Thread by @biblioracle

This is not the biggest problem around, but it's just irritating to see "wokeness" and "wokeism" framed as something that people explicitly argue in favor of. This is not my experience. Progressive people advocate for particular policies and frameworks, not an ideology of wokeism

That these specific policies and frameworks are gathered by the opponents of those frameworks under the name "wokeism" does not mean that those who advocate for them are advocating for wokeism. The policies can be looked at independently.

Like I suppose you an lump my stances on education policy/practice/structures under some kind of woke umbrella because I'm generally progressive, but I have very specific things that I'm championing and that they may be woke has nothing to do with that championing.

Ex. I want to drop the use of the SAT for admissions because I think it's part of a system that induces institutions and students to compete with each other and I think this has lousy effects on both college costs and student learning. That's a practical outcomes argument.

I believe that the structural impediments to minority students in our higher ed systems need eradicating because they are preventing those students from achieving access to education which is, IMO, anti-American, a denial of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

Is that woke? I think it's simple fairness. Every time someone wants to debate or discuss wokeness or wokeism, I don't even know what I'm expected to defend. Give me a genuine issue to talk about.

I have no expectation that people agree with my politics or the policy preferences I have based in my particular values, but can we at least talk about those, rather than some kind of phantom that no one can actually define with any consistency?

Like every time I write about something like how I think Haidt's "Safetyism" is a lousy explanation for what's happening with student mental health, I get accused of being "woke" rather than folks dealing with the fact that I have an alternate argument. insidehighered.com/blogs/just-vis…

I mean, who are the progressives who are genuinely trying to enact policy reform who are out front with an "I'm woke!" message as opposed to the policies themselves and the underlying values they represent?

You should see the responses where I'm accused of criticizing Heterodox Academy because I'm "woke." No, I'm critical because they're an organization that presents themselves as centrist that is in reality funded by the anti-democratic far right. insidehighered.com/blogs/just-vis…

Cornel West is on the HxA Advisory Council and I think everyone alive would think that Cornel West is more woke than me. My criticism is a specific substantive argument, that it's a problem for an ostensibly pro-speech org to be funded by the same people trying to ban CRT.

Maybe it's not a problem that HxA is funded by the same people who fund Turning Point USA, producers of the "professor watchlist" explicitly designed to harass progressive faculty. I think it is, but let's have that debate, rather than, "Hur...yur just woke."

What am I supposed to do? Deny wokeness? I believe structural racism is real. I think that we have many systemic barriers in our education system weighted against minority students. I've come to these conclusions through experience and observation, not from an ideological prior.

And if you want to get in the discussion you sometimes have to do a kind of head fake like, "While I recognize the excesses of the left...blah blah blah blah." It's just a waste of time and words and a bullshit sop to people who won't take the argument seriously anyway.

Yes, some people on the left do things I disagree with, but that doesn't make them "the left" any more than I'M the left. I'm just a guy who sometimes puts arguments into the world. Let's talk about those!

Please?