost traction.
Contrast that with the consistent hard work of Sanders and Warren over time to fight for specific goals and programs designed to actually accomplish structural change.
Who demonstrates a higher level of consciousness?
13
The writer is correct that certain words are misconstrued, demonized and ridiculed by conservative media so that they become political baggage. I would put the words woke and liberal in that category. The word Socialist has been mis-used by Democrats themselves with resultant political damage. But we Democrats have one first necessary (if not sufficient) purpose and mission-and that is defeating Trump. If we have to tailor our vocabulary for 11 months that’s a small price to pay.
6
@Richard Katz
Socialism = Capitalism + Democracy
Fascism = Capitalism - Democracy
1
To my mind, after listening to people talk and then watching what they actually do, people in general like to think they are open and unbiased racially and in other ways. They like to talk about these things as simply being a good person.
Yet, get some of these same people in a traffic jam, or a long line at a check out counter, and some of the openness and acceptance begins to disappear.
Get them into a private voting booth, and they seem to vote for what they think will benefit themselves personally most, and let the other persons grab for their share as best they can.
7
They are humans no surprise.
2
I think Mr. Bouie's commentary here is an extension of Michelle Goldberg's recent column, 'Twitter isn't Real Life (If You're a Democrat)'. The media has a preoccupation with the glut of polarized political opinion that churns through the twittersphere, but in actuality, those voices represent a significant minority of the hyper-vigilant, politically active class of voter. Part of this media fixation on the extreme ends, on both sides no less, evidently benefits ratings and paper subscriptions, and any level of rational agency would not feel affronted by the more fringe, authoritarian sensibilities of the extreme twitter left.
I think Jamelle offers a tactful rationale, in acknowledging that inflexible, fringe positions are politically deleterious in a general election - yet the animus propelling those individuals to action is born of a genuine awareness of the oppressive institutions our government has propagated over the centuries. We should be aware of the conspicuous levers of oppression, although not alienate those who are not quite afflicted with the same level of historical trauma. Pundits like Maher should know better.
8
The "woke" dropped out because wokeness is always about lording your righteousness over others, not about making change. It's empty virtue signalling driven by contempt for less "enlightened" people. Both Beto and Harris were empty suits with no principles who were skating on platitudes and personal charm to get by.
Real changemakers like Bernie bring people together and build broad coalitions of shared interests. He doesn't demand moral perfection before helping people or encouraging them to join his movement.
58
I don't agree with Bouie about Warren, who seems to have managed so far to attend quite carefully to issues of identity and social justice while also maintaining her steadfast critique of institutional corruption. That said, I can see already where this two-step may become her weakness going forward. It is likely that she will have to choose between her appeal to "economic patriotism" and her embrace of social justice issues, at least in terms of what is central to her campaign. Her use of the term "Latinx," for instance, has already been a source of ridicule from pundits on the left and right. Similarly, she incurred critique for that viral town hall moment when she humorously questioned whether men who oppose gay marriage would be able to find women who are interested in them. The politics are not as clearly defined as we might think in these matters. While her use of the term "Latinx" distinguishes her as attuned to academic discussions of Hispanic identity, her mockery of men who oppose gay marriage really seemed to be an attempt to shore up the generally more conservative HRC crowd--a "basket of deplorables" moment that puts her at risk with one crowd while giving her more cache with another. All of this is to say/show that while I don't agree entirely with Bouie's thesis when it comes to Warren, I certainly agree with him that wading into the murky waters of identity is politically perilous, even when it's the right thing to do.
9
If you try to please everybody, you will end up being no one’s darling. Integrity is key, walk the talk. Elizabeth Warren from my perspective so far did great.
2
The reason why woke candidates aren’t winning isn’t because people don’t want there president to worry about social justice issues, but rather because a candidate who focuses on wokeness feels disingenuous and condescending, especially when, like Harris, your actual actions have been less than woke
28
If requiring candidates to report foreign offers of campaign help to the FBI and forbidding them from soliciting foreign help, under penalty of removal should they win, are measures of "wokeness", then I am all for them. These are the most fundamental issues at stake here, not simplistic ideas of gender or racial politics that make for spirited arguments but little else.
8
Political wokeness or puritanism as a measure of candidates reflects a strategic choice for elections: win by appealing to the broadest possible spectrum of voters, or win by targeting a narrower spectrum but motivating more of them to vote. (A personal opinion: one of these methods encourages broader consensus and enables functional governance; the other creates partisan division and dysfunctional government.)
Or perhaps extreme candidates serve the same purpose as the uber-expensive top-of-the-line model in any type of consumer good. It is not designed to sell in significant numbers, but makes the semi-expensive mid-level models look reasonable. After all, modern US political campaigns are just more consumer marketing.
8
If one were to make up a movement least likely to gain the support of the majority of American people, "wokeness" is certainly one that would be very high on the list. Most people don't have the time nor desire to walk around living their lives in a politically correct bubble, whatever the current flavor of that bubble might be. People of all races and creeds have jobs, families, stresses and struggles to deal with, real life in other words. Intellectual games by elite people, games that often don't get to the core of helping people truly hurting and in need, isn't a luxury most Americans have the time to indulge in.
58
The term 'wokeness' is an epithet used by Trumpists to denigrate thinking people.or democrats of any stripe. We need to stop using it in any context especially by democrats who try to explain it giving it some kind of legitimacy. in the way the GOP uses it it applies to liberal and centrists who do not necessarily disagree, but are considering how to achieve common goals. We do not need to buy into Republicans efforts to drive a wedge between us which this term represents, but find a common language and policies that will serve the entire nation.
8
Isn't it crazy and ironic that it took the election of a monster like Trump to make me aware of the importance of "woke"? Yes, I'm white and most people would consider me "privileged" but please don't hold it against me! While I see woke used in the pejorative, I am committed to the idea, how important it is. I think most of us in the Bernie/Warren camp are to be honest. Beto and Kamala needed more granular positions to differentiate their campaigns from the front-runners. And true, Joe is seemingly lost in the 50's, If I have to vote for him I will, but only out of necessity. I, we, fight for a progressive agenda and it includes woke ideals. We are all in this together, as Bernie says.
8
One of the problems with the "woke" crowd is that elected officials and candidates are never woke enough for them. There's always another woke hill to climb; we will never reach the summit of Woke Mountain. As such, of course woke activists will be disappointed with any given Democratic candidate, and with them collectively. That is simply how they roll; they are perpetually disappointed with America, and voters, and politicians. That may, in fact, be the most annoying quality of the woke movement, which is saying a lot.
183
@Tom Meadowcroft I agree completely. The “annoyance” factor is particularly troublesome. One wants to remind the “woke” that, as Mick Jagger put it, “You can’t always get what you want...” with an addendum of “Grow up.”
