Has the push for a ‘woke’ America gone too far?

Starting in the interwar period (between World Wars I and II) and rapidly accelerating in the 1970s, there were shifts to the global economy that radically increased the influence of the “symbolic industries” — science and technology, education, media, law, consulting, administration, finance and nonprofits. People who work in these fields traffic primarily in data, ideas, rhetoric and images instead of physical goods or services. These “symbolic capitalists” are also the Americans who are most likely to self-identify as antiracists, feminists, environmentalists, leftists or “allies” to LGBTQ people. And for good reason.
From the outset, these professionals have defined themselves and their jobs through a commitment to social justice and altruism. Journalists, for instance, are supposed to speak truth to power and be a voice for the voiceless. Academics are supposed to follow the truth wherever it leads, without regard to whether it serves others’ financial or political agendas. Symbolic capitalists successfully won higher pay, prestige and autonomy than most other workers under the auspices that providing these benefits serves the common good — including and especially helping the most vulnerable and disadvantaged in society.
In the years that followed, symbolic capitalists sought to enhance their influence further by arguing that if still more resources and authority were consolidated in their hands, we would usher in an age of unprecedented social cohesion, progress and prosperity. Under their rule, opportunities would be allocated according to merit, resources redistributed according to need, disputes by disinterested experts governed by reason and empirical facts. These experts would be mindful of the details and the big picture. And as a consequence, long-standing social problems and tensions would be ameliorated with an increasingly shared understanding of the facts of the world and the “correct” course of action.
To a large degree, we got what the symbolic capitalists wanted: Over the last half-century, the global economy has been increasingly reoriented around these industries. However, to put it mildly, things have not played out as we’d predicted. Instead, the U.S. has seen slowing innovation, economic stagnation, rising inequalities, increasing polarization, a “crisis of expertise,” diminishing trust in one another and social institutions, and, allegedly, epistemic chaos.
My forthcoming book, “We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite,” attempts to figure out what went wrong. As the book lays out, there is much to criticize about symbolic capitalists and the social order they preside over. There is much to critique about “wokeness,” the dominant ideology of symbolic capitalists, and how it is instrumentalized in struggles over power, money and status. However, it’s also critical to bear in mind that people are complicated. Societies, even more so. Social orders and ideologies tend to arise and persist for complex reasons, and should they fail, they leave behind complex legacies. The same is true of what it means to be woke.
It’s easy to see why many hate bureaucrats and administrators. They exert significant (often arbitrary) power over other people’s lives. They are typically unelected and largely unaccountable to the people under their jurisdiction. Their rules and box-checking seem to make everything harder than it needs to be. And sometimes, there are just too many rules.
However, the absence of these professionals and their protocols is no picnic either. Societies with weak institutions, or contexts where the rules are not transparent and consistently enforced, tend to have much lower investment, high levels of instability, lots of nepotism and corruption, and even more arbitrary roadblocks that people have to work around (which tend to be far less predictable to boot). And although overly powerful and centralized institutions can easily slip into tyranny, overly weak institutions can also create grounds for oppressive, exploitative and likewise unaccountable non-state actors to fill the void.
If you travel the world, especially in the “Global South,” you can easily see what the world might look like without those busybodies and their rules. Most Americans, despite their complaints, would not want to make the trade. Instead, people from all over the world flock to America precisely because it’s a place where, far more than most other countries, people can count on relatively consistently enforced and transparent rules, functional institutions and checks (if often inadequate) on “private tyrannies.”
These extraordinary features of American society — broad freedom of trade and individual liberties paired with consistently (if imperfectly) functional institutions and rule of law — may help explain why the U.S., despite being in a period of stagnation, continues to be economically far ahead of the rest of the world (and the gap keeps growing). Two cheers for the bureaucrats and administrators, loathed as they are condemned to be.
In a similar vein, there is much to criticize about mainstream media. As my book details at length, contemporary journalists and pundits tend to hail from (and live in) relatively affluent urban and suburban areas. They have something approaching an ideological monoculture — and their values are significantly out of step with those of most other Americans. Unavoidably, journalists’ idiosyncratic values and their backgrounds shape the kinds of stories they focus on and how they talk about those stories — often in ways that are unfortunate.
However, mainstream media is generally reliable, as well. Despite their myriad biases and blindspots, most journalists are committed to presenting readers with an accurate and fair-minded picture of the world (in a concise, compelling and accessible way). In this, they are lightyears ahead of their primary competitors.
Outlets like Fox News and Newsmax, for instance, also largely ignore people in flyover country, working-class people and local issues. They criticize the left for being elitist, but they are based in the same cities, drawing reporters who share similar demographic backgrounds, and cover the same types of stories (just with a different slant).
On top of this, they have an existential stake in villainizing mainstream media and perpetuating the culture wars — this is how they peel people off from other channels and keep them engaged — often in ways that are incompatible with telling the full and unvarnished truth, and often in ways that are pernicious for American society and culture.
Mainstream media has a lot of problems. But folks wouldn’t want to live in a world where outlets like The New York Times didn’t exist anymore but sites like Breitbart News continued to flourish. That would not be an improvement. Certainly, alternative media can serve as a helpful check on mainstream reporting. They can also complement mainstream coverage, focusing on stories and perspectives that don’t get enough play. But they’re no replacement for the mainstream institutions they condemn. At present, there is no genuine alternative (and so, legacy media continues to limp on despite its myriad challenges).
Similar realities hold for higher education. There is a lot to hate: Academic credentials are increasingly bound up with social status and inequality. Professors are drawn from a narrow and idiosyncratic slice of society, while research and teaching are often distorted by the ideological and demographic skew of the faculty. These are real problems. I’ve long been affiliated with an organization, Heterodox Academy, that seeks to raise awareness about these problems, and build momentum to address them.
However, it’s also the case that education, research, and credentialed expertise are of central and growing importance in virtually all spheres of contemporary life. Precisely the reason there is so much political contestation over K-12, higher-education and science and technology is because a lot seems to be at stake.
Frankly, there aren’t good substitutes for mainstream colleges and universities. Think tanks, for instance, are often comprised of the same demographic strata of society as professors. They’re marginally more diverse ideologically, but they also tend to be explicitly oriented toward particular ideological or political goals in ways that may subvert and circumscribe their pursuit of truth. Although there are many problems with “academic capitalism” in higher ed, think tanks tend to be even more beholden to the whims of donors because they receive very little direct money from the government (although many receive foreign funding and others receive federal funds indirectly). Put simply, think tanks are an important complement to the knowledge production and dissemination roles that colleges and universities play, but they’d be terrible as outright substitutes.
Winston Churchill famously declared, “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.” The same thing holds for many of the symbolic professions. They’re deeply flawed, but they’re better than nothing, and better than most plausible alternatives too. They’re also better today than they were in the past, largely as a result of increased diversity and inclusion.
As symbolic capitalists have grown in power and influence, we have dramatically reshaped the symbolic landscapes of the institutions and societies we preside over. Many of these changes have been unambiguously positive. Beyond the gains in meritocratic opportunity described above, overt and casual abuse against members of historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups is less common and less tolerated. There is increased awareness of the potential for unjust bias and discrimination even when people do not harbor ill will against members of minority populations. There is greater representation of nonwhites, women, LGBTQ people and people with mental illnesses and physical disabilities in virtually all cultural domains. There is greater recognition and accommodation of the unique challenges faced by members of these populations. As the work of Michèle Lamont has powerfully illustrated, these changes matter. They have been transformational for how beneficiaries understand themselves and the ways they experience the institutions and societies they are embedded in. Myself included.
