What Do The Woke Believe?

An excised chapter from my manuscript

After meeting with the editor for my manuscript, I’m now beginning the rewrites. His views were helpful, and I’ve now to work on reframing the narrative structure of the book.

One of the things we decided is that one section at the beginning just doesn’t work with the rest of the book, as it’s a bit too terse and theoretical. Each of the other chapters start out from the personal and societal situations before discussing a specific point about Woke Ideology’s massive divergence from leftist frameworks, and the editor found these to be the most engaging. This one doesn’t do that, as anyway I had written it more as an overview of the general problems. Frankly I also found it to be my least favorite bit.

I’ve decided to publish it here for you though, since it anyway has a lot of useful information. Those who are not deeply familiar with the specific beliefs within Woke Ideology will find it helpful and clarifying; those already familiar with it will likely find the discussion about how to define Woke belief useful. And I think those who abscribe to these positions would consider it a fair assessment.

What Do the Woke Believe?

The immediate problem we face when trying to understand Woke Ideology is the problem of definition. That is, what beliefs and political positions actually compose Woke Ideology?

To understand this problem, consider a typical argument on social media and in real conversation (which are absolutely different things) after we encounter an extreme statement like “white people should not be allowed to adopt black children.” Such a statement might have been uttered by a social justice activist, a popular media figure or “influencer,” a politician, a participant in a protest, or it could have merely been a comment on a social media post. Regardless, the statement appears to express a belief about racism and race that we then associate with Woke Ideology.

We might then later refer to that statement in conversation with someone else, who might respond in anger or disbelief. That person would become angry, arguing that in fact “no one” believes this. He or she might say that we must have misunderstood what the person was saying, or that it was just an extreme statement that no authentic activists believe.

Such a position (for instance, that white people should not be permitted to adopt black children) is one I’ve encountered quite frequently, both on social media and in-person conversations. It is not, however, necessarily held by all social justice activists or black people, nor even really by a majority of them. Therefore, to speak about such a statement risks a long dispute about how “no one actually says that,” as well as risking accusations that I am making it all up. That is, of course, unless I encounter another person who has heard—or believes—the same thing, in which case they will defend the statement as a core anti-racist, social justice, or Woke position.

In other words, there are some Woke positions which are not held by all, nor even by a majority, yet which nevertheless have the weight of gospel or divine writ for others. Also, there is often a significant gap between the views a politician, an academic, or an activist might express regarding some particular question. Further, each of these positions might be different again from what an average adherent to Woke Ideology might believe.

For instance, some trans-identified activists have made statements declaring that any lesbian who will not have sex with a trans woman is not only transphobic but is also a “fascist.” This is actually a rather common statement found on social media and also a position held by some trans academics. On the other hand, the more common Woke belief appears to be that it is transphobic to decline sex with trans people or to exclude trans people from potential sexual relations, but that does not necessarily mean that the person is therefore also a fascist.

So, which is the actual Woke position: the more extreme one or the more common one?

Degrees of Belief

This problem is not as overwhelming as it might initially seem, because it is the same difficulty which arises in defining any political, ideological, or especially religious movement. Consider: what does a conservative “really” believe? Immediately what comes to mind is a preference for tradition and the status quo over radical political or social change, as well as a deep belief in “small government” (a government which interferes as little as possible in the daily life of its citizens). However, even these core beliefs by which conservatism is usually defined are not held by every person who self-identifies (or whom we may identify) as conservative. In fact, it is not uncommon to find self-identified conservatives who argue for expansions of government spending or who support significant political or social changes which benefit their values and worldview. In Europe, it’s not rare at all to encounter self-identified conservatives who support socialist programs such as lowered retirement ages, increased housing subsidies, and national health systems. The same contradictions can be found likewise among liberals, social democrats, and far-right and far-left political movements across the world.