8
@Tom Meadowcroft
But what's the alternative? Constantly settling? Complacency? As a teacher, I love it when my students have high expectations of me and themselves. Even if we never achieve perfection, I'd rather be striving for the best than settling for mediocre, and I try to teach them just that.
If your best reason for settling for mediocrity is because you think high expectations and a drive to improve are "annoying," then it's hard for me to understand your argument, let alone support it. If I heard a student tell me that working hard and expecting a lot from ourselves and one another are "annoying" they'd be on the fast track for failing my class.
4
@Tired If I may, I think Tom's point is that the woke have the attitude of, "If you have more than I do, you're bad!" It's boring, childish, and adults aren't going for this tantrum.
3
I agree with this interesting column for the most part - however, I believe that if Warren and Sanders are not as "woke" in action as other candidates have been, they certainly get (false?) credit for being more woke than they are.
1
The difficulty of using a word such as woke in a way that is an enormous departure from its original meaning is much of the problem.
Somewhere along the line this was first done, was a marker of difference, and I argue a superiority declaration of not only one's self but those who you want to include in your clique, and therefore became a club of exclusion.
Nearly every time I see or hear the word woke used, I cringe and have to go back to the basic ideas expressed in the article, having to react to the snobbish exclusivity of those who use the word. Sorry to say, it is perceived that way by others I have spoken to.
Good idea. Poor word choice. I hope someone can come up with another word to convey the essence without the off-putting that it brings to many.
7
Give me a break.
Two different responses to this editorial
a) O'Rourke lost because he was a one issue candidate, and to most Americans, not the most important issue
b) Speaking as someone who initially put Harris as my #1 candidate, she lost because she could not find a coherent and consistent message.
My experience with those who consider themselves "woke" has been uniformly negative. They have all been hypersensitive, looking for insult where none exists. Any criticism is met with a single answer: You simply can't understand.
I am Jewish. My dad survived not one, but two concentration camps and lost his first wife and three children. Yet, when people said "Merry Christmas" to him, he was not offended. He understood the underlying sentiment. When I worked in a largely Hispanic office, many did not realize that Jews did not celebrate Christmas. So we had a talk, one with some laughter.
If I were "Woke", on the other hand, my dad and I would have found great offense.
This, we don't need.
This I understand: United We Stand. Divided We Fall.
679
@Steven I'm with you, Steven. It is in accepting and sharing in our differences that makes us American.
56
@Steven
Excellent comment. I liked Gillibrand but banking her entire candidacy on being a woke woman was not a winning strategy, even to this feminist.
And when a guy who I know supports equality for woman but calls me honey, I get over it. If you can't see the difference between someone who innocently says something "unwoke" and someone who really is unwoke, that's on you.
101
@Steven No offense to your father, but wokeness has nothing to do with saying Merry Christmas. That's a Republication notion. They are ever hurt about about everything.
15
That broad awareness of oppression and the commitment to ameliorating it is what turned certain members of the white working class to Reagan. The Democrats have continued with that commitment, albeit with less fervor than some of its members would like. In 2016, the Democratic nominee centered social justice as a stepping stone to decreasing economic inequality and got the second most votes of any person running. That nominee lost, in the Electoral College, to a person who highlighted racial grievance with a sprinkling of economic nationalism and "anti-corruption". From that defeat, the DNC took the advice of the loser of the primary and designed the rules to advantage said loser. They also took the advice of the punditocracy who declared that loser of the Democratic primary (by almost 4 million votes) was the actual "winner", despite running a clearly inferior campaign. This primary has benefited those with either name recognition, deep pockets, or access to them. The so-called "woke" candidates appeared to be weak because of the barriers imposed by the DNC and the primary loser. So, if the Democrats lose in 2020, keep in mind that they took the advice of a sore loser to pick their nominee.
2
@scm18
Correction, the loser of 2016 got 3 million MORE VOTES than Trump. And, until we return more equality to voting nationally, we will continue to have “losers” as president. A Senator represents millions in California and NY while only thousands in many other states. Winning by one vote in most states gives ALL electoral votes to one candidate.
If we can’t change the electoral college we can change state rules....as Nebraska and Maine have giving electoral votes proportionally.
2
The right invents new pejorative terms for those who oppose them almost daily. This is one aspect of their mastery of political deception. When the left tries it, it doesn’t tend to stick the same way - but it is aggravating when the left adopts the right’s insults and apologizes. We are all supposed to offer penance now because anyone with a brain and an education is “elite”. The left needs to toughen up its skin.
8
Critics of “wokeness” are themselves addicted to identity politics: the most pervasive form in the US today, which is white identity politics. Any efforts to decenter whiteness for even a moment results in paroxysms of agony and accusation from the right and center-right. The perpetrators of white identity politics must be forced to confront the dystopian reality and consequences of their worldview if we are ever to deal with the true issues of our day: healthcare, climate change, income inequality. When people like Sec. Clinton in the 2016 election cycle would claim that we as a nation are too “diverse” to have healthcare, services, etc. like Sweden or Denmark, the actual subtext was: “we cannot challenge white identity politics, which is at the heart of why many Americans do not support public funding for much-needed services: those services would also benefit brown people.”
25
@Philippe Egalité Correct. It's ironic, as this resistance is held despite the fact that while all things poverty are associated with racial minorities, it is poor and lower wealth Caucasians who are more broadly impacted by the anti-poverty rhetoric of economic conservatives. For example, I'm sure most readers here did not bat an eyelash with the announcement that 700,000 SNAP recipients will potentially lose their benefits, assuming this will largely be felt by "undeserving" racial minorities, when in fact, it will impact Caucasians the most.
7
@Philippe Egalité "The perpetrators of white identity politics must be forced to confront the dystopian reality and consequences of their worldview" sounds to a lot of people like "education camps."
9
@Philippe Egalité
I assume that Mr. Egalite's post is a parody.
3
I don’t care for the term “woke” as it is used now know but to the reference to it being an African-American word bothers me. In the term African-American the important word is American so “woke” is an American term with a different interpretation now. My point is until we get to the point that we are all Americans without the hyphen, with a common cause we will continue to be polarized.
16
While there likely is no data yet, I would bet that most who are ardently against the concept of wokeness are Caucasian or those of first generation immigrant groups who've bought into the American Dream by admirably ignoring and moving past objective oppressions. There is a strange defensiveness induced who those labeled as "woke." This is a good article about that: https://medium.com/@GoodMenProject/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-473d91b5091c I'm sure it'll be dismissed on face, without any effort to understand the sentiment. Nonetheless, this reflexive defensiveness is widely understood by those who've been compelled to research the history of their oppression (i.e. most racial minorities with access to higher education in the country).