At the time my father was growing up, segregation was still in place. All the way until 1973, 19 states had officially segregated higher education systems. “Miscegenation” (interracial unions, which I am a product of) was illegal throughout my father’s childhood. The idea that someone like me could attend a Ph.D. program at an Ivy League school, sell a book in a competitive auction between prestige university presses before I even graduated, become a fixture of major media outlets and a professor at a top research university — all while enjoying ethnically diverse collegial, friendship and romantic networks — this was not even in the realm of plausible aspiration for young Black men of my father’s time. My own children, however, take it for granted that opportunities like these could be within their grasp (should they choose to pursue them). This is no small thing.
It hasn’t all been good news, though. Lamont’s work has also highlighted that, even as identity-based stigma and discrimination have steeply declined in recent decades, socioeconomic inequalities and segregation have increased just as dramatically. And as formal barriers preventing people from flourishing have been dismantled, there is a growing sense that those who are unsuccessful deserve their lot. There is diminished solidarity across lines of difference, and a reduced willingness to make redistributive investments that serve others instead of oneself or the groups that one personally identifies with.
Moreover, most of the benefits from the symbolic shifts highlighted by Lamont have accrued to a fairly narrow band of elites who also happen to identify with historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups. The most vulnerable, desperate and impoverished in society have not been able to profit nearly as much. In many respects, their lives have been growing worse.
But here, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can recognize the highly limited nature of “progress” under symbolic capitalists, while also acknowledging that some real progress has been made.
As a prime example, let’s revisit the facts I highlighted at the outset, about how the middle class is shrinking while socioeconomic inequalities are growing. Part of this story is that growing numbers of middle-class Americans are slipping into poverty. However, at the same time, an even larger share of Americans has been moving from the middle class into affluence. Too many elites, to be clear, can cause its own problems. But it’s important to bear both trajectories in mind when people talk about the shrinking middle class.
And even as many Americans are earning more than they used to, most physical goods are much cheaper than they were in the past — and for those goods that are not lower in price, average incomes generally rose faster than costs. There are important exceptions to this rule, such as medical care, child care and college (which have gotten more expensive). The housing market, at present, is also quite tight (which is great for homeowners but terrible for first-time buyers). But it’s nonetheless the case that, all things considered, many Americans are enjoying more prosperity than ever. Symbolic capitalists may be among the primary “winners” in these shifts, but they’re far from the exclusive beneficiaries.
In fact, zooming out to the macro level, global inequality is at the lowest level in 150 years. And within the United States, socioeconomic inequality seems like it may be going down, too — although the U.S. trend seems to be driven more by declines in higher income brackets rather than gains among lower and middle income earners (“leveling down” is not the ideal path to equality, but it’s perhaps the most frequent manner that inequalities get reduced in practice).
All to say, there are some very real problems in the symbolic economy. However, there is also much to celebrate. Something similar holds in the realm of ideas.
Many views associated with “wokeness” seem to significantly diminish adherents’ psychological well-being — pushing them toward higher levels of anxiety, depression and cynicism than they might otherwise feel. However, this doesn’t mean said views are wrong. The truth is often unpleasant. Engaging in moral action often has costs. We can’t infer much about the “correctness” of views from the impacts they exert on believers.
And despite these risks, people aren’t stupid or crazy to find “woke” ideas compelling. They became popular for a reason. In part, my book demonstrates some ideas caught on because they were useful in elite power struggles. But most also helped expose and address significant shortcomings in how others were seeking to understand and mitigate social problems at the time. It was precisely because they were analytically powerful and morally compelling that many sought to mobilize them in other arenas.
Theories are, however, fundamentally about ignoring certain data to see other things more clearly. Consequently, any theoretical approach that elucidates some important aspect of society will generally obscure other phenomena. It will handle some things well and explain other things poorly. Moreover, all theories are products of particular times and places, responding to particular needs and circumstances — and any theoretical approach may need to be refined and updated, or even eventually cast aside, as the “problem space” evolves. This is all to say, even powerful theories have their limits. A recognition of these limits does not diminish their power. On the contrary, it can help us deploy these ideas in cases where they are most effective and avoid applying them to cases where they are not particularly useful.
