Indeed, some of the most insidious of these laws seek to restrict the discussion of those aspects of US society that gave rise to these movements in the first place. The areas targeted by anti-woke legislation read like a summary of the social movements that have reshaped US society over the past 60 years. For the moment, anti-woke forces are pushing their agenda through school boards, city halls, and state houses, so it is in these spaces - as well as in the streets - that leftists and liberals will need to fight back. But these laws have real material consequences for the overwhelming majority of the working class, who are women, people of colour, or queer. Despite grumbling about cancel culture, the Right holds no compunctions about seeking to silence their opponents.įor some socialists, this debate might seem like a distraction, an aspect of the culture wars pitting the neoliberal establishment against the Christian nationalist Right. Their preferred remedies, however, belie this supposed commitment to free expression and include book bans, attacks on academic freedom, attempts to eliminate transgender people from public life, and various forms of retaliation against the excessively “woke”. These laws seek to restore the authority of white, cisgender, straight father figures in the face of challenges from the “woke mob”.Īdvocates of anti-woke laws often style themselves as defenders of “free speech” who seek to protect unpopular opinions from the ravages of cancel culture. Like “political correctness” and “social justice” before it, woke has come to stand in for an ostensibly rigid ideology typified by privileged college students shrieking about racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, advancing a “cancel culture” that threatens to exile even the most established figures for trivial missteps.Īnti-woke laws have targeted an apparently disparate array of social issues, but they all seek to return the United States to an imagined 1950s, before the social movements of the 1960s and beyond expanded the rights and visibility of black people, women, queer people, and other minorities. The term “woke”, drawn from African-American Vernacular English and referring to alertness to racism, sexism, and other social inequalities, has been twisted by conservatives into a symbol of left-wing authoritarianism. Jamie Hare is a researcher and writer based in Decatur, Georgia.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |