A Woke New World
By Michael Dahlen
On May 25, 2020, four police officers arrested George Floyd, a black man, for using a counterfeit $20 bill. While Floyd was lying face down on the ground, handcuffed, officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes, killing him.1 This flagrant injustice spurred nationwide riots and protests. Many Americans were outraged over what they assumed was a racially motivated murder. The sales of books on racism soared, from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist to Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race, to Robin DiAngelo’s _White Fragility:_Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. According to a Monmouth University poll taken shortly after Floyd’s death, 78 percent of Americans believed the protesters’ anger was justified, though they didn’t fully agree with the protesters’ actions.2 And a Pew poll showed that two-thirds of Americans support the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.3
The riots, the unrest, the protests, the turmoil, however, overshadowed something else. Floyd’s killing accelerated an ominous trend that has grown in recent years. Started in universities, this trend has spread like a virus throughout our culture. One example is the story of David Shor, a political data scientist who worked for Civis Analytics.
On May 28, 2020, Shor tweeted research by Princeton professor Omar Wasow. Summarizing Wasow’s findings, Shor wrote that peaceful civil rights protests have led to more votes for Democrats whereas riots have led to fewer votes.4 This crossed the line for activists such as Arianna Trujillo-Wesler who tweeted, “This take is tone deaf . . . and reeks of anti-blackness.”5 She also tagged Civis Analytics CEO Dan Wagner, writing, “Come get your boy.”6 Shor then backpedaled, tweeting, “I regret starting this conversation and will be much more careful moving forward.”7 After reviewing what happened, Civis Analytics fired Shor. A couple of weeks later, the electronic mailing list “Progressphiles,” which Shor participated in, announced that it kicked him out for his “racist tweet.”8
Yes, you read that correctly. In some circles, examining the repercussions of riots is considered racist.
This was not an isolated incident but just the tip of the iceberg. Welcome to this brave new world, a world without room for dissent or debate, a world that punishes independent thought while demanding intellectual conformity. This is the world toward which we are heading—thanks to the woke social justice movement.
Being “woke” means being hypersensitive to any alleged injustices concerning group identities. According to the woke view, a person’s identity is determined not by his choices, actions, and convictions, but by his race, gender, and sexual orientation. Being woke does not mean merely opposing racism, sexism, and the like; it means embracing a particular ideology. If you oppose racism and sexism, yet don’t embrace this ideology, you’re not woke; you’re part of the problem.
You might wonder: Aren’t woke social justice activists just calling for equal treatment for marginalized groups? Isn’t their main goal a laudable one: combating hate, bias, and discrimination against women, racial minorities, gay people, and transgender people? The social justice movement may appear noble because it ostensibly takes the right side of a legitimate issue. But this is a facade. The problem with the movement is that it illegitimately redefines basic concepts, trumpets false narratives, and peddles a toxic ideology. It projects a virtuous, shiny aura that masks a corrupt, rotten core.
This movement is not like the civil rights movement. Despite their inconsistencies, many civil rights leaders of the 1960s fought courageously for the equal rights of minorities. This, they argued, follows from the logic of America’s founding principles. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,” Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) proclaimed, “they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men—yes, black men as well as white men—would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” MLK also dreamed that one day black people would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” while “little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”9
The social justice movement rejects all of this. “I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible,” wrote law professor Ekow N. Yankah in the New York Times.10 According to social justice scholars, MLK’s vision of a colorblind society is not the answer to racism. “A society suffused with commitments to colorblindness,” UCSB professor George Lipsitz argues, “is not a less racist society; it is merely a more effectively racist society.”11
The social justice movement holds that identity-based prejudices not only are far worse than most people believe, but that these problems are everywhere. As law professors Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic put it, “racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained.”12 Recall, however, the near-universal outrage over Floyd’s killing—this isn’t the response one would expect from a society suffering from “pervasive” racism. Indeed, abundant evidence shows that antiblack racism has declined significantly. Whereas 68 percent of white people supported segregated schools in 1942, only 4 percent did in 1995. In 1944, 55 percent of white people believed black people should not have an equal chance to get a job; in 1972, only 3 percent. In 1958, 96 percent of white people opposed interracial marriage; in 2011, only 14 percent. In 1958, 63 percent of white people would not vote for a black presidential candidate; in 1997, only 5 percent. Also in 1958, 44 percent of white people said they would move if a black family lived next door; in 1997, only 1 percent.13 Oddly, as not only racism but also sexism and homophobia have declined, the movements against these prejudices have become louder, shriller, and more hysterical.
It’s certainly true that racism still exists, but what are the best ways to combat it? Is it the top problem facing black people today? What about police brutality? Is it a widespread, racially motivated problem? Or has biased media coverage distorted the issue? These questions should be open to debate. But social justice activists shun debating; instead, they prefer smearing, shaming, and intimidating.
These activists don’t want to end discrimination. They don’t want people judged only on the basis of merit and character. They don’t want to replace racial strife with racial harmony. They don’t seek reform, progress, or justice; they seek subversion, disruption, and collective, identity-based retribution.
Like David Shor, many well-meaning people have been fired, bullied, or silenced—not for bigoted remarks, but for voicing ideas contrary to the social justice narrative. Meanwhile, fearing the woke thought police, countless others silence themselves. Professor and legal analyst Jonathan Turley calls this fanatical, authoritarian movement the “French Revolution 2.0.”14 Writer Mike LaChance calls it “the American version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.”15 Many others call it “cancel culture.” I call it the woke purge.