Where this apparent internal inconsistency becomes clearer and deeply helpful is when we look at the way religious belief is defined. Consider: what do Christians “really” believe about the transubstantiation, or the meaning of the crucifixion, or about the purpose of prayer or the route towards grace and forgiveness? Obviously, such questions cannot be answered definitively without ignoring sectarian difference. Protestants, for example, generally reject the transubstantiation, while Catholics generally (at least in official Catholic doctrine) accept it. Likewise, there are significant differences between conceptions of grace and forgiveness among differing Protestant groups, not just between Protestants and Catholics or Orthodox believers.

Even more complicating is the divergence between official doctrine (taught by the priests or ministers) and the actual acceptance or interpretation by believers in their congregations. Official Catholic doctrine opposes homosexual relations, for example, but there are plenty of Catholics who do not oppose such relations. So, when attempting to answer the question, “are Catholics opposed to homosexuality?,” the only truthful answer would be both “yes and no,” or maybe “depends on which Catholics.”

Regardless of this difficulty, it is nevertheless possible to generalize about certain shared positions or beliefs and thus generalize about the belief system itself. For example, Christianity is generally a monotheist religion, meaning that it posits the existence of one god rather than multiple gods. Christians generally believe that Jesus was part of that god or was himself that god, and that the crucifixion of Jesus changed the previous Judaic system of sacrifice and atonement. Certain sects may disagree vehemently with other sects about the specific way in which those things occurred or their power and meaning, but they don’t disagree on the underlying points.

It is similar with the system of belief I am calling Woke Ideology. To return to the previous example, regardless of whether or not a particular Woke person believes that lesbians who decline sex with trans women (or gays who decline to have sex with trans men) are fascist, they generally believe that transphobia plays some part in such decisions. As another example, consider how there is often debate within Woke Ideology about whether or not all masculinity is toxic or that merely some forms of masculinity are toxic. Regardless, Woke Ideology generally believes that there is such a thing as “toxic masculinity.” Likewise, Woke Ideology includes a belief in the existence of “white supremacy” and takes moral position against it, even if not everyone who ascribes to this belief also concludes that it is the default system of Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, or that is inherent to all white people.

The matter of degrees of belief relative to the position of the person is particularly important to keep in mind here. An academic who publishes a book about racism is often given an aura of authority over the matter on account of his or her position as an academic. Academic authority (or at least the appearance of it) often functions the same way that clerical authority functions in religion: what a cardinal, an imam, or a rabbi has to say about a matter is given extra weight regardless of the arguments they employ, because they are seen to speaking with what we could call “the voice of god.”

This same kind of authority aura is also applied to popular activists who speak on the same topics, but their authority derives not from a kind of official position but merely their popularity and their apparent position as representatives for an identity group. For instance, anti-racist activists such as Ijeoma Oluo or Rachel Cargle, or “Breadtube”¹ trans-identified figures such as Nathalie Wynn and Abigail Thorn significantly influence the beliefs of others through the reach of their very large social media followings. As such, a sense of authority is attributed to them not through any official relationship to academic learning or education, but rather on account of their popularity and position as spokespeople for the identity groups to which they belong.

Another thing to consider regarding the formation of belief is the influence of social media and particularly the genre of statements known as “memes.” A statement about a matter in image form (a screenshot of another social media post, or a picture with text) that becomes viral (highly distributed through shares or reposts), often untraceable to the original speaker or creator, can often have a significant effect on the beliefs of large amounts of people specifically because it appears to be a popularly-held opinion. As with highly-followed social media accounts, viral memes function as authoritative voices on account of their popularity, something lots of people appear to believe because they’re posting, liking, and sharing it.

Who (or what) then should be considered the “true” source of Woke doctrine? Again, as with religious belief, it would be inadequate and untrue to cite only the clerical texts (the academic theories) as the final word. Instead, we should keep in mind that belief itself manifests in often very different ways from what the originators of those beliefs intended. As with religious writings like the Bible, theory texts are constantly subject to interpretation and re-interpretation by those who cite them. Even more so, the beliefs derived from those texts are often completely unattributed or untraceable to their original sources.

