Companies like Apple, Red Hat, and GitHub are dropping decades-old coding terms like 'slave' or 'blacklist.' Advocates say it's a small but important step towards a more inclusive tech industry
Lee, that is a very good summary of this crazy period. It is an example of social illness by a mind virus. Like the « dancing folly » first occurred in Strasbourg in 1600.
To add to the list of exhibits, remember fervent renaming scientific laws and equations (to remove the names of those who sinned), repackaging soap (to remove the non-inclusive word "normal" as in "normal skin"), and the war on language? Here is a refresher from the STEM corner: https://pubs.acs.org/jpclcd/article/12/22/5371/580761/The-Peril-of-Politicizing-Science
Unfortunately, this essay is still relevant. For example, grown-up scientists are still fearfully using the silly term "Quantum Advantage" instead of the cancelled "Quantum Supremacy." Publishing houses are still peddling inclusive language guides and DEI...
Remember that the ardent supporters of Woke 1, the champions of the "Consequence Culture"
Yes, absolutely another mass hysteria in all the ways you deftly outline, but with the devastating modern twist of screens transmitting images and ideas into our brains from inches away. If we consider the primal fear that the covid pandemic evoked, then the fact that we were isolated with those screens as we hunkered down, often without loved ones, we can see in retrospect the perfect storm for brainwashing, especially for developing minds. When we marvel at how crazy people have become, how hateful and suspicious, how prone to simplistic good versus evil narratives, we have to consider that the new mob mentality is an ancient impulse abetted by new technology that make mass hysteria a far more dangerous phenomenon than we could have imagined only a decade ago. If there is any way to de-radicalize people who have succumbed to the woke kool-aid, we haven't found it yet. Logical argument doesn't seem to be winning the day, though it's still worthwhile of course for those still capable of reasoning. Hopefully it won't take another cataclysm to break the spell that the Great Awokening has so successfully cast.
They key question is whether woke adherents have actually awakened from the spell and reflected on what they did and continue to do. I'm not so sure they have or will. Woke beliefs are central to their identities; to admit that their beliefs are wrong is to admit that they are wrong. They also live in worlds of like-minded thinkers, so where's the motivation to change? Moreover, it has been the backlash against wokeism from the "normies" and them bringing their full political power to bear that has caused the tide to recede. I've seen no indications that his has been reform from within. Have you ever talked with an academic who came of age in the 1960s? They are old now but still think as if it's 1968. The death of Jason Arday should chill them to their bones. If this doesn't lead to a change of ways I don't know what will.
I guess all societies (all places and times) have their own particular styles and forms of mass hysteria, and our Tulipmania of White Guilt was deeply American, but in our modern guise of postliberal postmodern Social Justice, meaning highly therapeutic, deeply Christian, and with a splash of Marx-ish political vibes:
First there were the rituals of atonement and marches of flagellants, their souls on fire for Justice, who became a single flock dedicated to publicly confessing their sins, which included hymns and slogans meant to acknowledge historical guilt, plus the ultimate form of self-harm: sitting through a White Guilt Struggle Session or reading something as tedious as "White Fragility", which certainly has to be as dull as reciting the 50 Hail Marys Catholics do after confession—this gave our social panic attack an old-school Puritan flavor and wouldn't have been out of place during a Medieval Children's Crusade or some such March of the Flagellants;
but then came the modern American twists: the constant performance of people "raising awareness" of themselves through public morality pissing contests; the ridiculous rush of every brand and company from candy to syrup to leggings etc confessing their crimes of structural racism and promising to "do better", meaning (more or less) put more black people in ads; the weepy performances of guilt and atonement from kneeling congresspeople to the nervous breakdown the Mayor of Minneapolis had over George Floyd's solid-gold coffin; the florid denunciations of America and the reimagining of its history as a single uninterrupted hate crime, with academia proudly denouncing itself and its inherent structural evil, with all our most prestigious universities officially converting en masse to become Churches of White Guilt; the moral exhibitionism, moral entrepreunership, endless moral poses and preening from every celebrity and politician, all mostly known for being amoral; and then, most American of all, the entire mania having no boundaries, no connection between word and deed, and no limiting principles—limiting principles are white supremacist!—all of it ending in a mad dash of money changing hands between guilty whites and anyone with a BLM bank account.
