‘We Have Never Been Woke’ Review: A Symbolic Ideology

Believers in their own reasonableness, the woke ignore evidence that they are more prone than others to rationalize away inconvenient facts.

By Jonathan Marks. He reviews the book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi. Marks is a professor of politics at Ursinus College. Excerpts:

"The most recent awokening, Mr. al-Gharbi tells us, began not in 2015 but around 2011. After 2011, the use of “terms referring to various forms of prejudice and discrimination” surged in popular media outlets. Related shifts in focus occurred in academic research, advertising and entertainment. Meanwhile, affluent, well-educated white liberals—symbolic capitalists are mostly that—began to adopt attitudes we now call woke. For example, they came to perceive “much more racism against minorities than most minorities . . . reported experiencing.” Increasingly, they joined the Democratic Party and became “more militant.”"

"The lineage of symbolic capitalists goes back to the early 20th century, when the sciences, college teaching, journalism and other fields professionalized. Their claim to influence was founded on their expertise and willingness to use it for the common good. The professions that emerged have since justified themselves with the potent combination of moral and intellectual authority, as implied in the Covid-era phrase “follow the science.” If being woke means thinking that one knows and cares more than others about our social ills, especially the plight of the powerless, then symbolic capitalists have always been woke. From the late 1920s to the late ’30s, then again from the mid-’60s to the mid-’70s, symbolic capitalists led protests on multiple fronts, including civil rights, war and economic inequality. The late ’80s and early ’90s produced a mania for “political correctness.” Mr. al-Gharbi argues that the present, fourth, great awokening “is not particularly novel.” It’s “a case of something.”"

"Awokenings happen, according to Mr. al-Gharbi, when the symbolic capitalists’ expectations for a good life are disappointed. Campus antiwar protests took off only after colleges ceased to be a reliable refuge from the draft. Protests also coincided with “a stall in the growth of symbolic capitalist jobs.” In the ’60s, as during earlier great awokenings, symbolic-capitalist protesters sincerely believed they were making common cause with nonelites, whose discontent is also needed to spur a great awokening. But the protesters fought mostly for themselves and stopped fighting when their prospects improved."

"Mr. al-Gharbi’s effort to move proudly analytic symbolic capitalists to analyze themselves is important. He is mainly in the business of describing, not moralizing, but the self-serving blindness of woke symbolic capitalists seems like a moral failing. The idea that moral progress depends on attending to social science is a signature of the knowledge professions. It is, for better or worse, wokeness rightly understood."