Regardless, we can look at specific beliefs expressed about race, gender, sex, sexuality, power, family, and other key sites of social oppression to get a grasp of the general framework of Woke Ideology itself.

What Do You Mean?

We need to consider one other important problem regarding the concepts which form the foundation of Woke Ideology. Often, there is a significant difference between the way these concepts are understood traditionally and the way they function in social justice discourse. For example, take the idea of “white supremacy.” Traditionally, white supremacy referred to a fringe political ideology that argued for full dominance by white people of all cultural, political, and economic institutions within a country, and also to the belief that whites should have such dominance because of some sort of inherent superiority of “the white race” over other race. Now, however, white supremacy also refers to something completely different. An academic or an activist aligned with Woke Ideology might use the term to describe the default situation in the United State, the United Kingdom, Australia, or Europe now, and also say something along the lines of “white supremacy is the cause of all social inequality.”

So, though white supremacy was formerly understood to be a specific ideology held by a fringe group of white racists (white supremacists), it is now often seen as a kind of esoteric force which sets the co-ordinates of anti-racist struggle. That’s why it’s common now to hear or read statements like, “Trump won in 2016 because of white supremacy,” or to see self-help books for white people who wish to become more anti-racist entitled Me and White Supremacy². This is also why, in the example of Bret Weinstein cited in the introduction, many of the campus activists—as well as many more people on social media—repeatedly called him a “white supremacist” despite his many statements asserting that no racial group should ever be privileged over other groups.

An additional difficulty here is that this definitional change is not complete, meaning that not all people accept this newer usage of the term. In fact, this shift in definition is so new that many English dictionaries still only list the older sense, though Merriam-Webster recently added this second sense around the same time that they famously expanded their definition of racism.³

What occurred was a shift in the popular sense that white supremacy was an ideological position to the sense that it was a system. Previously, white supremacy was thought of as something a white supremacist believed or demanded, but it now defines an omnipresent system that is intrinsic to white people themselves. This newer belief is displayed well in the following quotes from anti-racist writers:

“If you are white, remember that White Supremacy is a system you benefit from and that your privilege has helped to uphold….”⁴

“To ignore the fact that one of the oldest republics in the world was erected on a foundation of white supremacy, to pretend that the problems of a dual society are the same as the problems of unregulated capitalism, is to cover the sin of national plunder with the sin of national lying. The lie ignores the fact that reducing American poverty and ending white supremacy are not the same.”⁵

What this shows is that these definitions are currently in flux, undergoing moments of change corresponding to (though not precisely synchronized with) ideological changes. These changes are not uniformly accepted, if they are even noticed at all. This is how it can be that two people discussing what to do about “white supremacy” can be talking about completely different things. One may be referring to the older conception of white supremacy as a fringe extremist ideology, while the other may be referring to its conception as the dominant or even default system determining all social relations in the United States, Europe, or even the entire world.

Other concepts have experienced a very recent drift or expansion in meaning not uniformly accepted. Two common examples often encountered are the acronym BIPOC and the term “toxic masculinity.” BIPOC stands for Black Indigenous People of Color, but has two senses which are quite different in scope. One sense means “people of color who are indigenous or black,” a category excluding other people of color (for instance, excluding Asians or middle-easterners). The other sense means “all people of color, with a special emphasis on black and indigenous people.” Thus, one person might be using the term BIPOC as an inclusive term that adds particular focus on two specific groups, and another might be using it as an exclusionary term focusing only on two groups of people of color.