And then came the finale, for the moment, with at last some honest words spoken as epitaph:
“It was a major shock,” said Patrisse "Trained Marxist" Cullors, leader of BLM, about all the loot she scored and parlayed into a lucrative real-estate portfolio. “That was a lot of white guilt money. There’s a lot of white folks being like, ‘We just got to put the money.’ “
We just got to put the white-guilt money! And they will do so again...
White Guilt/Saviorism is still the shared sacred belief of all Western liberals, the moral credential that separates Progressives (esp in culture and academia) from the smelly proles and provides their divine right to rule. Migrants and Palestinians share the pedestal now with black/brown people, but the beliefs and their power haven't changed or lessened a bit. Ours might just be the Golden Age of White Guilt, and we're still in the thick of it.
Let’s go Brandon. Race hoaxes like Jussie Smollet and the subway sandwich, bubba Wallace and the nascar noose, AOC crying at a…deserted border fence, #believeallwomen to what is a woman?, and #metoo and Brett kavanagh, the dems wearing kente cloth, cnn lampooning Nick Sandmann as white supremacist then settling for $275 million, the woke melting over the Mueller Report. The last decade has been a real banger
No single one of these does it justice, but rather the entire composition of years of freaking out over exaggerated or invented or hallucinated accusations of racism.
Wokeness did not accelerate in 2015 or begin to recede in 2024. It began in the 90's and continues to spread ever wider despite efforts by conservatives to restore sanity.
It began even earlier than the 90s, although it's metastasizing into "political correctness" in the 90s was a major step in its development. If there was a beginning it was in the spring of 1968 (when history started to be written by the losers) with the roots of decolonialism (when this actually meant something, since France and other countries were still actively maintaining colonies in other continents) and the slogan "It is forbidden to forbid". Foucault should probably be tied to the beginnings as well, with his idea to take "power" as a central concept and to see every institution and practice through the lens of "oppressor/oppressed".
Heh. History always begins in the middle of something.... It definitely began before 2015, but I do think that is about when it took off. Twitter began to become an platform around then for outrage, mobbing, and woke-organized denunciations. Also, Rosado's data posted above are pretty consistent with this.
I do think it has receded throughout much of the country, though it is entrenched in academia -- but even there it is, for now, mostly on the defensive.
If we think of wokeness as a cancer, 2015 is when it hit Stage 4. Despite some minor retreats....sadly...it remains at Stage 4 in academia, K-12, government and much of industry. If the goal is to seek a cure...we need to look at the root causes that led to Stage 1 of the cancer of wokeness. Sadly...most people alive today have never experienced such a precancerous "non-woke" world.
An excellent list. Here are a few more:
The 2005 gender gap comments by Larry Summers about math and science abilities
https://pages.uoregon.edu/wmnmath/Summers/index.html
Companies like Apple, Red Hat, and GitHub are dropping decades-old coding terms like 'slave' or 'blacklist.' Advocates say it's a small but important step towards a more inclusive tech industry
https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-github-terms-master-slave-blacklist-whitelist-open-source-2020-6
What Should You Call a Master Bedroom Instead?
https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/what-should-you-call-a-master-bedroom-instead
Woke 2 will be next level. With AI any DEI hire can be installed as a professor.
Thank you, Lee, for your excellent work, now, and over the years!
Whoa! That's one gigantic basket of off-the-scale crazy - and you've only just scratched the surface!
Lee, that is a very good summary of this crazy period. It is an example of social illness by a mind virus. Like the « dancing folly » first occurred in Strasbourg in 1600.
To add to the list of exhibits, remember fervent renaming scientific laws and equations (to remove the names of those who sinned), repackaging soap (to remove the non-inclusive word "normal" as in "normal skin"), and the war on language? Here is a refresher from the STEM corner: https://pubs.acs.org/jpclcd/article/12/22/5371/580761/The-Peril-of-Politicizing-Science
Unfortunately, this essay is still relevant. For example, grown-up scientists are still fearfully using the silly term "Quantum Advantage" instead of the cancelled "Quantum Supremacy." Publishing houses are still peddling inclusive language guides and DEI...
Remember that the ardent supporters of Woke 1, the champions of the "Consequence Culture"
(https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/5/2/295), are still among us. They might have dropped pronouns from their signatures, but not their commitment to Woke ideology.