The Woke Purge
The most visible manifestation of the social justice movement is Black Lives Matter. Pushing a far-left agenda, BLM calls for, among other things, defunding, dismantling, and abolishing police departments, sentiments echoed by politicians such as Representative Ilhan Omar.16 “The Minneapolis Police Department,” Omar said, “has proven themselves beyond reform. It’s time to disband them and reimagine public safety in Minneapolis.”17 Contra Omar, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told BLM protesters that he supports reform, but “I do not support the full abolition of the police.” Outraged, the crowd of protesters booed Frey and cursed him out, repeatedly shouting, “Go home, Jacob, go home.”18
BLM supporters have indiscriminately toppled statues and monuments, not only of Confederates but of abolitionists.19 At best, BLM won’t condemn riots, looting, and vandalism; at worst, it condones and commits these acts—along with its partners-in-crime, the violent thugs of antifa.20 Hawk Newsome, president of Greater New York Black Lives Matter, said, “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.”21 In the summer of 2020, according to a Princeton University report, nearly 570 riots erupted in 220 locations.22 This led to property damage costing an estimated $2 billion.23 Yet BLM was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.24
Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi founded BLM. When asked whether the organization lacked ideological direction, Cullors replied, “We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular, are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super versed on ideological theories.”25
A violence-prone movement founded by Marxists certainly warrants scrutiny.26 Yet for woke activists, scrutinizing BLM is off-limits.
Harald Uhlig, University of Chicago professor and editor of the Journal of Political Economy (JPE), tweeted that BLM “just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice.” “Time for sensible adults,” he continued, “to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all.”27 For these comments, many economists, led by Justin Wolfers and Paul Krugman, called on Uhlig to resign from JPE. Wolfers remarked, “I don’t think the profession’s resolve to look more deeply into racial justice will get a fair hearing under his editorship.”28 Uhlig apologized but did not resign. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, however, terminated its contract with Uhlig, saying, “his views are not compatible with the Chicago Fed’s values and our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.”29
Cornell law professor William A. Jacobson wrote two articles critiquing BLM. In the first, he wrote that BLM is led by “anti-capitalist activists” who “have concocted a false narrative of mass murder of Blacks at the hands of police, when the statistics show otherwise.”30 In the second, he argued that BLM’s slogan, “Hands up, don’t shoot” (inspired by what Michael Brown supposedly did before police shot him in 2014), is based on a myth. The Department of Justice investigation of the shooting, Jacobson pointed out, found no credible evidence that Brown either held his hands up or pleaded, “Don’t shoot.”31 But such facts aren’t allowed to be mentioned. Students, alumni, and professors launched a campaign attacking Jacobson and boycotting his classes. A letter to the Cornell Daily Sun, signed by twenty-one of Jacobson’s colleagues, denounced “racism masquerading as informed commentary.” It didn’t mention Jacobson by name, though, to avoid giving him “a larger platform” for his “racist speech.”32 Many called for firing Jacobson, but because he has job security (similar to tenure), he kept his position.
Others haven’t been so fortunate.
Cisco held a videoconference on race, diversity, and BLM with its thirty thousand employees, after which it fired several for comments they posted about the conference. One wrote that the phrase “black lives matter” “reinforces racism” for singling out one ethnic group. Another wrote, “People who complain about racism probably have been a racist somewhere else to people from another race.” The point here is not whether these opinions are sound; the point is that any criticism of BLM—sound or not—is forbidden. After the firings, one employee wrote, “No place for contrary opinions or feelings. Wow. This is my first and last comment, then.”33
One need not criticize BLM to overstep; merely questioning it is a problem. On her Facebook page, Tiffany Riley, principal of Windsor High School in Vermont, wrote:
I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter, but I DO NOT agree with the coercive measures taken to get this point across; some of which are falsified in an attempt to prove a point. While I want to get behind BLM, I do not think people should be made to feel they have to choose black race over human race. While I understand the urgency to feel compelled to advocate for black lives, what about our fellow law enforcement? What about all others who advocate for and demand equity for all? Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist.34
Superintendent David Baker said Riley’s post is “what I define as pretty much outright racist in my values system.”35 The Mount Ascutney School Board, meanwhile, was “uniformly appalled” by Riley’s comments: “The ignorance, prejudice, and lack of judgement in these statements are utterly contrary to the values we espouse as a school board and district.”36 The board voted unanimously to fire her.37
If this story sounds surreal, consider this: Supporting BLM, but not supporting it strongly enough, is also a problem. The Poetry Foundation, based in Chicago, issued a statement after Floyd’s killing, saying its members “stand in solidarity with the Black community, and denounce injustice and systemic racism.” In response, more than eighteen hundred poets signed an open letter condemning the foundation’s statement as “vague,” “worse than the bare minimum,” and “an insult to the lives and families of George Floyd . . . and the countless other victims of the racist institution of police and white supremacy.” The letter listed several demands, including “that the staff of the Foundation more adequately reflect the demographics of the city of Chicago. We believe that as long as the Foundation’s staff and leadership remain overwhelmingly White, it fundamentally limits the Foundation’s ability to ever be an organization rooted in anti-racist practice.”38 It also demanded the resignation of President Henry Bienen and Board Chairman Willard Bunn III. Poets, too, pledged to withhold work from Poetry Magazine until their demands were met. Bienen and Bunn resigned.39
For woke social justice activists, anything less than zealous, unquestioning allegiance to BLM is heresy—and must be ruthlessly quashed.40 Such allegiance means you must fully endorse the BLM gospel. If you deviate from it—if, for example, you support the police—you’re a heretic.
