TWaking died that day. This is one of the main analyzes of Donald Trump’s landslide victory: that it was a radical rejection of the “woke” left and a shedding of the shackles of political correctness. According to some in the media and political establishment, people are tired of being taunted and reprimanded for not using the right words, frustrated by the constant focus on race and identity, and trying to please a group of individuals. He is said to be wary of the new orthodoxy of radical politics. The sacrifice of common sense. One British journalist summed it up: “The days of Black Lives Matter, Latinx, critical race theory, pronouns and defunding the police are over.” This is an excellent conclusion. I can’t help but see this result as some kind of rejection. But is it a particularly “woke” value system?
As a starting point, it’s worth considering Kamala Harris’ campaign, not the assumptions about it. In fact, she seemed to avoid focusing on identity or “wokeness.” She didn’t really care about her race or even her gender, choosing to base her identity on her background as a middle-class person raised in a rented house by her hard-working mother. Her stance on the race has softened since she was a candidate in 2019. She had previously supported “some form” of reparations, but had not staked the position as part of her campaign. Mr. Trump wanted Ms. Harris to say “something that would antagonize white voters, and she was wise not to take the bait,” author Keith Boykin wrote. She was tough on immigration and keen to show that she was a gun owner (she once told Oprah Winfrey, “If someone breaks into my house, I’m going to get shot”) It was impressive). And she also sidestepped gender-affirming care for transgender Americans.
So, according to American journalist Jack Markinson, this story of succumbing to the “Big Wake” “bears little resemblance to the real campaign we have all just experienced.” Wake Talking Points was a key part of the Trump campaign, not the Harris campaign — Harris suddenly became “black” to capitalize on her race, and the campaign spent millions on transgender rights ads. He said he spent $1,000. Welcome to the culture wars. Only the right is actually fighting there, and the other side is helping it by punching itself in the face.
So why are progressives so keen to take up this story now that they have moved to the UK, where the US election result is seen as a cautionary tale?One reason is that the cause is simple. This is a mistake that can be easily avoided next time. It is much simpler to blame an abstract “woke” than to consider the fact that Harris ran a broad center-right campaign and still lost. It also conjures up a congenial electorate who would be more offended by the language than by the promise of mass deportations. That way, these voters can get back what they can, rather than being exposed to major changes such as class dissolution and the transformation of previously working-class parties into parties that attract higher-income voters. Become.
It’s also a big story. Rejecting all forms of identity politics and being prepared to group them under the umbrella of “bad awakening” is more a matter of perception than policy – social justice is one way or another about liberal causes. It is seen as a taint, because social justice is the stuff of vulgar radical activism, not the power of the upper classes. Part of that is a widespread backlash against nearly a decade of groundbreaking movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. But it also shows that they can’t actually find a meaningful home within the Democratic Party, and are only seen as a way to appeal to specific voting blocs. If those voters don’t turn out to vote, this is seen as a flaw in identity politics itself rather than the fact that it is being pursued in a shallow and completely disconnected way from the lives of the voters. .
There is an irony in all this. For central to identity politics’ lack of appeal lies its “elite capture” by precisely the kinds of people who are currently distancing themselves from it. Black Lives Matter is a case in point. The buzzwords of the early 2020s, “alliance” and “doing the job,” created a frankly humiliating era of white liberal politicians taking a knee, and this symbolic act ran from sports to the media. has occupied an incredible amount of space in public debate. “Doing the Work” focused on the interpersonal dynamics of racism, rather than the structural ones. Diversity is about visibility for people of color and “firsts,” and I apologize for this fatally outdated synopsis, but it’s about poverty, bad public housing, unequal policing, access to health care, etc. , which became separate from the broader systemic impact of diversity. (Visibility and institutional reform are not necessarily in competition, but only one benefits white people.) Even more dangerous, and crucially, are the It concerns the demands and needs expressed by black activists who have In 2013, it was completely rejected. The debate over police enforcement has become a mockery of unrealistic demands to “defund the police” rather than what those demands actually mean. The call, even a cursory glance, is not to abolish police enforcement, but to invest in preventive measures at the local level.
Still, I’m not sure this diluted vision has piqued voters enough to drive them into President Trump’s arms. But it serves as a reflection of a superficial and sluggish approach, without an edge or universal vision. This is especially dangerous in the absence of a clearly defined, unified and unifying policy towards change, making the right-wing version of awakening more vivid and convincing. Scholar Asad Haider identifies this missing force of universalism in his book, Misplaced Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump. This universalism is “created and recreated in an act of rebellion” against a system of interlocking but singular oppressions. common enemy. The power of identity politics lies not in fragmenting society into mutually opposing special interest groups, balkanization, but in precisely what the modern adoption of identity politics seeks to prevent: common The enemy lies in the recognition that society itself is the way it is. is designed.
In short, a universal problem faced by people of all identities in the US and UK is hostility towards those who lack capital in all its forms. More or less, our economies are based on social mobility rather than the ability to live with dignity without social mobility, while the barriers to prosperity are becoming higher and higher and public Infrastructure is inadequate at almost every level. Meanwhile, the aggressive right-wing culture war message succumbs to the fact that liberals, in Yeats’s words, are “lacking all conviction, but at their worst / full of passionate intensity.” ” This is because.
Acting as if stopping the use of Latinx language, dropping pronouns, or reducing the representation of black people in Jaguar ads is the way forward is a useful distraction, and believing it is Even. But these are only crises of confidence broadly limited to people of the same class who imagine themselves to be related to millions of people outside. A far more unpleasant reality is the one that requires us to level up. It’s that the elites create “wokeness” in their own image, creating an imaginary reality that this aristocracy fought valiantly for but failed because it clearly isn’t. be. people want.
But in the real world, what people wanted was never respected or asserted with any leadership, consistency, or conviction. The battle never started.
Nesrine Malik is a columnist for the Guardian
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