Toxic Masculinity likewise has two different sense which can greatly affect misunderstandings. Originating in academia as a way to define an extreme form of masculinity, it generally refers to types of masculinity which can be harmful (“toxic”) both to men and also to women. A more current use of the term seen especially on social media, however, refers instead to an inherent aspect of masculinity itself. That is, rather than “a toxic form of masculinity” the meaning becomes “masculinity is toxic.”⁶

Besides creating quite a few arguments between people that might otherwise be avoided, the double sense of these terms leads to a kind of slipperiness whenever we try to grasp them. What are people really talking about when they are using these terms? Which of their senses are they meaning when they use them, and which of these sense are others hearing when they are used? And more so, which sense is actually the dominant one?

The Core Beliefs of Woke Ideology

With all these complications in mind, we can now look at the general beliefs of Woke Ideology, the universal and primary features of Woke Ideology that distinguish it from other ideologies.

Identity

• Identity is the primary site and mechanism of all unequal social, economic, and power relationships. Therefore, all oppressions and injustices within society can only be understood accurately through the lens of identity.

• Identities are divided into two categories: dominant (or hegemonic) and non-dominant (or oppressed). Each identity therefore has a dominant and non-dominant form. For example, racial identity has a dominant (white) form which dominates and oppresses all other identities (non-white, that is, black, asian, indigenous, etc).

• Identities can “intersect” so that a person can have non-dominant and dominant identities, or have only dominant or non-dominant identities. These intersecting identities compound to create highly oppressed groups (for instance, black disabled asexual trans women), highly oppressive groups (white able-bodied heterosexual cis men), or groups that are both oppressed and oppressive (white disabled lesbian women, Black gay men).

• Most identities, which the specific exception of gender identity, are intransitory. That is, an identity is not something you can change, but is rather a core and perpetual aspect of you.

Race

• Race is the primary site of identity oppression in all multi-racial societies, and racial oppression is both systemic and structural.

• Racism is present and intrinsic to all interactions between white and non-white people, with white people wielding both systemic and structural power over non-whites in all such interactions, intentionally or unintentionally.⁷

• Race is not an identity that can altered or changed, and racism cannot be abolished or eradicated merely by denying it exists.

Gender

• Gender identity is a secondary but otherwise core site of identity oppression. Male (or cis-male, or cis-man) identity is the dominant category, with women, trans woman, trans men, non-binary, and other configurations of gender identity are part of the non-dominant category. All such identities are oppressed because of their identity, both structurally and systematically, but not all are oppressed to the same degree.

• Unlike race, gender is an identity that can be altered, changed, and can be declared. That is, it is not necessarily linked to physical characteristics (such as biological sex), and though a person may appear to fully belong to the dominant identity (male or man), they can declare themselves to be otherwise.

Sexuality

• Non-dominant (gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, asexual, and so on) sexual identities are oppressed structurally and systematically by heterosexuals.

• Sexuality and sexual preference both can and cannot be changed. For instance, homosexual desire is seen as immutable, but homosexual desire that doesn’t include trans people within its conception of “same sex” is seen as oppressive and changeable.

Ability

• Able-bodied people comprise a dominant identity who structurally and systematically oppress disabled people.

• Disability, as with gender, is not necessarily tied to socially-identifiable physical characteristics but rather to a person’s inner experience of themselves. As a person can know they are “really a woman” despite appearing physically fully male, a person may be truly disabled despite appearing physically (and medically) able.

Privilege and Social Hierarchy

• Privilege describes both an individual’s or group’s dominant position over others, as well as a kind of inherent or intrinsic trait that person carries into all interactions with people of non-dominant identities. There is thus white privilege, male privilege, straight or heterosexual privilege, and able-bodied privilege, as well as other tertiary forms, each of which derive from the dominant or hegemonic identity categories to which a person belongs.

• Privilege functions very similar to the Christian concept of Original Sin insofar that it is a kind of indelible and essential trait to a person. A person with white privilege cannot undo their white privilege, even if they do not wish to be privileged.⁸ Also, a person always benefits from their privilege, even if they do not appear to be benefiting. Thus, a homeless white man benefits from his white privilege and male privilege, despite being homeless and destitute.