Professor Sonya Forte Duhé knows this all too well. After accepting a position as dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, she tweeted, “For the family of George Floyd, the good police officers who keep us safe, my students, faculty and staff. Praying for peace on this #BlackOutTuesday.” An online petition signed by four thousand people urged Arizona State to fire Duhé. A letter signed by faculty members said she showed “poor judgment and a lack of understanding of what it means to be the dean of the Cronkite School.” The university rescinded Duhé’s job offer.41
At West Virginia University, Meshea Poore (vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion) and W. P. Chedester (chief of the university’s police) wrote a letter to students and faculty after Floyd’s killing. In addition to condemning racism and violence, Poore and Chedester announced that they would host an online “Campus Conversation focused on how we can work together to foster a safe, diverse and inclusive culture at WVU.”42 During the event, held over Zoom, a Thin Blue Line flag was displayed in the background of Chedester’s office, a flag representing law enforcement. This enraged the attendees. Chedester, to repeat, is the university police chief. He removed the flag and publicly apologized, “I sincerely did not have any intent to suggest that police lives matter more than Black lives nor was I intentionally trying to cause any harm or offense.”43 Despite the apology, students and faculty demanded that he resign.44
Some activists argue that “black lives matter” doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter. Yet they argue oppositely about “blue lives matter,” referring to police. “The pity of Blue Lives Matter,” Philip Galanes (New York Times) wrote, “is that it springs from a zealous denial that Black lives matter.”45 Another problematic phrase, according to these activists, is “all lives matter.” As David Theo Goldberg (HuffPost) argues, “The universalizing politics of ‘All lives matter’ is one of racial dismissal, ignoring, and denial.”46 Or as Ashley May (USA Today) puts it, “‘all lives matter’ can actually be interpreted as racist.”47
Not everyone got the memo. In Melrose, a suburb of Boston, a digital traffic sign read, “The Safety of All Lives Matter.” When Mayor Paul Brodeur heard about this, he said, “I have ordered that [the sign] be taken down immediately and am taking steps to find out how this happened. I apologize to the residents of Melrose.”48 Grant Napear, announcer for the Sacramento Kings and radio host on KHTK Sports 1140, tweeted, “ALL LIVES MATTER . . . EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!”49 No surprise what happened next: Napear resigned from the Kings, and KHTK fired him.50 Leslie Neal-Boylan, University of Massachusetts-Lowell dean of nursing, e-mailed the nursing school, “I am writing to express my concern and condemnation of the recent (and past) acts of violence against people of color. Recent events recall a tragic history of racism and bias that continue to thrive in this country. . . . BLACK LIVES MATTER, but also, EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS.” She, too, was fired.51
Some have had enough of this. Protesting the woke purge, 156 authors, artists, and professors, including J. K. Rowling, Steven Pinker, Salman Rushdie, and Fareed Zakaria, signed an open letter in Harper’s Magazine titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” Besides supporting “overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society,” the letter expressed concern: “it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.” “The way to defeat bad ideas,” the letter continues, “is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. . . . We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”52
By any reasonable standard, this letter uncontroversially defended civil discourse and intellectual freedom. But social justice activists griped. Emily VanDerWerff, a transgender woman, felt “deeply saddened” that her colleague at Vox, Matthew Yglesias, signed the letter. She sent a written complaint to his editors—and posted it to Twitter, of course. She opposed the Harper’s letter because “several prominent anti-trans voices” signed it, and it conveyed “many dog whistles toward anti-trans positions.” (The letter mentioned nothing about transgender issues.) Also, Matt’s “signature being on the letter makes me feel less safe at Vox.”53
Feeling less safe or unsafe from others’ speech is common among the woke. Consider Senator Tom Cotton’s New York Times op-ed in which he argued that government should deploy troops to “restore order to our streets.”54 Several Times journalists not only disagreed with Cotton (many reasonable people did); they were furious that the paper published his opinion—and they feared for their safety. Tweeting screenshots of Cotton’s piece, they commented, “Running this puts Black @nytimes staff in danger.”55 The paper’s union, the NewsGuild of New York, said publishing Cotton’s opinion was “irresponsible” and “a clear threat to the health and safety of journalists we represent.”56 As pressure mounted, the editorial page editor, James Bennet, resigned.
A month later, New York__Times journalist Bari Weiss also resigned, not because she was pressured to, but because of the stifling, woke culture at the paper. In her resignation letter, Weiss, a self-described centrist, wrote that activists on Twitter have become the paper’s “ultimate editor.” Further,
My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist. . . . Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are. . . . Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. . . . Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do.57
The Times isn’t alone. Several other news outlets, including Vox, the Intercept, the Los Angeles Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer suffered internal strife over those who didn’t toe the woke line. Consider Intercept journalist Lee Fang. He argued that many people quote MLK’s line that riots are “the language of the unheard” out of context. Read his “actual speech,” Fang tweeted; “It’s a passionate argument against riots and in support of nonviolence.”58 A few days later, Fang interviewed a black man named Max, a cautious BLM supporter. “Why does a black life matter only when a white man takes it?” Max asked; “If a white man takes my life, it’s going to be national news. . . . If a black man takes my life tonight, it might not even be spoken of.”59 This was the last straw for Akela Lacy, Fang’s colleague at the Intercept. She tweeted, “Stop being racist Lee.”60 It’s not about her and him, Lacy continued, “it’s about institutional racism and using free speech to couch anti-blackness. I am so fucking tired.”61 To save his job, Fang apologized, explaining that he “failed” to be sensitive “to the lived experiences of others.”62
Also “failing” the sensitivity test is New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees. Is “everything right with our country right now?” Brees asked; “No, it’s not. We still have a long way to go.” But when asked about players kneeling for the national anthem, he answered, “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America.” When standing for the anthem, honoring the flag, he thinks about “those in the military” and “those throughout the civil rights movement of the 60s.”63 These comments enraged players, pundits, and the woke mob on Twitter. In her USA Today column, Nancy Armour scolded Brees for being “tone deaf” and “willfully ignorant.” His comments, she continued, were “disingenuous,” “self-absorbed,” “dangerous,” “hurtful,” and “the kind of entitled view only a white person can have.”64 Denounced, defeated, and publicly shamed, Brees humbly apologized.65
The woke purge, as we have seen, has infected most cultural institutions, from the arts to education, from newspapers to corporations, from social media to professional sports. Although the events highlighted above came after the death of George Floyd, his killing was a catalyst, not the cause. This movement has been decades in the making, and we have seen a preview of it for years on college campuses.66 At Evergreen State College in 2017, for example, white students and professors were asked to leave campus for a “Day of Absence,” that is, a day of segregation. Professor Bret Weinstein refused to leave, a move that led to a student insurrection. Besides threatening Weinstein, smearing him as a racist, and demanding his resignation, the students overran the library and several offices while holding faculty hostage.67
Writing in New York magazine in 2018, Andrew Sullivan presciently commented, “We all live on campus now.”68 The question is: What caused the woke purge? Why are social justice activists maligning, harassing, and silencing not only their adversaries, but their seeming allies? What ideas motivate these activists?
