> The first step to resist or undo Woke Invasion in your organization (or your psyche) is to thoroughly understand its creed Critical Race Theory, so as to uncover the fact that generally speaking woke disciples care less about the problems in the world than assuaging their self-centered ideological feelings. 1 The next step, obviously, is then to effectuate an elimination of the wannabe woke invaders from your organization by instituting a culture based on common sense values stripped of identity politics.
this wildly pejorative definition of the central concept at play in the discussion, probably, is a good start to what i find objectionable, yeah?
or maybe the author's own definition of "wokeism"
> Wokeism is a secular religion that originated in the United States of America, based on the pseudoscienfic field Critical Race Theory. It presumably took roots around 2016 (see Woke Invasion) and has been withering away since around 2024. Bigoted ideologies like neoracism fall under wokeism.
which is about on the same level as vaccines cause autism
i'm sure there are lots of people who think otherwise and maybe you're one of them but frankly there is nothing useful to be gained by arguing the merits of this kind of stupidity
> which is about on the same level as vaccines cause autism... but frankly there is nothing useful to be gained by arguing the merits of this kind of stupidity
I prefer to follow the HN guidelines and not use language like that, but the feeling is mutual. (And I can assure you that the ideas you're trying to dismiss as fringe are in fact quite widely supported.)
Regardless, I'll try:
Certainly srid's rhetoric there would not be appropriate in the HN comment section (and you can see a clear difference in style between that rhetoric and srid's actual HN comments). But it frankly comes across that you primarily object to the fact that someone else doesn't like your politics and seeks to prevent such politics from taking root in more places.
And srid very clearly refers to documented and evidenced phenomena: many academics are quite open about their use of CRT, and there are clear connections between that theory and observable real-world policy (in particular, policies that attempt to effectively implement racial quotas while pretending they are not racial quotas), and abundant critiques of the pseudoscience involved. What is here called "neoracism" (not a term I've heard anywhere else) seems to simply mean racism that targets white people (and sometimes Asians; and where this happens, pointing out Asian victims often seems required in order to get anyone to care). This demonstrably exists (the people claiming it not to exist will commonly engage in it, and commonly seek to redefine terms to excuse themselves), is obviously bigoted (on basic principles of morality that children understand), and has clear real-world impact (see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v...).
Your shallow dismissal of all of this, aside from not being how we do things here, is ignorant of the available evidence. Taking the so-called "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" efforts at face value is a mistake. We are talking here about people who believe that racism is inherent to being white (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22all+white+people+are+racist%22), and invent terms like "whiteness" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiteness_theory) in order to perpetuate harmful stereotypes (leading to additional concepts like "white fragility", "white defensiveness", "white degeneracy", "white space" etc.). It is pseudoscientific because many of those terms are aimed at not only dismissing criticism without addressing it, but holding up the act of criticism itself as evidence.
> There is nothing "anachronistic" about pointing out the clear, well-evidenced facts about the racism that is demonstrably being perpetuated today.
You were cherry picking
I am a long way from the Americas (New Zealand), so I know little of the racism in the USA
But here the realisation that our dominant paradigms were based on racist and sexist assumptions has lead to an enormous flowering of culture. Don't knock it, it has made social conditions much better especially for young people (as economic conditions got much worse)
From this distance it looks to me that racism in particular and bigotry and prejudice in general in the USA are deeply entrenched and backed by violent fanatics on all sides. The reactionary bigots appear to have the upper hand for now, but it looks like it will not hold
I hope the USA can avoid the sort of violent conflicts of the 1860s, not looking good
>> our dominant paradigms were based on racist and sexist assumptions
> I don't think they actually were.
Open a book!
The dscovery doctrine
In the USA there is westward expansion, both genocidal and racist
Women have only been entitled to equal pay since the 1970s in most places
Indigenous Australians were only considered fully people in the 1960s
Most European countries restricted the rights of Jews until mid nineteenth century (or worse)
The Tasmainian genocide
In New Zealand the invasion of the Waikato
Canadian Christian schools
In New Zealand Māori were denied university education from about 1880 until the 1970s (a very few snuck through, some pretending they were foreign)
It was legal to rape your wife until very recently
When a woman married she had to resign her job (my grandmother)
Until the 1960s in NZ a married woman needed her husband's permission for a bank loan
On and on, from my memory banks. I am no historian nor sociologist so I may have buzzed some details, but you should get the point. The West's dominant paradigms are historically deeply racist and sexist.
More generally it is prejudice and bigotry
Whatever, you should see why DEI, even if it has become a box ticking farce, it has deep roots in desperate need
> The first step to resist or undo Woke Invasion in your organization (or your psyche) is to thoroughly understand its creed Critical Race Theory, so as to uncover the fact that generally speaking woke disciples care less about the problems in the world than assuaging their self-centered ideological feelings. 1 The next step, obviously, is then to effectuate an elimination of the wannabe woke invaders from your organization by instituting a culture based on common sense values stripped of identity politics.
this wildly pejorative definition of the central concept at play in the discussion, probably, is a good start to what i find objectionable, yeah?
or maybe the author's own definition of "wokeism"
> Wokeism is a secular religion that originated in the United States of America, based on the pseudoscienfic field Critical Race Theory. It presumably took roots around 2016 (see Woke Invasion) and has been withering away since around 2024. Bigoted ideologies like neoracism fall under wokeism.
which is about on the same level as vaccines cause autism
i'm sure there are lots of people who think otherwise and maybe you're one of them but frankly there is nothing useful to be gained by arguing the merits of this kind of stupidity