Woke Ideology And Class

These are all what can be identified as core ideological beliefs within Woke Ideology without delving into sectarian or secondary corollaries. It’s important to note the crucial difference between the core beliefs of Woke Ideology and the core beliefs of Marxism, and we can do this best by looking at the one identity category which doesn’t appear in the list, class.

Class analysis forms the core of Marxist political beliefs, as iterated in the first two sentences of The Communist Manifesto’s first section:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.⁹

Of course, Marx and Engels proposed a dichotomy of opposing categories, “oppressor and oppressed,” but these categories were specifically economic class categories, rather than racial, gender, sexual, or other identities.

The key to understanding how class and identity differ is in the functional nature of class. Identity describes traits of people (black, straight, disabled, female, pansexual), whereas class describes a material relationship and function: producer versus exploiter, or worker versus owner. There is no inherent trait or characteristic at play in class categories, and your position in one class or another has nothing to do with how you feel, what color your skin is, who you have sexual relations with, or whether you have ovaries or testicles. Instead, class is determined by whether you control the means of production of wealth, or whether you do not.

Of course, certain identity traits historically made it more likely you would be in one class or another. If you were the descendant of an African slave in the Americas, chances are you would not later be part of the owning class of the United States. However, being a heterosexual man in quite perfect health descended from European settlers in the United States is no guarantee you will be a capitalist rather than a waged worker, especially if your ancestors had been poor in Europe.

The point to remember here is that class is not an identity and therefore is rarely accounted for in Woke Ideology. The reasons for this are numerous and will be explained later, but for now consider how class cuts across each Woke identity category, rather than intersects with them. A homeless straight white man belongs to all the dominant identity categories. Thus, he would be seen as inherently oppressive and privileged in all interactions he might have with a black property owner demanding he be arrested for trespassing or a trans woman CEO pushing for city laws to make vagrancy a crime. Class analysis can easily account for such situations; Woke Ideology cannot.

1. Breadtube is the name for a group of video makers on YouTube who describe themselves as leftists but who generally espouse Woke Ideological positions. It’s supposedly a reference to anarchist theorist Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread, but others have noted the very large incomes of such video makers suggests a double meaning of ‘bread’ as “paychecks.”

2. This is the title of a book by Woke theorist Layla F. Saad

3. The current definition is listed here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy (retrieved 20 December 2021) and was changed sometime after 2018 (available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20180824180248/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/white%20supremacy.

The definition of racism was expanded to include a “systemic” sense in 2020 due to request by an activist. (https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/dictionary-racism-definition-update-trnd/index.html)

4. Oluo, I., 2018. So You Want to Talk About Race. Seattle: Seal Press, p.218.

5. Coates, T., 2022. The Case for Reparations. [online] The Atlantic. Available at: <https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/> [Accessed 13 May 2022].

6. There’s a fascinating linguistic process at play here which we also see in the term “Crony Capitalism.” In one sense it refers to a specific kind of capitalism based on cronyism as opposed to a more fair kind of capitalism. In the other sense, the “crony” adjective is used to draw attention to a specific trait seen as inherent to capitalism (in other words, “capitalism is based on cronyism.” As in the case of toxic masculinity, the two senses represent entirely different frameworks for understanding the problem the term is meant to describe. In one sense, there is a neutral concept (capitalism, masculinity) that exists also in corrupted manifestations; in the other sense, the negative trait is merely a descriptor of the thing itself.

7. For corollary: Racial identities that are part of the non-dominant category can still nevertheless be adjacent to the dominant category (for instance, bi-racial people, asians, light-skinned black people, hispanics) and “participate in” or “uphold” white supremacy.

8. An important exception to this situation is that of male privilege in the case of a trans woman. Identifying as a trans woman retroactively removes male privilege in the same way that Evangelical conversion experiences retroactively forgive or erase past sins.

9. Marx, K. and Engels, F., 1848. Manifesto of the Communist Party. [online] Marxists.org. Available at: <https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/> [Accessed 13 May 2022].