Social Justice Theory
Conceived, developed, and refined in American universities, the woke social justice ideology draws from several interrelated academic “disciplines,” including queer studies, postcolonial studies, whiteness studies, critical race theory, and intersectional feminism. At its root, however, social justice theory combines identity politics and postmodernism, a radically skeptical philosophy that emerged in the 1960s. Articulated by French intellectuals such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Francois Lyotard, postmodernism rejects Western conceptions of truth and objectivity. Instead, this philosophy posits power imbalances among social groups and holds that these imbalances are mediated through knowledge—who decides what legitimate knowledge is, who benefits from it, and who is harmed by it.69
The central dogma of social justice theory, its unquestionable absolute, its sacred article of faith, is that oppression—in the form of racism, sexism, and the like—is omnipresent. In their social justice textbook Is Everyone Really Equal?, Özlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo write, “the societal default is oppression; there are no free spaces from it. Thus, the question becomes, ‘How is it manifesting here?’ rather than ‘Is it manifesting here?’”70 Oppression pervades society because some identity groups have power and some don’t. Or as Ithaca College professor Paula Ioanide says, “gendered racial power structures our lives, opportunities, and actions.”71 Those with power are the so-called “dominant,” “privileged,” or “oppressor” groups; those without power, the “marginalized,” “minoritized,” or “oppressed” groups.
Oppression, in this view, is not about “individual incidents” but is “an all-encompassing system.”72 Sensoy and DiAngelo argue, “No individual member of the dominant group has to do anything specific to oppress a member of the minoritized group; the prejudice and discrimination is built into the society as a whole and becomes automatic.”73 This means white people—not as individuals, but as a group—oppress racial minorities (racism/white supremacy); men oppress women (sexism/patriarchy); heterosexual people oppress gay people (homophobia/heteronormativity); cis-gendered people—those identifying with the gender they were born with—oppress transgendered people (transphobia/cis-normativity); Western cultures oppress non-Western cultures (colonialism/imperialism). Because of this systemic oppression, Ioanide says, dominant groups “receive unearned, automatic advantages because they are white, male, heterosexual, and/or wealthy.”74
People fall into several identity groups. They can be oppressed in one way, in this view, yet privileged in another. A gay man, for example, is oppressed because he’s gay but privileged because he’s a man. Others are oppressed in multiple ways in what author bell hooks (she doesn’t capitalize her name) calls “interlocking systems of domination” and what professor Patricia Hill Collins calls a “matrix of domination.”75 In other words, systems of power and oppression overlap and intersect; this is the principle of “intersectionality,” a term coined by UCLA professor Kimberlé Crenshaw. She argued that traditional feminism was racist for highlighting white women whereas traditional antiracism was patriarchal for highlighting black men. Both excluded black women.76 Intersectionality teaches that each activist must support all marginalized groups simultaneously, as supporting only some perpetuates oppression of others.
Intersectionality also establishes a moral hierarchy separating the noble from the depraved. In this morality, being oppressed confers righteousness; being “privileged” confers guilt. Thus, the “gendered racial hierarchy” that allegedly defines society is turned upside down. The more oppressed you are (that is, the more marginalized groups you belong to), the more entitled you are to have your voice heard, to air your grievances, and to make demands. The more privileged you are, the more obligated you are to listen, stay silent, and bow down to your moral superiors.
It’s true that some groups have been oppressed in the United States—and some horribly so. Black people were enslaved, and Jim Crow laws segregated them from white people. Women were prohibited from voting, and wives were restricted from owning property or entering contracts. Gay people were barred from marrying, and sodomy laws banned same-sex intercourse. Thankfully, this government-enforced oppression no longer exists.77 Further, social attitudes have steadily improved. Most Americans no longer believe black people are inferior to white people, or that a woman’s place must be in the home, or that gay people should be closeted.78 So where’s the oppression today?
Compared with “dominant” groups, some “marginalized” groups have unequal incomes, unequal wealth, unequal educational achievement, unequal life expectancy, and unequal “representation” in many fields, industries, and companies. These inequalities among groups supposedly prove bias and discrimination.79 Social justice scholars, however, ignore that groups on average have different interests and preferences—and the people in a group, on average, make different decisions than those in other groups. According to these scholars, the only possible explanation for unequal group outcomes and unequal “representation” is that dominant groups oppress marginalized groups while privileging themselves.
But “marginalized” groups sometimes outperform “dominant” groups. Observe that Asian Americans earn higher average incomes than white Americans.80 If you’re woke, though, you know that facts cannot refute your narrative. Because oppression is omnipresent, according to social justice theory, recall that the question is always: How is it manifesting? Discussing Asian American outperformance is oppressive, we are told, for it reinforces the “model minority” myth, the idea that Asian Americans are a good “model” for other minorities to live up to. As professor Robert S. Chang says, “The model minority myth plays a key role in establishing a racial hierarchy that denies the oppression of Asian Americans while simultaneously legitimizing the oppression of other racial minorities.”81
Some identity groups, including blacks and Latinos, are “underrepresented” in American orchestras. Many orchestras, however, hold blind auditions, ensuring that musicians are selected only on their performance, not their race or gender. If you think this proves the absence of bias and discrimination, think again. As Kendi argues, “racial inequity is evidence of racist policy.”82 Despite intent, in this view, if blind auditions lead to a racially unequal outcome, they’re ipso facto racist. To “fix” this, New York Times classical music critic Anthony Tommasini calls for ending blind auditions. We must “redress racial inequities,” he says, with a “new approach to auditions—one that takes race and gender into account.”83 This illustrates one social justice method for fighting oppression: discriminating against dominant groups. As Kendi explains, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”84 Rather than more discrimination, isn’t the solution to stop discriminating and to treat people equally? Not if you’re woke. “Treating everyone exactly the same,” Amy Sun says, “actually is not fair. What equal treatment does do is erase our differences and promote privilege.”85
According to social justice scholars, oppression runs much deeper than mere group inequalities. The dominant group also oppresses marginalized groups by imposing its culture on them. It does this through “discourses”—that is, through language, ideology, and science. “Discourses,” Sensoy and DiAngelo argue, “shape relations of power.”86
These scholars, in line with postmodernism, hold that reality is a “social-linguistic construct.” Further, language is not “a neutral transmitter of a universal, objective, or fixed reality. Rather, language is the way we construct reality.”87 Dominant groups allegedly control language, using it to “construct” reality for their own benefit. But for marginalized groups, author Riki Wilchins says, “Language works against you. It is meant to, because the language of gender [and race] is highly political.”88
This view of language means that when a non-woke person talks, woke activists interpret his words to mean something different from what he actually said. Dominant groups “speak in coded language,” professor Dwanna L. McKay argues, in order to mask and reinforce oppression.89 For example, “A ‘good school’ or ‘good neighborhood,’” Sensoy and DiAngelo tell us, “is often coded language for ‘White,’ while ‘urban’ is code for non-White and therefore less desirable. . . . When we say ‘American’ we do not mean ‘any and all Americans,’ we mean White Americans.”90 According to Michael Harriot (The Root), the phrase “diversity of thought” is a euphemism for “white supremacy.”91 Kendi has a long list of coded terms, including “law and order,” “race-neutral,” “handout,” “tough on crime,” “personal responsibility,” “Blue Lives Matter,” “All Lives Matter,” and “Entitlements”—these terms, he says, allow “users to evade admissions of racism.”92 Also on Kendi’s list is “reverse discrimination.” But recall that he supports discrimination as a remedy for discrimination. You may not, however, call his view “reverse discrimination” because according to him, that’s racist.