4
Woke candidates are not wealthy candidates and it takes a lot of money to run. With 20 plus running and each having their own woke constituency, there was not enough money to keep them all in the game. Donald’s Trump subsidized his rallies until his hats and his fundraising could take over. I despise him, but he showed how to get there. Most of the Democratic candidates have a similar message. For me, any one of them will be a better choice than Trump do when you all figure out who you support, I will step in with the voter turnout effort and pull the full blue lever.
6
In the end, it’s always about economics: We need to fix unfair wages, job security, healthcare, schools, infrastructure. Everyone can relate to all that. This is not to say that social issues should be ignored: fight against voter suppression, protection of women’s reproductive rights, gun control, and on and on... Candidates can modify their message by regions, cities, states where some of these issues are a greater challenge.
8
It's simple: Democrats know that a large swath of the country is not "woke." Thus, they can either push wokeness and lose the election, or run a solid moderate who can glean disillusioned, former Trump voters, and win.
Americans are not looking to transform the country into something risky and new. They know that through gerrymandering, voter suppression, and big money--and with help from Comey and Putin--the Republicans have inserted an illegitimate president into office. Step one is simply to restore legitimacy and sanity to government. Transformational change is not wanted.
81
@Ima Palled
Ima, you are woke. Misuse of power to deprive lawful voters of their right to vote is the first step for all woke people. Our vote is the currency of change to fix oppressive policies. Fixing a broken system would be very transformative and we should not be afraid of it if we want this country to really stand for equality and liberty,
3
@Ima Palled
"We the People, in order to create a more perfect Union, promote Justice..."
More Americans are interested in Justice than in dividing our Union.
The history of Amendments to the Constitution, which require super majorities to pass, show that the real "silent majority" wants political equally for all, just like it says in the 14th Amendment. Equality and Justice are the motivating forces for the Left.
The loud minority, financed by the mega-rich to divide workers against each other, openly say that "equality is impossible," invent monirities, dehumanize them, treat them differently under the law, and use these manipulations to defraud, dissenftanchise, imprison, and steal from them. (Look at foreiture laws for example where the police can take their property without proving any crime).
While Democrats fret about metaphorical "mobs" on the left who yell at Ted Cruz in a restaurant, the President of the USA is encouraging white supremacists terrorists by repeating their memes and conspiracy theories, and the entire Right ignores the fact that their white supremacists base is committing ten of thousands of hate crimes, and 70% of mass murders. Republicans invite the leaders of real mobs, like the Proud Boys to speak!
Yesterday Bill Barr said neighborhoods that protest police brutality should not expect any help from the police. His assumption is that police brutality is good and that the Justice and Tranquility promoted in the Constitution are bad.
5
Anti New Deal ideas are not moderate, they are right wing extreme, and any Democrat that pushes them is going to lose. The New Deal is the most moderate set of policies ever created and they resonate with every voter, Republican or Democrat. But they are also the most hated policies of the big banks and corporations who fund all presidential campaigns. So like always the issue is not extreme or moderate, the issue is whose side are you on.
5
Thank you for informing readers about the true origins of the term and concept, as may have no idea what they are actually disagreeing with. It is painful to see the "identity politics" backlash, as it is just another iteration of prior anti-progress backlashes (e.g. the post American Reconstruction period of Jim Crow, the post-civil rights act backlash that ushered in the war on crime and drugs, and demonization of urban life). Being woke does not mean rigid idealogical purity, it means being aware of how history has shaped the country's structure (e.g. laws, institutions) and culture (norms, customs, and underlying today's primary forms of racism such as negative attribution bias that impacts one's capacity to obtain employment, mortgages, favorable rates/pricing/contracts, access to mentorship, etc.), and being less tolerant of having conversations about progress without this full history being acknowledged (as those less impacted by the various -isms of society tend to love doing).
4
If the definition of "woke" is the awareness of societal oppression, both Sanders and Warren sound pretty "woke" to me. They simply focus primarily on economic oppression rather than more identity based forms of oppression. Economic inequality in general as opposed to racial inequality unique to black Americans.
I agree though. This is not what critics mean when they use the term "woke." Puritanically concerned with political correctness puts the meaning mildly. They mean "woke" as an insult, something derogatory. In the same way "liberal" turned into a dirty word disassociated from its true meaning, critics are attempting the same thing with "woke." They are aided by the moderate Democratic left.
You have three types of moderates. You have Joe Biden type moderates who are primarily aging Reagan Democrats. You have Bloomberg type moderates who are really Republicans who don't like Trump. Finally, there are the issue extremists. These are people who hold positions both on the extreme left and the extreme right. However, if you average out all their positions, they'll look moderate on paper. Bill Maher is one of these.
They all assist the conservative right by negatively associating "wokeness" with a mob mentality when in truth they generally just dislike progressive policies. Maher, not surprisingly, is a sometimes exception. This allows the right to successfully paint everything on the left as crazed hysteria or petty identity politics. The tactic appears to be working.
6
I tend to be very suspect of candidates who lead by woke. They are hiding their economic centrism, usually.
2
@FurthBurner Perhaps those who are merely virtue signaling may be. Those who understand what it means to be woke, are truly seeking economic justice, as this goes hand in hand with social minority justice.
2
Bravo for this column! It troubles me that the Democrats are becoming more and more like Republicans: increasingly captive to their extreme wing, more insistent on doctrinal purity than on pragmatism, given to chattering among themselves in closed-door pep rallies rather than communicating with voters, and increasingly self-righteous. Come on, Democrats! Please, take on the Republicans (somebody needs to), but don't stoop to their level.
54
Maybe the shift in the demographics of the Democratic Party has led some writers to assume that Democrats must be more "woke" than they used to be. My take is that people of color now own the party. But they haven't figured out what to do with it yet. Their continued support for Biden and regard for the accomplishments of the Obama administration aren't encouraging signs. That younger people of color appear to support Sanders and Warren is.
3
@Billy Glad
First of all no one owns the Democratic Party and ain’t that great? You rightly point out, though, that some woke supporters will pout and not vote unless their preferred candidate is on the presidential ballot. These woke people become drop outs. Their choice of course but it gave us Trump.
5
@Billy Glad - If people of color own the Democratic Party, I hope they vote. In 2016 many didn’t.
@Nb
The people who gave us Trump were white women.
True, white men without a college degree are Trump's most ardent supporters, but let's remember that the Bernie Bro is a myth and the vast majority, about 90% of Bernie supporters (including yours truly) held their breath and voted for Clinton in November.
The people who abandoned the Democratic party for Trump were white women and a mere few days after that video came out to boot. White women voting Trump flipped the rust belt states Trump needed. Period. Full Stop.
1
Jamelle - you have emerged as the voice of reason and wisdom in these pages. More power to you. One important point to make -- which should be made at every opportunity in the press -- is that EVERY single Democratic candidate, including those that dropped out -- is (or would be) a committed, faithful civil servant who would offer sensible government, the rule of law, and return our country to the democracy we deeply crave. This is a contrast to Trump that is simply night and day.