Yes, absolutely another mass hysteria in all the ways you deftly outline, but with the devastating modern twist of screens transmitting images and ideas into our brains from inches away. If we consider the primal fear that the covid pandemic evoked, then the fact that we were isolated with those screens as we hunkered down, often without loved ones, we can see in retrospect the perfect storm for brainwashing, especially for developing minds. When we marvel at how crazy people have become, how hateful and suspicious, how prone to simplistic good versus evil narratives, we have to consider that the new mob mentality is an ancient impulse abetted by new technology that make mass hysteria a far more dangerous phenomenon than we could have imagined only a decade ago. If there is any way to de-radicalize people who have succumbed to the woke kool-aid, we haven't found it yet. Logical argument doesn't seem to be winning the day, though it's still worthwhile of course for those still capable of reasoning. Hopefully it won't take another cataclysm to break the spell that the Great Awokening has so successfully cast.
They key question is whether woke adherents have actually awakened from the spell and reflected on what they did and continue to do. I'm not so sure they have or will. Woke beliefs are central to their identities; to admit that their beliefs are wrong is to admit that they are wrong. They also live in worlds of like-minded thinkers, so where's the motivation to change? Moreover, it has been the backlash against wokeism from the "normies" and them bringing their full political power to bear that has caused the tide to recede. I've seen no indications that his has been reform from within. Have you ever talked with an academic who came of age in the 1960s? They are old now but still think as if it's 1968. The death of Jason Arday should chill them to their bones. If this doesn't lead to a change of ways I don't know what will.
Campus wokism was Red Guard 2.0
A horrifying Mao style Cultural Revolution
Rest in Peace Richard https://www.richardbilkszto.ca
I guess all societies (all places and times) have their own particular styles and forms of mass hysteria, and our Tulipmania of White Guilt was deeply American, but in our modern guise of postliberal postmodern Social Justice, meaning highly therapeutic, deeply Christian, and with a splash of Marx-ish political vibes:
First there were the rituals of atonement and marches of flagellants, their souls on fire for Justice, who became a single flock dedicated to publicly confessing their sins, which included hymns and slogans meant to acknowledge historical guilt, plus the ultimate form of self-harm: sitting through a White Guilt Struggle Session or reading something as tedious as "White Fragility", which certainly has to be as dull as reciting the 50 Hail Marys Catholics do after confession—this gave our social panic attack an old-school Puritan flavor and wouldn't have been out of place during a Medieval Children's Crusade or some such March of the Flagellants;
but then came the modern American twists: the constant performance of people "raising awareness" of themselves through public morality pissing contests; the ridiculous rush of every brand and company from candy to syrup to leggings etc confessing their crimes of structural racism and promising to "do better", meaning (more or less) put more black people in ads; the weepy performances of guilt and atonement from kneeling congresspeople to the nervous breakdown the Mayor of Minneapolis had over George Floyd's solid-gold coffin; the florid denunciations of America and the reimagining of its history as a single uninterrupted hate crime, with academia proudly denouncing itself and its inherent structural evil, with all our most prestigious universities officially converting en masse to become Churches of White Guilt; the moral exhibitionism, moral entrepreunership, endless moral poses and preening from every celebrity and politician, all mostly known for being amoral; and then, most American of all, the entire mania having no boundaries, no connection between word and deed, and no limiting principles—limiting principles are white supremacist!—all of it ending in a mad dash of money changing hands between guilty whites and anyone with a BLM bank account.
And then came the finale, for the moment, with at last some honest words spoken as epitaph:
“It was a major shock,” said Patrisse "Trained Marxist" Cullors, leader of BLM, about all the loot she scored and parlayed into a lucrative real-estate portfolio. “That was a lot of white guilt money. There’s a lot of white folks being like, ‘We just got to put the money.’ “
We just got to put the white-guilt money! And they will do so again...
White Guilt/Saviorism is still the shared sacred belief of all Western liberals, the moral credential that separates Progressives (esp in culture and academia) from the smelly proles and provides their divine right to rule. Migrants and Palestinians share the pedestal now with black/brown people, but the beliefs and their power haven't changed or lessened a bit. Ours might just be the Golden Age of White Guilt, and we're still in the thick of it.
Agreed! Well put. My comment below was meant as a reply to this.
What must be said about all this documentation is that is non-exhaustive; this just scratches the service.
I was about to say, this is by no means the worst of it.
Its def not exhaustive. I think that'd be impossible, even in a book, let alone a Substack post.