Besides language, some common ideologies and institutions are oppressive. These include individualism and “meritocracy,” colorblindness and race neutrality, individual rights and the rule of law. Like many people, you’re probably thinking the opposite: that these principles are essential for combating prejudice and oppression, not promoting them. If so, the following six questions might cross your mind. But worry not. Social justice scholars have the answers to set you woke:
Shouldn’t we view people as individuals rather than interchangeable members of an identity group? “Individualism obscures racism. . . . It isn’t actually possible to see everyone as an individual and thus to treat them as one” (Sensoy and DiAngelo).93
Shouldn’t we judge individuals on their merit and character? “Meritocratic discourse . . . is a mechanism of racial power” (Crenshaw).94 “It is unfair to rank people according to mechanical scales and distribute valuable social benefits on that basis” (Delgado and Stefancic).95
Shouldn’t we be colorblind and not judge people on their race (or gender)? “At the core of colorblindness is an obfuscation of hierarchies of power” (professor Marzia Milazzo).96 “Colorblindness can function as a racial preference for whites” (professor Devon W. Carbado).97
Shouldn’t policies be race and gender neutral, neither favoring nor discriminating against any group? “Race neutrality preserves white supremacy” (Lipsitz).98 “The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist’. . . . The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism” (Kendi).99
Don’t marginalized groups have the most to gain when individual rights are recognized and protected? “Because of the imbalance in power among social groups, the protection of individual rights does not ensure justice for the members of particular social groups” (professor Lynn Lemisko).100 “Rights should not be understood as the establishment of legitimacy but rather the method by which subjugation is carried out” (professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson).101
Isn’t the rule of law essential to a just society, so everyone plays by the same rules and knows them beforehand? “The rule of law was highly politicized to reinforce structures of power” (Crenshaw).102
The principles behind the questions above, according to these scholars, can’t combat prejudice and oppression because they’re “hegemonic” ideologies imposed by dominant groups. As Sensoy and DiAngelo sum up, these ideologies “rationalize the concentration of dominant group members at the top of society and their right to rule.”103 But what if a person from a marginalized group supports these ideologies? If so, that means she’s allegedly suffering from “false consciousness.” Similar to Stockholm syndrome, she has “internalized” her oppression.104
When examining an idea, social justice scholars don’t ask: Is this idea true, valid, or rational? Because reality is “socially constructed” in their view, and because power and oppression inform all knowledge, such a question is pointless. Instead, they ask: If this idea is accepted as true, which groups does it privilege and which groups does it subjugate?105 Ideas contrary to social justice theory, according to professor Alison Bailey, should not be viewed “as propositions to be assessed for their truth value, but as expressions of power that function to re-inscribe and perpetuate social inequalities.”106 So fact-based logical arguments prove nothing; they’re just “expressions of power.”
What about objectivity? No one can be objective, social justice scholars tell us, because a person’s “position” in society (his identity group membership) determines how he thinks and thus what he can know. According to professor Sherwood Thompson, “The theoretical construct of positionality refutes dominant notions of objectivity in the academy.”107 This means science itself is nonobjective—and oppressive. Quoting professors Glenn Adams and Phia S. Salter, “the scientific research enterprise is not an unbiased reading of objective reality or identity-neutral tool wielded by dispassionate or positionless observers. Instead, it is an integral component of the modern/colonial order that reflects and reproduces racial domination.”108 Others have argued that besides being racist, science is also sexist.109
Social justice scholars believe science has been unfairly “privileged” for too long, imposing its Western-biased version of “truth” in the “colonized” minds of its victims. They want to replace it with the voices and knowledge of marginalized groups. That is, they want to replace science—the universal method of gaining knowledge—with tribal subjectivism, the doctrine that each marginalized group has its own narratives, its own “lived experiences,” its own unique ways of knowing that dominant groups can’t understand. One example is “indigenous epistemology.” (Epistemology is the study of how knowledge is gained and validated.) As McKay explains, indigenous epistemology “acts to decolonize the academy’s scientific practices, to disrupt Westernized ways of knowing, and to develop research approaches based on Indigenous knowledge and voice.”110
In social justice theory, the “knowledge and voice” and “lived experience” of marginalized groups trump logic, science, and objectivity. But a marginalized person’s voice is not considered “authentic” if he contradicts the social justice narrative. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel proclaimed, “I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican.”111 According to Jim Downs (Advocate), Thiel isn’t authentically gay. “Thiel is an example of a man who has sex with other men,” Downs wrote, “but not a gay man. Because he does not embrace the struggle of people to embrace their distinctive identity.”112 Mohamed Ali, a University of Rochester student, organized a panel on religious fanaticism in the Middle East. Afterward, a protester complained that the event wasn’t organized by an Arab. Ali told her that he, the organizer, is Arab. “You don’t count,” she replied. “We know your politics.”113 Echoing this sentiment is New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. “There is a difference,” she says, “between being politically black and being racially black.”114 To be authentically gay, authentically Arab, or authentically black, in this view, a person must embrace the right politics/ideology—he must be woke.