12
I am sorry to have to differ. Senators Warren and Sanders openly propose policies that are pretty clearly unconstitutional (e.g., "wealth tax").
6
@MHW
How do you see a wealth tax as unconstitutional? I am not being sarcastic. I want to know which Constitutional prohibits a wealth tax.
I see it as nearly impossible to implement, however, because of the difficulty of determining value. All you to do is look at the morass of taxing property at the state level to see the problem.
4
The progressive income tax required a constitutional amendment because of the constitutional proscription against direct taxes. The wealth tax would probably stumble on that same clause. It's confusing. There were those at the Constitutional Convention who had difficulty with the concept.
3
A broad swath of core supporters of Sanders and Warren are keyed to the ongoing social injustice imposed on many in the U.S. That wokeness is an essential element of our political activism, an awareness that we absolutely must do more for the oppressed among us. Warren and Sanders convey unwavering commitment to the vow that “we can do better.”
7
excellent, thoughtful, engaged column, all the way through. Being annoyed by ideological purists does not give me a pass not to recognize and try to act on injustice, but Job One right now is getting rid of Mr. Trump and flipping the Senate.
8
First, "“Wokeness,” in this rendering, is an overly rigid commitment to identity politics and social justice ideology. "
This definition doesn't really capture "wokeness", as something liberals and well as conservatives object to. I would define wokeness as 1) a commitment to very left views on identity politics and redistributive policies as you imply, but also 2) an effort to suppress or destroy those who express opinions to the contrary, whether by getting such people fired, by publicly condemning and ostracizing them, or (if possible) by law. You don't have wokeness without cancel culture; cancel culture is fundamental to the ideology.
Second, I think there is a bit of a straw man here in the idea that "Democrats" are "all zealots". I think the concern is that people to the very far left are a large and prominent subset of the Democratic coalition; that such people have a great deal of power in academic and media circles; and that their growth in size creates a situation where, in the 2020 general election, they might stay home rather than vote for a moderate candidate (or, moderate Dems might stay home rather than vote for a far left candidate).
57
@MA You are speaking from a position of defensiveness, which suggests a lack of understanding of those you fear. There is no single "woke" movement or well-defined "woke" coalition. Think simpler. It is a commitment to avoid repeating histories of oppression through active engagement with a higher tolerance for dissent, yet also with the assumption that contentious debate can yield insight on all sides. This comes partially out of the tradition of tolerance for contentious yet insightful debate, which is why it seems shocking to the sensibilities of suburbanites who've long forgotten the college days (or never participated while there, as they lacked the curiosity), or working class citizens who've never been to college or had their homegrown sensibilities shaken in a positive way. The intolerance is for those who would rather live in the delusion of whitewashed history, rather than the ugly, and yes, anxiety provoking task of actually building progress from messiness.
10
@Every man, No man. Not convinced much by this response.
"suggests a lack of understanding of those you fear."
...this suggests that I have a definition of wokeness that you don't like.
"There is no single "woke" movement or well-defined "woke" coalition."
There doesn't need to be. There is a general convergence of views broadly held by a certain group of people, which I have described,
"It is a commitment to avoid repeating histories of oppression through active engagement with a higher tolerance for dissent"
I thought there was no single movement or well-defined coalition? You came up with a PR-ready definition here. Except it is false; wokeness definitely reflects a lower tolerance for dissent.
"why it seems shocking to the sensibilities of suburbanites who've long forgotten the college days"
You're just stereotyping people who disagree with you here.
"The intolerance is for those who would rather live in the delusion of whitewashed history,"
So, there is intolerance, but it's OK if it's for those you disagree with.
But there is much not taught in our conventional history. I would actually argue that standard teaching doesn't educate young people *enough* about the magnitude of America's modern achievements, which is how the antivaxxer, anti-GMO, and anti-fluoride (and related) movements came to be.
11
@MA
The polls say otherwise. Millions of democrat voters stayed home in 2016 because they were not interested in a corporate/establishment/centrist "do nothing" candidate like Hillary Clinton who represented the worst of the Washington "elites" all of which ultimately gave America Donald Trump, the candidate with the lowest approval rating in Presidential election history.
4
Mr. Bouie has made some excellent points. Another problem with woke politics is that it actually divides the working class into competing identities...which I think is one of the reasons why it has received so much financial support from big donors, who want to share the heat with their underlings.
By holding all whites responsible for racism or all males responsible for sexism it alienates support for overcoming those social ills more than it grows that support. If you start off talking as though people are on your side you are more likely to get them to agree with you than if you start off accusing them of being part of the problem.
Systematic racism and sexism has a clearly defined purpose and comes from the board rooms and exclusive country clubs, not from your fellow workers and consumers, who are all mostly focused on just making it to the next weekend. Yes, we all make mistakes, but the key goal should be to overcome systematic racism and sexism in education, employment, housing, and health care.
54
@Robert Scull Bravo! Dynamite comment. Very astute and concise.
Mr Bouie is a thoughtful writer and captures well both the political weakness of puritanical "wokeness" and the necessity to call out oppression on the marginalized in our country.
As we aging boomers once proudly proclaimed, right on.
The important message is not to conflate the need to confront oppression with some ideologues' self-appointed right to rule on what is or is not acceptable behavior or outcomes in the public discourse. Eradicating oppression is mandatory and is important. Scolding people for not being sufficiently woke is neither. Politically, it is self-defeating.
The majority of the electorate is not fooled, let alone convinced by such scolding. Worse, such demagoguery makes real oppression fade into the social noise. Most, not all, people tune out when every message is a one note song.
The stakes in this next election are far more important than suffering through a wokefulness mirror image equivalent of the Trump cultists.
19
To me the basic problem has been when candidates try to be 'woke', they sound insincere, unconvincing, and unrealistic.
Like a parent trying to be 'cool'.
It's not cool. It's embarrassing.
And so it seems even to the individual candidates allegedly 'core demographics'.
No wave of suburban white women for Gillibrand.
No real traction for O'Rourke with Hispanics.
Neither Booker or Harris seem to have had large swaths of passionate African-American support.
In fact, a significant portion of black voters seemed decidedly skeptical about Harris, especially her DA work.
33
Mr. Bouie's last paragraph touches upon the correct and probably realistic usefulness of "wokeness". I will put it more succinctly, it should inform us and not define us.
Being aware of privilege and structural injustice helps one when making policy decisions. Tearing down the institutions that most of us we thrive under is not a winning strategy or one that most of us support.
For all the belly-aching about privilege and injustice, how many of us are thriving in a nation of 3-point-something % unemployment? A nation where our slightest whim can be addressed by Prime. Where we can dial up an affordable ride even in a remote neighborhood. Where we can FaceTime with grandparents. Where Goodwill bins overflow year-round with clean, quality clothes and coats that people donate. Where food is plentiful.
Things are not perfect in 2019 USA, but find a place that is better.
14
@Bruce I live in CT, a very rich state. 1 in 8 people in CT is on food stamps. They don't have enough money to feed themselves. In one of the richest states in the richest country in the world. Something is wrong. Things need to change, fundamentally. Being woke won't help anyone, people need to realize that a very small number of people own and control everything. Until that changes, nothing changes.
4
@Bruce - Doesn’t take much searching to find many places better than the States: Canada, New Zealand, Scandinavia (for starters). Many people, of all races and ages, here in the States have little money; struggle to pay rent and buy food and pay medical expenses or health insurance; are unemployed or working two jobs (for starters). I speak from my experience.
3
@Carol Derrien
This is the way things are in a very capitalist economy, one which won't change much over the next 4 years. Which is better, Trump or a moderate Dem who can be supported out where I live?
I guess there's nobility in "falling on your sword" for what you believe, no? It's certainly not the way to get the American people to elect you. There is nothing that pleases the right more than watching the left confound and consume itself as it attempts to fast forward political correctness to its ultimate conclusion.
9
I am greatly concerned that most of the Democratic presidential candidates are competing to see who can make the most woke and socialist promises:
Free college tuition. Medicare for all, including illegal immigrants. College loan forgiveness. Reparations for blacks and gays. Guaranteed basic income. Federal job guarantees. Federally mandated school busing to achieve integration. Green New Deal (eco-socialism). Voting and early release for prisoners. Open borders.
All the fabulously wealthy US individuals and corporations together do not have the many trillions of dollars needed to pay for these goodies year after year, and even Bernie Sanders has admitted that taxes would have to be raised on the middle class to pay for Medicare for All, not to mention the additional trillions needed for the other items. (For perspective, the current US budget is about $4.4 trillion, with a deficit of about $1 trillion.)
As Margaret Thatcher aptly noted, the problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
Don’t forget that our goal in 2020 is to elect a Democratic president, and that will require appealing to the independents, undecideds and others whom the Democrats failed to reach in 2016.
If all of these progressive (socialist) promises, or even a few, are planks in the 2020 Democratic platform we are doomed to a second term of Trump as president.
28
@Mon Ray
I understand your concern, Some of the issues you mention will be clear losers in the election, but the Green New Deal and Medicare for All both poll very well. Bernie is also polling better than Warren now because he has not waffled on Medicare for All.
Democratic socialism has brought a higher quality of life, much lower levels of crime, and a longer life exectancy in western European countries than what we have here. Republicans will try to link it to North Korea, but it is more accurate to link it to western Europe.
5
@Mon Ray
How do you explain that every other Western nation on Earth has government-run healthcare system that costs on average half what we pay (not including prescription drugs which we also pay an even larger premium on)?
Opponents of medicare for all seem to have fallen for the insurance industry propaganda which says that the costs are too much for the country to bear.
Were you up in arms when Republicans in Congress passed a giant tax break for the very rich (who now pay a lower average share of their income than the middle class)?
If people weren't taking to the streets after seeing the deficit soar, they have no business complaining about needed reforms to healthcare system.
Even a Koch industries think tank found that medicare for all would save money and vastly improve efficiency:
https://theintercept.com/2018/07/30/medicare-for-all-cost-health-care-wages/
4
@Mon Ray I'm skeptical of your "concern." You conflate "woke" with practical, real-world solutions to 21st Century policy concerns. M4All is common sense. The only things preventing it are fear and greed.
4
You have to be able to win elections.
You have to be able to talk to Trump voters and convince them that you’re interested in their problems too.
If you want them to be Woke, enjoy four more years of Trump.
17
@Larry Thiel
If you want a Dem who can speak to Trump voters you should consider Sanders. See the CNN link at bottom. BTW its only a surprise to CNN; I remember Bernie winning every county in WV in 2016.
If you want a Biden candidacy be prepared for a series of disastrous debate performances, absurd gaffes, fights with town hall attendees, a stunned and demoralized electorate who realizes in September that have anointed a fool completely out of touch with the needs of average Americans.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/11/30/bernie-sanders-support-trillbilly-workers-party-ebof-reeve-pkg.cnn
2
I'm admittedly a woke dem, but I have to honest I don't think my preferences have anything to do with which candidates are still in this race. How well each has branded himself/herself, generated buzz and avoided fatal scrutiny has propelled them to this point. I feel like a bystander, just waiting to see who gets the nomination. You can argue that Biden is withstanding an onslaught of scrutiny right now, but he's coming out fighting and banking on the "any news can be spun into positive news" view of media exposure. Our woke candidates, on the other hands, are losing out on all the free publicity and falling behind. Sadly, I think mine is a cynical view of the process of finding a democratic nominee, but I really don't see issues and platforms as the deciding factors. More important, seems to be a sense that a candidate is electable and open-minded enough to appeal to the most voters possible.
4
Another outstanding piece, sir, thank you. It comes down to human self-interestedness. To win a national election you have to build a broad coalition of folks whose self-interest is often all over the map. The problem with candidates who laser focus on social justice as their primary talking point is that those issues only DIRECTLY impact a minority of the voting public. I certainly believe these issues negatively impact all of us, but most voters don't see that. People want to know how candidates will help them solve their own direct problems. This is why focusing the main lines of argument around healthcare, economic opportunity, and educational access are more likely to be winners next November. Doesn't mean the candidate can't also be "woke", but it does mean that we humans aren't compassionate enough to get fired up en masse to support candidates who don't have anything to offer us personally.
8
Important to keep in mind this isn’t about “progressivism” but a specific aspect of left wing politics based on identity. Bloomberg has been the strongest champion of two progressive cause, reduction of gun violence and climate change, yet he’s excoriated for being a Billionaire and his stop and frisk policy while Mayor of NY, Representation and acknowledgement of these issues is clearly important to a party that represents the “Big Tent” but when the politics appear to be based SOLELY on identity, it comes with clear hazards to a wider voting public.
43
@Wechson No way. Bloomberg is the strongest champion of Bloomberg. He's in the race cause he doesn't want to pay his taxes.
@Josh - so you’re suggesting that, in order to save on taxes, Bloomberg is going to run for President at a cost of 100M dollars, and if he wins run the country for 4-8 years? As a cost benefit? C’mon now.
2
The extreme left end of the party exerted so much influence that some two dozen candidates came forward, many of whom expressed views that appealed to that wing of the party. Predictably enough, it was a total turnoff to everyone who saw them in action in the debates..
I still haven’t decided who to vote for and probably won’t until next fall. I am turned off by Democrats who have made support for abortion on demand and abolishing ICE a shibboleth. Beto O’Rourke was done the minute he said he was coming for everyone’s guns. Health care and retirement and funding of social welfare programs are my primary concerns.
