Heirs to the Wreckage

There’s no phrase I see levied with more spite on the internet than the term “woke”, usually complemented by other edgy conservative insults like “leftist”, “radical”, “gay”. They deliver these terms like adolescents who’ve gleefully acquired a new swear word. What is being woke exactly? And how has it come to be so hated in the modern era? To be woke is to decry the excesses and failures of western society. It is painted as less masculine, less patriotic, in comparison to the jingoistic hyperaggressive nationalism that certain Americans seem so desperate to uphold now. Now, is there some truth to the portrait of the shallow liberal championing causes in the name of moral validation? Of course there is. I have met many a troubling liberal who can’t quite justify what they support aside from the fact that it makes them feel good. There is also some truth in production companies shoehorning cheap representation into modern media to adhere to political correctness. This of course, disadvantages efforts to implement authentic stories of representation, and only adds fuel for right-wing commentators. Despite these issues, it is shocking how in today’s society the basic notions of kindness and longing for a better world have become so scorned and despised by certain sectors of society.

            Being woke is a paradox. For me, it’s contradictory to denounce all elements of the status quo. I’m a product of modernity, conditioned to consume, near addicted to the pleasures of social media and commodification, and tragically not free of its narratives or demands. Despite knowing that everything I buy comes with an increasingly high environmental and labor cost, I still find myself spending money on frivolities. Despite critically idealizing feminism I would be lying if I claimed to not derive some amount of pleasure from the continued objectification of women. That relationship has been coopted through years of interaction with the neoliberal sexual apparatus, which means that some part of me will never quite be free from its influence. I do not make these statements to absolve myself of any culpability, I have consciously made choices to capitulate to these influences. I haven’t lived some charmed liberal life that now enables me to preach to others from a pulpit. I instead want to show that the contradiction of wokeness is more complex than anti-woke critics make it out to be, some things are deeply entrenched and woven into our lives and require serious unlearning. Obviously, some concessions to the system are downright necessary for survival. Workplaces are demanding, food needs to be put on the table, sometimes the pleasure of consumption is the only way to alleviate stress and malaise. But even so, many of us don’t stop at the bare minimum when society offers excess in exchange for maximum labor. No doubt this is where one of the criticisms of “woke” people come from, although it is equally unrealistic to demand they deprive themselves of vice and crucify themselves to prove their devotion to their ideals (it really isn’t that simple, and many times this means stripping them of their platform). There is a contradiction in criticizing a system that one profits from, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. And it is isn’t purely a matter of moral validation. I am far from being first on the chopping block when it comes to these issues, but they do affect me. I care about climate change not only because I worry for non-human nature and people immediately at risk, but also because I perceive a credible threat to my own freedoms and contentment.

            And the mission of the “woke” movement, is all the more complicated. In America at least, the mission is to radically reimagine a country that suffers from a lack of political imagination. I recently watched an interview with Mehdi Hasan, as he debated with a conservative who claimed “all whites are Native Americans”. Indigenous people be damned, they came over from an Asian land bridge, to be white is to be native to America. This view is obviously vile for many reasons, but I’ve found myself questioning if it’s really that out of step with the logic of America. Even our history is framed explicitly through a white lens: a clear genealogy is established from the British and from the settler colonies that built America’s political foundation. This characterization of America persists, so that one might see how the most conservative of white people see themselves as the inheritors and protagonists of the US. This obscures that America is a diverse place, where its government, by conquest or less tragic means, came to govern many different kinds of people with their own histories. And the white mythology is powerful, it remains attractive for many people, yet so precariously fragile and fantasmatic (which is perhaps why those people become so vehement and reactionary when defending it). 

Forget Trump’s policies (I have met few supporters who explicitly praise his policies, most fiscal conservatives in the limelight have already denounced him), it’s this idea of defending the “soul” of America that attracts so many conservatives. And that soul is composed of ideas, experiences, myths, that are typically or even exclusively white originating a la the “City on a Hill”. They would never equate it to white supremacy or racism, perhaps they themselves cannot think of it that way due to the malicious connotations, but it is in fact both those things. “The Dream”, as it’s labeled by Ta-Nehisi Coates, excludes enslavement, the genocide of the First Nations, and the current inegalitarian experiences Americans are subjected to in service of The Dream. And so much of this logic, of white supremacy, the very social construct of whiteness and race, is still baked into the fabric of our country. To be woke means to challenge much of this, which is uncomfortable for the woke and confrontational for the anti-woke. But then this leads to a misinterpretation (inflamed by the neoconservatives of our time), where the idea of being woke comes to mean anti-American and anti-white. And from this misconception (aided by roots of racism) came the “All Lives Matter” slogan. 

Firstly, it goes without saying that being white is not the liberal movement’s problem. Yet, it says much that certain people are offended at their children’s extensive exposure to the concepts of slavery, critical race theory, other religions. The parents say, “I don’t want my children to feel guilty”. But where would this guilt come from? The children clearly did not commit these crimes, nor are they responsible for them in any way. This would be akin to non-Jews in Germany demanding that their children not learn about the Holocaust. The fact that these parents react in this way reveals that people still can’t separate themselves from that slaveowning culture, or mistakenly perceive an attack on slaveowning culture as an attack on them. That seems an important difference between the US and Germany; Trump attempts to lord the defeat of Nazi Germany over the German chancellor and he replies, “That was actually the day my country was liberated”. Mention the defeat of the Confederacy to certain Americans, and they might not react the same way. 

In any case, America has work to do before forming a coherent liberal movement. Being woke is imperfect, which opens it to critique, but it is a start. It’s a sign people are grappling with the necessary questions this country’s legacy presents, for people of all ethnicities and genders. Again, the attack is not on being white, but on a symbolic politicization of the unjust justifications of the Dream. It’s a politicization that needs reworking and recontextualization if it is to rise to its political ideals. It’s not anti-American, if anything I contend that it is a more honest form of patriotism. Being a patriot who simply chants USA is not enough in this day and age. Continuing with this line of thought, my next post will discuss James Gunn’s Superman.