To be woke, to have an authentic voice, and to be a social justice activist, you must understand the dynamics of power, the distribution of privilege, the intersections of oppression, and how power, privilege, and oppression manifest through discourse, language, and ideology. You must understand this not only to empower marginalized groups, but to turn the tables on dominant groups—maligning them, laying guilt trips on them, knocking them off their perch. After all, dominant groups, we are told, are oppressors; they deserve to be scorned, shamed, and purged.
“Why can’t we hate men?” reads a headline from the Washington Post. “We have every right to hate you,” Suzanna Danuta Walters wrote. “You have done us wrong.” She then implored men “to vote for feminist women only. Don’t run for office. Don’t be in charge of anything. Step away from the power.”115 The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, too, thought men should step away. Asked when there will be enough women on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg replied, “When there are nine, of course.”116 In a Huffpost article, Salma El-Wardany explained what feminists mean when they say “men are trash.” It means “masculinity is in transition and it’s not moving fucking fast enough_._”117 The problem with masculinity, feminists argue, is that it’s “toxic,” not only for women, but for men. The American Psychological Association agrees. “Traditional masculinity,” the APA claims, “is, on the whole, harmful.”118
Besides decrying masculinity, social justice scholars also decry “whiteness.” More than just a skin color, they tell us, whiteness is an invisible yet ubiquitous system of norms, beliefs, and practices upholding the superiority of white people. “Literature and popular culture,” Delgado and Stefancic write, “reinforce white superiority [as do] law and courts.”119 University of California Santa Barbara professor Barbara Tomlinson says white people “manage the categories of thought and the terms of debate.”120 Another name for this is white supremacy. According to these scholars, white supremacy is not simply a fringe doctrine held by fringe groups such as the KKK. Instead, as Ta-Nehisi Coates (The Atlantic) says, “white supremacy is . . . a force so fundamental to America that it is difficult to imagine the country without it.”121
That most white Americans don’t believe they’re racially superior is irrelevant. “While we may explicitly reject the notion that we are inherently better than peoples of Color,” Sensoy and DiAngelo tell us, “we cannot avoid internalizing the message of White superiority.”122 Although white people “cannot avoid” this, they’re still responsible for it. “All whites,” professor Barbara Applebaum argues, “are complicit in systemic racial injustice.”123
A white person, however, can partly redeem himself. If he admits his complicity in racism, if he acknowledges—and apologizes for—his privilege, and if he relentlessly calls out other whites for their complicity in racism, he becomes a woke “ally” to marginalized groups. A good ally, DiAngelo says, should strive to be “a little less white, which means a little less oppressive, oblivious, defensive, ignorant and arrogant.”124 An ally can then, as UC Berkeley professor Ian Haney López says, help “dismantle the edifice of whiteness.”125
In a New York Times op-ed, “Dear White America,” professor George Yancy admits that he’s sexist—because he’s a man, and all men are sexist. He then asks all whites to face their racism and “to enter into battle with your white self . . . your white identity, your white power, your white privilege.”126 If you think DiAngelo, López, and Yancy are peddling antiwhite racism, then you’re not woke. If you were, you’d know that racism toward whites (and sexism toward men) is not possible, as only marginalized groups can be victims of racism or sexism.127
Watching his school succumb to these ideas, math teacher Paul Rossi refused to stand by. Risking his career, he publicly criticized his employer, Grace Church School in New York City, for indoctrinating students with woke “antiracist” ideology. “‘Antiracist’ training sounds righteous,” Rossi explained, “but it is the opposite of truth in advertising. It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race.”128 In a recorded phone conversation with Rossi, the school’s principal, George Davison, admitted, “We’re demonizing white people for being born. . . . We are using language that makes them feel ‘less than,’ for nothing that they are personally responsible for.” We are attempting “to link anybody who’s white to the perpetuation of white supremacy.”129
When white people are told that white supremacy is dominant today, that they are personally complicit in racism, and that they bear the guilt of an oppressive past, many properly resist these claims. For social justice scholars, though, white people resist not because they have good reasons to, but because of psychological defensiveness. This manifests in several ways. Whites are either “willfully ignorant” or, as Milazzo says, they pretend to be ignorant: “white people strategically simulate ignorance as a mechanism of domination.”130 DiAngelo argues that resistance by whites entails “anger, fear, and guilt and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation.”131 These reactions DiAngelo calls “white fragility.”
Besides the bigotry of generalizing like this about an entire race, these psychological pseudo-diagnoses are Kafka traps—a fallacy in which a person’s denial of an accusation is considered proof that he’s guilty. For DiAngelo, the only nonfragile way a white person can react to being told he’s complicit in racism is full agreement. If he denies his complicity, that proves he’s fragile. If he then denies his fragility, that further proves it.
Speech, Violence, and Deconstructing America
Social justice ideology dominates the administrations and humanities departments of many universities, particularly elite ones.132 Over the past couple of decades, social justice professors have trained an army of woke activists who now work as teachers, principals, and board members in America’s schools, as employees in the HR departments of corporations, as bureaucrats in government agencies, as journalists in major news outlets, and as trolls on social media, policing others’ speech.
Such policing, according to social justice scholars, is essential because allowing their adversaries to speak reinforces “dominant discourses,” perpetuating oppression. Consequently, social justice ideology is designed to silence or dismiss anyone voicing a contrary view. Rather than trying to defend their ideas against criticism, these scholars fixate on the imagined motives of their critics, attacking them as disingenuous. And rather than trying to refute contrary ideas, they devise loaded terms to discredit them.
