Even Progressives Agree That Woke is Pretty Cringe

The NY Times published a podcast featuring three progressives discussing the topic of wokeness. Somewhat surprisingly, the consensus of the group is that wokeness is now pretty cringe, even among leftists.

Just to set up who is talking here:

Aminatou Sow is a podcaster and DSA member. 

Nadja Spiegelman, the host of this discussion, is the daughter of cartoonist Art Spiegelman and has written several graphic novels.

Brock Colyar is a journalist who has written for New York magazine. Colyar is male but wears dresses and uses non-binary pronouns.

Starting with a group like this, you’d probably expect some or all of them would be eager to defend wokeness but none of them are really.

Nadja Spiegelman: Did woke go too far? I’ve noticed some people are saying the R-word again, and pronouns and emails no longer feel so obligatory. It feels as if we’re just being a little less careful with what we can say and who we might offend. So, where are we with language policing, and are we simply done with being politically correct?…

To start, I wanted to play a game where I am going to say a word and you guys are going to tell me if it is alive, dying or dead…OK: problematic.

Colyar: Dead.

Sow: Hmm. Should die. But it’s around. You know what I’m saying? It’s around, but it should die.

Spiegelman: Triggered.

Sow: That one’s going to come back. It’s going to come back, but it’s dead…

Spiegelman: Microaggression.

Sow: Dead.

Colyar: Dead.

Spiegelman: OK. Safe space.

Sow: Dead.

Colyar: Dead.

Spiegelman: “Folx” — with an “x.”

Colyar: Dead.

Sow: Never alive.

Is that reflective of how 20-something progressives really feel about all of this? I can’t say independently whether it is or not because I’m not a young progressive living in New York. But it seems there is at least some movement away from the wokeness that took over college campuses 5-10 years ago. According to this small sample of progressives, that type of wokeness is now somewhat cringe.

Spiegelman: “Woke” obviously has had a lot of different transitions as a word, and who uses it and how, and to mean what. And I would say that it seemed like a positive thing to be woke five years ago. And now it doesn’t feel that way anymore. Have you noticed a shift, and where are you noticing it?

Colyar: Yeah, when I’m trying to describe my politics to people, I often say that I have some “anti-woke” sensibilities. And by saying that, I think what I’m often trying to do is distance myself from the woke of five years ago — this way too earnest, super p.c. kind of cringe, resistance-y culture, whose politics I mostly support, but the way that it’s carried out is cringe to me. Yeah, I think “cringe” is the best word.

Spiegelman: What about you, Amina?

Sow: Yeah, “cringe” is a really good word. Thank you to the young people for that one. I do think that language moves very fast. And I think that sometimes, too, when I hear people use certain words, all it does is carbon-date them for me.

Especially cringe are white woke people:

Spiegelman: And does it go further than time? If a white person says to you, “I’m woke,” what do you think of that?

Sow: I mean, I’m laughing. It has been ridiculous since Day 1 — I just want to be so clear about that for me — because I don’t know what they’re saying. Are you saying that I should trust you, or are you saying that you are considerate about people, which is not what “woke” has meant in the Black community, at least, where it originated from.

So, I’ve never known what that means. It’s very much like the dad from “Get Out,” you know? I’m like, OK, got it. If Barack Obama was running a third term, you’d vote for him. Cool. I don’t know what that means, you know? Also, now you have people on the right using this word “woke” to mean something completely different than what a mainstream Democrat is saying. So it is very confusing.

But more generally, the current backlash is partly because all of this was adopted so quickly by corporations eager to virtue signal. The posting of black squares in the summer of 2020 comes up a couple times.

Colyar: Like when we were trying to define “woke” earlier, and I’m thinking about what that means. Everything I’m thinking about is happening on the internet. Thinking about that black square moment, it seems silly in retrospect, but it felt very serious at the time to some. I remember getting confronted by a co-worker ——

Sow: Stop.

Colyar: “I haven’t seen you post yet,” and you know ——

Sow: But post in general or post the black square?

Colyar: That square. And then we had to have a conversation, and that was really difficult at the time. It was really intense, you know?

What you were saying about the Biden years, I think the reason it feels like we’re having this kind of backlash to this culture right now is because of the institutionalization of it in our workplaces and on campuses. And I don’t think even good liberal people feel like the antiracist training that they’re doing in their office is helping anyone. Even people who respect people’s pronouns and believe in nonbinary identity or whatever, I don’t think that they think that putting it in their signature is helping anyone, and I think they’re rolling their eyes and laughing about it in private.

Of course the anti-racist training isn’t helping anyone. It’s probably doing more harm than good because it reveals that the whole thing is a silly office game which white people can’t win. So everyone just plays along to avoid creating trouble and nothing changes. It is good for the trainers though. They have made millions of dollars spreading this dreck.

By the end of the conversation, all of the participants seem to agree that woke is coming back and that it will always be trying to come back because some people are just fanatics. 

Sow: It’s coming back. Woke is always coming back. It just comes back in new clothing.

Colyar: New iteration for a new generation.

Sow: Yeah. And also new leaders of the woke.

Woke will come back. You can count on it.

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