17
@Bookworm8571 Beto responded to a harrowing display of gun violence in his home city. To the point of this piece, I suspect more people took issue with him starting his first debate in Spanish than him taking a more vigilant position on guns given what transpired in El Paso.
3
@Bookworm8571
I don't remember who has advocated for abortion on demand? Oh, right - no one.
Some people don't understand that ICE is a superfluous entity, created only after 9/11 (border crossings were a much bigger phenomenon in the late 1990's). We already have the Border Patrol which no one has pledged to dismantle. We also have both the ATF and the DEA with significant overlap.
I suggest you give Sanders a look. He has pledged to expand coverage of medicare to cover hearing aids, eye glasses and is more popular in rural areas than pundits and the MSNBC crowd would like to admit.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/11/30/bernie-sanders-support-trillbilly-workers-party-ebof-reeve-pkg.cnn
With medicare for all in place, America will finally pay less than twice the amount other Western nations do for healthcare and no family will go bankrupt if someone gets sick.
1
I'm a swing voter. I'm Gen X. I'd vote for a Democrat because I support universal health care, gun control and protecting the environment. But I'm sick of wokeness, political correctness, "gender fluidity", and being blamed for being white. I've worked hard for everything I have and pay a lot of money in taxes that get redistributed to lazier people and other countries. I don't like Trump, but nobody else inspires me either. Presently I'm thinking of just staying home next November.
66
@Roberta :
Remember the lesson of 2016 - not voting or voting third party or writing in your pet will give us another 4 years of trump. Is that really what you want?
10
@Roberta
I too am a Gen X-er who feels the way you do about health care, gun control and the environment. I too have worked hard for everything & pay a lot in taxes.
You lost me at “redistributed to lazier people...” Exactly who are these “lazier people”? The “lazier people” spin doesn’t jibe with reality.
Regarding ‘wokeness’, what is the alternative? Read “The Warmth of Other Suns”. Read Bryan Strevenson’s “Just Mercy”. Then tell me “wokeness” is something to be sick of.
11
What do you mean “lazy”? Who exactly would those “lazy” people be?
15
Wordy, esoteric and liberal use of intellectualization.
Bottom line if the democrats want to get rid of Trump and win the Congress next year, here is what they have to do.
1-Don't identity obsess.
2-Don't social engineer.
3-Unite a majority of voters in the electoral college not divide them.
4-Do offer moderate progressive proposals on issues that Trump demagogued in swing states.
5-And Most important nominate the candidate that best espouses the above and the democrats will have an excellent opportunity to win.
47
Thank you, Mr. Bouie. I greatly appreciate your inclusion of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. Great people have the rare ability to awaken and inspire us. To remind us to stay awake. Reading the speeches and words directly from the source of greatness is a blessing and an eternal flame to light our path. Frederick Douglas,
W.E.B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, and the many more African American leaders need to be heard for us all to truly awake and feel the depth of our humanity.
5
The awareness of oppression and injustice you talk about is something that almost all of the population has at this point, both Democrats and Republicans, AND, it's something that all should have, not just the Democrats you are pushing for. The woke syndrome should not be excused this way - it is making most of the country miserable and putting it in a daily state of turmoil without really advancing anything much.
11
@Robby
The Right is committing the injustices, like shooting up places of worship, and the left is opposing the injustices.
Choose a side.
The first 43 US presidents were straight white (ostensibly) Christian males. Biden is the only one of them anywhere near the top of the Democratic field. Of the top ten Democratic candidates Tom Steyer is the only other one and he is at the bottom; and Steyer's father was Jewish. All the rest of the long list of straight white (culturally) Christian male candidates (and there were a lot of them) have quit, or are so far down the list that it remains odd that they haven't dropped out.
"Something's happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."
Jamelle Bouie claims that "woke" candidates have not fared well so far in the Democratic race. Yet to me it seems that, Biden aside, it is the moderate or traditional candidates (state governors for example with actual executive experience) who haven't fared well.
I personally don't care for Biden, but it seems to me that the Democratic Party may very well have already shot themselves in the foot in 2020 by eliminating nearly every candidate likely to win broad support among that third of Americans who are neither Democrats nor Republicans;people who want something better, but aren't prepared for transformative change.
No issue is as important to me than to see Trump defeated in a landslide; to see Trumps repudiated in the strongest terms. What I fear is that the Democratic Party is so intent on reaching for the moon that they are going to get Trump re-elected.
7
I'm sorry but this doesn't make any sense. From where I'm sitting, it's precisely BECAUSE Kristen Gillibrand framed her campaign around the concepts of "privilege" and "racial justice" that she fell flat. It's not that those ideas and concepts are anathema to Democrats - far from it - it's that (1) the progressive left's bombastic takeover of the party is over-reported and under-realized, and (2) moderate Democrats are real, have substantial numbers and are "quietly" not backing down.
The concept of "electability", which is every progressives nightmare, is, for wide swath of Democrats a very real factor in choosing a candidate. Hence, those candidates that pushed "woke" concepts to the front of their platforms, absent other balancing and enticing priorities, found themselves with a rabid progressive fan base but little traction elsewhere. The funny thing about politics is how easily misleading it can be. Put 100 Democrats in a room and one might think there's a Progressive majority. Why?
Because Progressives are the loudest and most frantic. Yet the reality is that the other 80 people are much more moderate and won't vote for a puritanical ideology.
208
@John - I think that is what the author is saying.
18
@Tom
He is - kinda. He seems to simultaneously be saying that Democrats aren't "too woke" and offers the moderates leading the pack as the evidence to support his argument. But that argument rests on the idea that Democrats are a homogeneous group - which we all know isn't the case. Perhaps the truth is more nuanced. There is a growing swath of the party - the progressives - that are and want to be defined by their "wokeness". They wear it simultaneously as a badge of honor and a stick by which to bludgeon those (including moderate Democrats) who do not subscribe to their purist ideology. To me, this wing of the party is "too woke" for their own good and their brand of identity politics and reshaped and rebranded socialism, if unchecked, could lead to another 4 years of Trump. These folks are immune to criticism but are quick to criticize. They see the world through right and wrong and good v evil. Compromise is anathema to them.
26
@John
Couldn’t agree more.
3
"Puritanism is not useful for politics or governing. But a broad awareness of oppression — of the ways this country does not work for many of its citizens — is vital. To the extent that Democrats have that awareness, they should not shy away from it."
So much wisdom in that statement.
The greatest oppression we face today is the crony capitalism that has brought us Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump and their Republican Party. While candidates ought to be aware of injustice and oppression in all its forms, they must talk to voters about the economic oppression that affects every voter and threatens our democracy.