BUT, if I have missed anything that deserves to be here, fling the link and I will consider adding it.
https://reason.com/volokh/2020/07/02/university-of-massachusetts-nursing-dean-fired-after-saying-everyones-life-matters/
There are hundreds, maybe thousand of examples of 10 years
Let’s go Brandon. Race hoaxes like Jussie Smollet and the subway sandwich, bubba Wallace and the nascar noose, AOC crying at a…deserted border fence, #believeallwomen to what is a woman?, and #metoo and Brett kavanagh, the dems wearing kente cloth, cnn lampooning Nick Sandmann as white supremacist then settling for $275 million, the woke melting over the Mueller Report. The last decade has been a real banger
So, I've kept a bookmark tab labelled "woke" since probably 2021. I wish I would've started sooner, but here are some of what I have bookmarked:
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1078977416/race-chat-emoji-skin-tone-colors
https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/akron-canton-news/ethan-limings-dad-breaks-silence-says-grand-jury-reducing-charges-is-not-justice-for-sons-fatal-beating
https://www.unz.com/isteve/fbi-blacks-made-up-60-4-of-known-murder-offenders-in-2021/
https://themarkup.org/prediction-bias/2021/12/02/crime-prediction-software-promised-to-be-free-of-biases-new-data-shows-it-perpetuates-them
https://kriegman.substack.com/p/welcome-to-my-blog
https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/01/police-violence-linked-to-higher-rates-of-preterm-delivery-heart-disease-among-black-women
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/08/1134550280/stories-about-crime-are-rife-with-misinformation-and-racism-critics-say
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/15/university-blocks-academic-gender-wars-research/
https://www.thefp.com/p/coleman-hughes-is-ted-scared-of-color-blindness
https://www.thefp.com/p/npr-editor-how-npr-lost-americas-trust
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/indonesian-transgender-climate-change-bandung-b2522422.html
https://medium.com/@anthonybernardi/why-waking-up-early-is-rooted-in-white-supremacy-f487b04376f1
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/15/nx-s1-5026589/college-prison-women-pell-grant
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-ln-std-stigma-20180507-htmlstory.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/14/us/national-parks-history-racism-wellness-cec
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220125-why-climate-change-is-inherently-racist
https://www.seattleymca.org/blog/found-my-y-confronting-systemic-racism-swimming
https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/10/23/1129829865/camp-roundup-celebrates-body-positivity
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950484826000044
https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/07/1167863
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/11/how-structural-racism-plays-a-role-in-lowering-credit-scores.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/portland-burrito-cart-closes-after-owners-are-accused-of-cultural-appropriation_n_5926ef7ee4b062f96a348181
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/10/us/usc-chinese-professor-racism-intl-hnk-scli
https://abcnews.com/US/georgetown-law-professor-terminated-remarks-black-students/story?id=76413267
https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6297289/professionalism-racism/
No single one of these does it justice, but rather the entire composition of years of freaking out over exaggerated or invented or hallucinated accusations of racism.
At least some of those are great. Will update, thanks!
Wokeness did not accelerate in 2015 or begin to recede in 2024. It began in the 90's and continues to spread ever wider despite efforts by conservatives to restore sanity.
It began even earlier than the 90s, although it's metastasizing into "political correctness" in the 90s was a major step in its development. If there was a beginning it was in the spring of 1968 (when history started to be written by the losers) with the roots of decolonialism (when this actually meant something, since France and other countries were still actively maintaining colonies in other continents) and the slogan "It is forbidden to forbid". Foucault should probably be tied to the beginnings as well, with his idea to take "power" as a central concept and to see every institution and practice through the lens of "oppressor/oppressed".
Point taken. I should have said it was already active in the 90's.
Heh. History always begins in the middle of something.... It definitely began before 2015, but I do think that is about when it took off. Twitter began to become an platform around then for outrage, mobbing, and woke-organized denunciations. Also, Rosado's data posted above are pretty consistent with this.
I do think it has receded throughout much of the country, though it is entrenched in academia -- but even there it is, for now, mostly on the defensive.
If we think of wokeness as a cancer, 2015 is when it hit Stage 4. Despite some minor retreats....sadly...it remains at Stage 4 in academia, K-12, government and much of industry. If the goal is to seek a cure...we need to look at the root causes that led to Stage 1 of the cancer of wokeness. Sadly...most people alive today have never experienced such a precancerous "non-woke" world.