Consider the term “microaggression.” According to Delgado and Stefancic, microaggressions “can be thought of as small acts of racism.”133 Or as Sensoy and DiAngelo put it, “microaggressions are everyday slights, insults, and insensitivities from dominant group members to minoritized members.”134 These are general descriptions, but let’s look at specific examples. The University of California (UC) system, like many universities, issued a guide to students, Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send. According to these guidelines, asking someone, “Where are you from or where were you born?” is a microaggression because it sends the message, “You are not a true American.” Saying “America is a melting pot” is a microaggression because it denies the significance of a person’s “racial/ethnic experience and history.” Saying “Gender plays no part in who we hire” is a microaggression because it implies, “if women cannot make it, the problem is with them.”135
Microaggressions are a variant of “coded language” in which social justice scholars perversely misinterpret a person’s comments. Other microaggressions include “America is the land of opportunity,” “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” and “Everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough.” For social justice scholars, the validity of these core American ideals is closed to debate; they’re invalid and off-limits because they’re insults. Why are they insulting? According to UC, they send the message, “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.”136
Besides “microaggression,” another loaded term is “privilege-preserving epistemic pushback.” Bailey devised this term to attack critics’ motives. According to her, when a person from a dominant group “pushes back” (disagrees with) a social justice idea, his disagreement is insincere, as he is simply trying to “preserve” his “privilege.”
Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback is a variety of willful ignorance that dominant groups habitually deploy during conversations that are trying to make social injustices visible. . . . When our sense of self, group identity, core beliefs, and privileged place in the social order is challenged, we adopt defensive postures to resist what we perceive to be destabilizing.137
This is similar to “white fragility,” as both use the same tactic: Devise a dime-store psychological theory and use it as an excuse to dismiss a critic’s argument. Bailey further asserts that indulging these “defensive postures” harms marginalized groups: “Treating privilege-preserving epistemic pushback as a form of critical engagement validates it and allows it to circulate more freely; this . . . can do epistemic violence to oppressed groups.”138
Violence? Yes, we are told that the “wrong” speech—words, ideas, disagreement—constitutes violence. In her Nobel lecture, the late novelist Toni Morrison said, “oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence.”139 Northeastern University professor Lisa Feldman Barrett agrees. In the New York Times, she wrote, “If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech—at least certain types of speech—can be a form of violence.” What kind of speech? The kind voiced by people like Milo Yiannopoulos, an outspoken (if unhinged) critic of social justice ideology. “It’s reasonable, scientifically speaking,” Barrett continues, “not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from debating him.”140 Arguably, Milo is noxious, but if one thinks so, one is free to avoid him. For Barrett, that’s not good enough: Schools shouldn’t “allow” him to speak.
As surveys indicate, social justice professors have significantly influenced students’ views on speech. According to the Knight Foundation, 41 percent of college students believe that the First Amendment should not protect “hate speech.” Forty-six percent believe promoting “an inclusive and welcoming society” is more important than protecting free speech rights. And more than half of college students believe shouting down speakers or trying to prevent them from talking is acceptable—6 percent believing that it’s “always acceptable”; 45 percent, “sometimes acceptable.”141 In recent years, students have acted on these beliefs. From UC Berkeley to California State University LA, to Brown University, to Claremont McKenna College, to Lewis & Clark Law School, students have rioted to stop speeches from Milo, Ben Shapiro, Ray Kelly, Heather Mac Donald, and Christina Hoff Summers, to name a few. Many others have had their invitations to speak rescinded because of student protests.142
After the riots at Berkeley, the student newspaper published several op-eds under the heading “Violence as self-defense.”143 One student wrote that he and others tried to stop Milo “from delivering a speech that could have endangered campus students.”144 “I urge you,” wrote another student, “to consider whether damaging the windows of places like banks and the Amazon student store constitutes ‘violence.’”145 “These were not acts of violence,” wrote a third student; “They were acts of self defense.”146 Yet another student wrote, “I’m here to thank the radical measures the AntiFas sic took to ensure my safety. The so-called ‘violence’ against private property that the media seems so concerned with stopped white supremacy from organizing itself against my community.”147
Observe the inversion. Speech allegedly is violence. Yet real, physical violence—arson, assault, looting, vandalism—is not violence. It’s self-defense against “violent” speech.
Students aren’t the only ones holding such views. During the summer 2020 riots, Hannah-Jones said, “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”148 The journalists at the AP Stylebook announced new guidelines discouraging use of the word “riots.” “Focusing on rioting and property destruction,” the guideline reads, “rather than underlying grievance has been used in the past to stigmatize broad swaths of people.”149 The word “looting,” too, is discouraged: “Limit use of the term looting. Some have long viewed the word as carrying some racial overtones.”150
Whereas some pretend that violence isn’t violence, others openly defend it for what it is. According to professor Steven W. Thrasher, as any “social justice organizer can tell you, direct action gets the goods. The destruction of a police precinct is . . . a tactically reasonable response to the crisis of policing.”151 In a Guardian article titled “If violence isn’t the way to end racism in America, then what is?,” Arwa Mahdawi wrote, “The uncomfortable truth is that, sometimes, violence is the only answer left.”152 National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed author Vicky Osterweil on her book, In Defense of Looting. “When I use the word looting,” Osterweil said, “I mean the mass expropriation of property, mass shoplifting during a moment of upheaval or riot. That’s the thing I’m defending. . . . Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police.” Opposition to looting, she continued, is motivated by “anti-Blackness and contempt for poor people who want to live a better life.”153
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the ruling socialist party had three slogans: War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. To say that social justice ideology is Orwellian is an understatement: Reality is a social-linguistic construct—truth is culturally subjective—objectivity is a Western bias—knowledge is a power game—upholding American values is a microaggression—speech is violence—initiating violence is self-defense—earned success is privilege—equal treatment is privilege promoting—argumentation is privilege preserving—disagreement is fragility—merit is unfair—the rule of law is unjust—protecting individual rights is subjugation—individualism is racism—race neutrality is racist—racial discrimination against whites is anti-racist—color blindness is a preference for whites—diversity of thought is white supremacy—whiteness is domination—being white is to be complicit in racism—being male is to be complicit in sexism—science is racist and sexist—masculinity is toxic—everything is oppressive.
This isn’t just intellectual sophistry; it’s wholesale intellectual corruption—the corruption of language, thought, and communication. Social justice ideology is brainwashing young minds. It’s rotting our cultural institutions. It’s sowing strife, division, animus.