69
We’ve seen this happen before in the Democratic Party’s nomination battles with George McGovern and Michael Dukakis winning the nomination only to be crushed in electoral votes in the general election.
Since the Trump campaign knows that it can’t win the popular vote, they are committed to the electoral map, largely ignoring the northeast and Pacific states. Their only outreach will be to,go after the 43% of voters not casting ballots in 2016.
There is too much risk this time in a Trump second term in which the president’s autocratic instincts would be given full throttle by voters offering a new legitimacy to his winning again. Our country is at stake.
Democrats can’t nominate the wokest of the remaining field because that will spell disaster next November.
10
Participating in Vietnam protests due to the return of friends and family members in coffins and the decades since where income inequality has risen to the point America has evolved into an oligarchy. rather than a democracy, Joe Biden represents a bitter status quo. Corporate subsidies need to be addressed for what they are: corporate socialism. Democratic candidates should address that parallel in every speech since the general public has a fear and lack of understanding they have been denied that largesse. Progressives are fighting in the majorities best interest to ensure their economic stability, healthcare, climate change, education, childcare and an obscene stagnant minimum wage while the cost of living has sky rocketed. A simple trip to a grocery store defines that fact. We all need to stand together despite race, religion, political affiliation in order for the the function of the government to return to by and for the people. In fighting, nit picking among the Democrats will be our doom in a fight against lip service and propaganda by the Republicans.
5
@rhdelp
I think the perception is that progressives are primarily emphasizing other issues that strike many a zero sum, Warren and Saunders excepted, since they would also be thought progressive.
1
To quote fame historian Simon Schama -- referring to the evolution of British political culture -- what most people are looking for in a political leader is "reasonableness".
A steady hand at the helm of the ship-of-state. Progress, but not reckless progress that runs the us aground (healthcare agenda stalls over fight over Medicare for All) or worse piles us up upon the rocks (Trump wins second term).
26
Excellent writing here, Mr. Bouie, and you've clarified much for me about the "woke" term, which I suspected was another borrowing from African-American ideals. I notice many younger white friends use this as a sort of put-down for me and my older generation. It has become an all-purpose social separator for them. Odd to me, when we're all supposed to be getting it together in this country. Again, my sincere thanks for your thoughts here.
18
Mr. Bouie has restated his argument from his previous column: the loss of Kamala Harris is lamentable. And it is. I was hoping she would rise in the polls. But her campaign wasn't capable of making that happen.
Defending poor "woke" candidates is not a winning argument. The Democratic Party is struggling to decide whether will we support a return to pre-Trump politics or will we design a more active model to build hope for the future.
I liked Barack Obama and felt he got a raw deal. He brought in the ACA and for that he deserves much credit. But in retrospect, his argument for hope was based on the standard economic policies: the market knows best.
It is that question that you and David Brooks raise for me today. Mr Brooks acknowledges that some economic adjustments are necessary. So, a question for Mr Bouie is: is "wokeness" a state of mind or a commitment to economic correction?
18
Or is “wokeness” virtue signaling, and not necessarily substance? There’s a difference.
21
@Laume Give me awareness and ideas with clarity however long it takes to explain, not a 'cool' eye catching word made for the brevity of social media that confuses instead of enlightening. Same goes for 'virtue signaling'. They all such judgemental words and phrases?
A neighbor of mine in Stonewall, Texas long ago told me and a group of students that Democrats and Republicans were like slices of bread and that independent voters were like great brisket.
Winning an election, he said, was like making a brisket sandwich: it didn't matter how thick the bread slices were or whether they were the same thickness; what did matter was how much brisket you could put between them.
The man's name was Lyndon Johnson.
245
@Mack
Independent voters in this polarized political atmosphere of today are often what were described as 'live ones' in the past, that is, people capable of listening, even if ultimately in the camp of those one sees as the opposition. They have a social utility, but are of little use for achieving social equity. They're a wash.
Johnson quieted the right wing with his war based on the Domino Theory, even if grossly antagonizing them with the Great Society. He's largely responsible for the entrepreneurial, globalist Libertarians,now driving the nation toward even greater polarization.
4
@Mack
"Cute truisms attributed without source to famous historical figures are poor substitute for a political campaign that speaks to the material needs of the many" -Abraham Lincoln
22
@Mack independents can't understand how anyone could identify with either of the two odious, self-righteous commercial parties that control the country. LBJ's great brisket is indeed stuck in the middle with no seeming escape from being devoured
3
I don't quite understand "wokeness", but it seems that much of what is called identity politics falls pretty far back in the line of the fires raging that will confront the next president.
Climate change is the greatest emergency confronting our country and the world by far- it even dwarfs the extreme inefficiency and cruelty of our health care system, which has gotten the lion's share of attention in the Dem primary so far.
Even when climate change is discussed, it isn't with a holistic analysis of what is happening in the world that is creating this emergency, seldom transcending a discussion of how to transfer from carbon based to clean energy.
We need a candidate that can clearly articulate the larger picture of the overall human assault on our environment which has as much to do with excessive human population as the form of energy we use to sustain it.
Yes the planet is getting warmer, but that's just part of it, and even that is directly related to more and more mouths to feed and more and more consumers to serve.
Identity politics is a distraction compared to the genuinely existential threat facing our species, but I fear the public would rather focus on less frightening things and the politicians are compelled to follow.
164
@alan haigh The public, nothing. Division suits the wealthy and corporations. It is that slice of society that keeps the rest of us divided.
16
@alan haigh
Couldn't agree more. Stop worrying about the sink leaking when the house is on fire. None of the current Democrats still in the running have given the existential threat of climate change its due. Perhaps Bloomberg will change that calculus.
8
@Jeffrey Waingrow
I disagree. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have very strong platforms to address climate change. If that is your top issue, you should be supporting them.
If you prefer a billionaire candidate, Tom Steyer comes in third in Greenpeace's rankings.
20
If you are always apologizing fir something you didn’t do, (i.e. slavery), how can you have the time to actually accomplish something that benefits the people you hope to represent.
I for one would like to see an absolute ban on telemarketing, with no exceptions, unless a person opts into the call system, which very few would actually do.
Also, how about real reform for politicians - nothing paid for with public money can be named in ‘honor’ of someone who was doing their job with someone else’s money.
Next, no lifetime access to the Senate floor for persons who were Senators at one time (elected or appointed).
19
@stan An unwanted telephone telephone call can be irritating. But multiple that call by a thousand and it becomes more than an irritation. Death by a thousand cuts, if you will. Then think how an unwanted, perhaps unintentional, slight might irritate a descendant of slaves. Multiply that slight by a thousand and you will see how the after effects of slavery remain with us today. Far from apologizing for sins of the past, we continue to sin boldly in these times, unapologetically putting down an entire race with slurs like welfare queen, and raising the specter of Willie Horton to intentionally invoke fear and loathing. Sit down and have an earnest discussion with one of your black friends about what it was like growing up black. Then, at the end of the discussion, if you cannot tell them you are sorry for what they had to endure, at least know that a telemarking call is small potatoes.