Many views associated with “wokeness” seem to be straightforwardly correct, even if they are often taken to excess. For instance, a key insight of the “discursive turn” in social research is that how concepts are defined, and by whom, reveals a lot about power relations within a society or culture. These definitions are not merely reflections of social dynamics. At scale and over time, they can impose their own independent sociopolitical influence. They can help legitimize or delegitimize individuals, groups and their actions; they can render some things more easily comprehensible and others less so; they can push certain things outside the realm of polite discussion and introduce new elements into the “language game.” This is a genuine contribution to understanding the world.
That said, today many symbolic capitalists seem to attribute too much power to symbols, rhetoric and representation. Many assert, in the absence of robust empirical evidence, that small slights can cause enormous harm. Under the auspices of preventing these harms, they argue it is legitimate, even necessary, to aggressively police other people’s words, tone, body language and so forth. People from nontraditional and underrepresented backgrounds are among the most likely to find themselves silenced and sanctioned in these campaigns, both because they are less likely to possess the cultural capital to say the “correct” things in the “correct” ways at the “correct” time and because their deviance is perceived as especially threatening (because their heterodoxy undermines claims made by dominant elites ostensibly on behalf of historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups).
Overstating the power of language likewise leads symbolic capitalists to conclude that their symbolic gestures toward antiracism, feminism and so forth mark significant contributions to addressing social problems when, in fact, they change virtually nothing about the allocation of wealth or power in society, and there is not really a plausible account for how they could. Campaigns to sterilize language, for instance, will never lift anyone out of poverty. Referring to homeless people as “unsheltered individuals,” or prisoners as “justice-involved persons,” or poor people as “individuals of limited means,” and so on are discursive maneuvers that often obscure the brutal realities that others must confront in their day-to-day lives. If the intent of these language shifts is to avoid stigma, the reality is that these populations are still heavily stigmatized despite shifting discourse.
In fact, the Americans who are most preoccupied with linguistic hygiene actively avoid personally interacting with the poor, convicted criminals, drug addicts and others through strategies ranging from personal network choices to where they choose to live (and send their kids to school); their reduced use of public transportation; the zoning restrictions they typically support; their heightened use of police, personal security and surveillance services against folks who violate their aesthetic sensibilities or behavioral preferences; and beyond. More broadly, gentrifying the discourse about the “wretched of the earth” doesn’t make their problems go away. If anything, it renders elites more complacent when we talk about the plight of “those people.” On this, the empirical research is quite clear: Euphemisms render people more comfortable with immoral behaviors and unjust states of affairs. This is one of the main reasons we rely on euphemisms at all.
Critically, however, pointing out unfortunate consequences of symbolic capitalists’ approach to language and social justice does not invalidate the idea that language matters. In fact, it powerfully illustrates that how we choose to talk and think about society, alongside the ways we try to influence others’ thoughts and discourse, actually can have important social consequences — for better and for worse.
One thing I came to realize in researching and writing my first book — an insight that will form the basis of my next project — is that the primary divide in the U.S. today is between symbolic capitalists and those who feel alienated from our social order. The rise of Trump, the “crisis of expertise,” contemporary tensions around “identity” issues — these are all fronts in the same basic socioeconomic and cultural conflict.
Within the political sphere, the “diploma divide,” the “gender divide,” and the “urban/rural divide” are likewise proxies for the same core struggle, being waged between mainstream symbolic capitalists and people who feel sociologically distant from folks like “us.”
“We Have Never Been Woke,” for its part, is not a story about “good guys” and “bad guys.” It is not intended to promote some kind of clear social or political program. It does not conclude with a set of action steps or policy proposals. Rather than providing people with clean answers, its goal is to complicate readers’ picture of the social world and unsettle things that are taken for granted. What to do about the problems and dynamics the book highlights … that is something we’re going to have to figure out together.
Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist and assistant professor at Stony Brook University. This essay is adapted from his book, “We Have Never Been Woke,” published this month by Princeton University Press.
This story appears in the October 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.