Recall that social justice activists want individuals purged for questioning BLM, purged for defending law enforcement, purged for saying “all lives matter,” purged for supporting peaceful protests over riots. They call for abolishing the police. They defend rioting and looting (or commit it themselves). They block, harass, and shut down speakers. They reflexively slander their adversaries as racists, fascists, Nazis, misogynists, or white supremacists.
In 2019, the New York Times Magazine ran a series of articles called “The 1619 Project.” Organized by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the project argues that the true birth date of the United States was not 1776, but 1619, the year the first slaves arrived in colonial Virginia. The project argues further that the nation was founded only to preserve slavery. As Hannah-Jones wrote, “independence was required in order to ensure that slavery would continue. . . . some might argue that this nation was founded not as a democracy but as a slavocracy.”154 Revealingly, the Times Magazine ignored the objections of its own fact checker, historian Leslie M. Harris.155 Several other prominent historians have argued that the project’s central claims are preposterous.156 Hannah-Jones responded to criticism, saying “history is not objective,” and “white scholars are no more objective than any other scholars.”157 (She also tweeted, “it would be an honor” for the summer 2020 riots to be called “the 1619 riots.”)158
Despite this, Hannah-Jones won a Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project. More disturbing, the project is now taught in 4,500 classrooms nationwide.159 Don’t be surprised when more students and more of our future leaders think like former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. On Independence Day, July 4, 2020, Kaepernick tweeted, “We reject your celebration of white supremacy.”160
America, like every nation, has flaws. But its greatness lies in its founding principles: liberty, individual rights, equality under the law. Although these principles were not fully realized, many Americans (black and white, male and female) fought heroically to extend them to groups that had been excluded. Social justice activists, however, belabor America’s sins (real and fabricated) not to demand that it live up to its ideals, but to argue that such ideals are a mask for white supremacy. The “American dream,” Kendi says, “is a lie.”161
According to the social justice movement, everything in America is plagued not only with white supremacy, but also with patriarchy and cis-heteronormativity. In order to rid the nation of these taints, we are told, every achievement, every life-serving value, every rational principle, every legitimate institution—indeed, all progress of America itself—must be sacrificed on the altar of gendered racial identity. “As I viewed the subsequent protests in Minneapolis escalate,” Nate Nesbitt (Rolling Stone) wrote, “my only response was an unremorseful, ‘Let it all burn.’ . . . our country is frayed and splintered, and must violently unwind to right itself. We must unwind it.”162
The defiantly irrational ethos of the social justice movement—its unyielding dogmatism, its blatant double standards, its pathological fanaticism, its militant incivility, its endless unreasoning demands—is not a perversion of social justice theory but a faithful expression of the theory. If oppression is omnipresent, then it must be disrupted in any way necessary. If members of dominant groups are complicit in oppression, then none are innocent—and they deserve what they have coming to them. If “whiteness” is domination and if “men are trash,” then white men are the enemy—they’re guilty “for being born,” and marginalized groups “have every right to hate” them. If ideas such as merit, individualism, and colorblindness are oppressive, then anyone voicing such ideas must be silenced. If BLM fights for the oppressed, and if police fight for the oppressors, then anyone questioning BLM or supporting police must be purged. If America is oppressive, then “let it all burn.”
The thuggish, authoritarian behavior of social justice activists follows not only from the specific tenets of their ideology, but from one of their deepest philosophic premises: the postmodernist rejection of reason. When facts, logic, science, and objectivity are off the table, the only alternatives are smears, deceit, intimidation, and violence.
* * *
Social justice scholarship is an elaborate academic con game. As we have seen, if a white male disagrees with any of it, he’s “fragile,” “willfully ignorant,” or blinded by his “privilege.” Conversely, if a black lesbian disagrees with any of it, she has “internalized” her oppression, and her voice is not “authentic.” If you say, “I believe the most qualified person should get the job,” social justice scholars translate this into “People of color are lazy and/or incompetent and need to work harder.” These scholars dishonestly interpret everything as oppressive, and no facts can refute this because, in their view, any evidence or rational arguments to the contrary are also oppressive. Clinging to this dogma in defiance of reality, they spew absurdities such as “colorblindness is a global technology of white supremacy” and “enforcing it is an act of epistemic violence” (Milazzo).163 A theory that, as Delgado and Stefancic put it, critiques and rejects “merit, truth, and objectivity” doesn’t deserve to be called scholarship.164
It’s contemptible nonsense.
The woke social justice ideology is bigotry masquerading as antiracism. In the name of fighting antiblack, antifemale prejudice, this ideology foments antiwhite male prejudice. Vilifying “whiteness” is not the antidote to antiblack racism. Vilifying masculinity is not the antidote to misogyny. More discrimination is not the antidote to discrimination. The social justice left is not the antidote to the white nationalist alt-right (and the latter is not the antidote to the former).165
The social justice movement’s basic philosophy must be rejected unequivocally. In this philosophy, the individual is helpless. His life and his convictions are outside his control (determinism). As Peggy McIntosh, coiner of the term “white privilege,” says, “One’s life is not what one makes it.”166 Instead, what “makes” one’s life is the unchosen group he was born into: his gendered racial tribe. His personal choices? Irrelevant. “The discourse of choice,” Sensoy and DiAngelo write, “diverts our attention away from structural oppression by placing responsibility wholly in the hands of” the individual.167 If choice is out, then no one has earned what he has—and no one deserves more than anyone else. All gendered racial tribes, therefore, should have equal rewards despite any individual’s work, merit, or achievement (egalitarianism). If tribe A outperforms tribe B, that’s because it’s “privileged.” To remedy this, tribe A must be treated _un_equally in order to equalize outcomes.
These are the premises underpinning social justice ideology that we must reject along with all the pathologies that follow from them. But rejecting this, though necessary, is not enough. The only antidote to a corrupt, irrational philosophy is a rational philosophy, one upholding reason, logic, objectivity, and free will, one extolling the value and reality of the individual, one recognizing that the individual is defined and should be judged by his choices, actions, and character, not by his race or gender.168 Such a philosophy, moreover, is the only antidote to racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice.
Now more than ever, such a philosophy must be articulated, defended, and tirelessly fought for as if our rights, our freedom, and our nation depend on it—because they do.