3
@stan "apologizing for slavery" is an attitude, a way you vote. It takes absolutely no time at all. You can both believe that slavery was an abomination AND to to work and accomplish something.
Woke is untenable. They are speaking to the choir, 3pct of the population of voters. And those 35pct, like me, are not interested. Health care. SS. Medicare (not for all) is the winning focus. When i read about candidates pushing these issues, i turn away. And i am a liberal. These three issues have to be addressed in a sensible manner or they will lose that argument also. And the election.
108
If you don’t care, you’re probably not liberal. Which is okay. The Democratic Party is constantly lambasted for being too far to the left, but the reality is that “mainstream” Democrats today would have been conservative Republicans in the pre-Reagan era (look at the social programs of Eisenhower, for example). This Democratic Party must do all of the work of the two party system.
The analogy of Wokeness to religion only goes so far. The burden of knowledge holds, but Wokeness doesn’t require faith. It’s foundations are facts and evidence. You might not care, but these injustices are demonstrably true. Once you see these things you can’t unsee them. I think the popular progressive candidates have seen these injustices. They may not use the vernacular, but they are nonetheless Woke.
I’m sure you’re just trying to get by and take care of your loved ones, but these epiphanies won’t stop that. And while these truths are hard they are also freeing. We live in a place of almost unimaginable contradictions, haven’t you ever wondered why?
6
@Robert Black
With respect Mr. Black, the concerns you list; SS, Medicare (as it is) might be the winning foci for Florida, the oldest state in the union, but not for the country.
While losing white women sunk Clinton in 2016, its those under 40 the Dems stand to lose if they put a Biden, Buttigieg or Klobuchar in as the nominee.
Almost half of those under 30 and more than a third of those under 40 support Sanders whereas he has almost no support from boomers.
Its a generational moment and if boomers continue to be easily swayed by Insurance Industry propaganda and too frightened by the prospect of rational reform then we'll have Trump for the foreseeable future.
Medicare for all will be opposed by something over a Billion dollars worth of Insurance Industry money. Their executives don't care about the general good of the country or even lowering prices for ordinary Americans. Their fiduciary duty is to their shareholders, which is fine. But don't pretend the insurance companies actually want to help anyone as the cost of healthcare in this country reflects.
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@D W how did I know that as soon as you negatively mentioned Pete, you were a Bernie supporter?
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Being woke is not the problem. Identifying racism and oppression where it exists is always necessary.
The problem is that the universal appeal is lost when it focuses on one group. Everybody has a cause.
Take slave reparations. The words 'slave reparations' can be dropped in a broader emphasis of including all disadvantaged people or those lacking opportunity, whether due to race, education or class. Redress can be accomplished by providing healthcare to all, regardless of means to afford it or race; making a quality education accessible to all; decriminalizing drugs; a fair justice system.
Universal humanitarian themes will lift all boats.
When government policy becomes so narrowly focused on one group then a racist backlash ensues. There are ways to manage and prevent remedial policies from being shot down due to perceived favoritism.
Minorities don't want a handout. They want a fair shake. They want the same opportunities to succeed that others enjoy. When poor whites and the middle class are included in this pool then democrats will succeed at the polls. The country then, as a whole, wins because minorities are not seen as a separate group but as fellow Americans.
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Which is actually what most Democrats want and many Republicans—or at least the politicians they elect—strive to avoid.
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@tom The only viable reparations are redline reparations. Black people who suffered redlining have had no chance to own property to build wealth, like most white families have been able to do.
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All Democratic candidates for the presidency should focus on social justice, inequality, and corruption. If that makes them "woke" so be it.
If a candidate doesn't want to address those pressing issues as president head on, he/she should go back to sleep or find another profession. Or run as a Republican.
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@avrds "social justice, inequality, and corruption" are those issues that affect all of us whether we are 'woke' or not. Corruption addresses much, including the climate emergency. The zealots like Warren seem to see this very clearly.
Moderates who are appalled at the zealots who want to address these pressing issues settle into comfortable political slots that are neither here nor there, and that amounts to nothing more than apathy.
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The point is that Democratic candidates do not focus on those issues. They stick to social justice issues that are fragmentary and divisive and neglect the economic inequality that produces all of them. They do this because focusing on economic inequality forces them to confront the banks and corporations that fund their campaigns. It is much easier to campaign on lgbtq rights that do not scare the banks but that also effect almost no ones lives. You can’t win a national election on woke issues and it is sad that so many Democrats have not grasped that.
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@avrds
I am for ordinary plain justice, without the “social”, and think equality other than equality before the law is the bailiwick of scoundrels and children with no relevance to adult life.
I guess that would be why I haven’t voted for many democrats lately.
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The issue isn't so much whether all Democrats are zealots as whether zealots drive the party and its platform.
The majority of Americans aren't on twitter. But twitter is Woke Central, and also where many journalists spend a lot of their time.
Zealots on twitter can easily translate into news stories about what "voters" think is important.
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@Talbot - I spend a lot of time on twitter and this is spot on.
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People are overthinking it, this is exactly correct. So many societal and cultural "dramas" everyone is supposed to be up in arms about have no traction beyond the Twittersphere.
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@Talbot
But the other source of misinformation is modern polling and fundraising.
The young are the future of the party, but they are not being polled and they do not make large political donations. Polling has fallen apart because scientific polls are only allowed to call landlines, which the young don't have, and online polls are self selecting and easily manipulated.
Historically, young people start out to the left and move to the right as they age. If the Democrats want those young people to vote against Trump and stay in the Democratic Party, you need to stop insulting them and give them some respect. Moderates and the left can unite.
The Right which openly espouses the values of hate, greed, and violence, even from the Oval Office, is not going to start voting for Democrats any time soon.
The Left protests for the values of love of your fellow man, equality for all people, investing in Americans, and peace.
They are not going to give up their values to promote embrace Split She Economics which has lower GDP growth than the we had under stagflation, and almost no wage growth at all.
The Right keeps dividing our Union and supports real mobs that violently attack people. Their president calls fascist terrorists "Fine People."
The Left protests for peace and Justice against violent fascists. Let is more moderate than Right.
Moderates must choose a side.
Don't waste your time scolding the Left.
To beat Trump, explain why the Left is better than the Right.
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In my opinion, wokeism is just used as an effective weapon in political atrition, i.e. for everyday, low intensity politics. It tries to win by exhaustion.
But, when time comes for high intensity, short sprint political dispute (such as a presidential election), wokeism shows its weakness, because then the differences in scale of importance of the causes it defends to the causes that are really essential to the survival of the nation become very stark.
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