“Woke” or “SJW” ideology asserts that racism, sexism, and similar forms of prejudice are pervasive forces in our society, and that this is pretty much the worst, most important problem in our society. I think the first part of that is objectively, factually false, and that makes the second one extremely false as well.
Now, I don’t expect to persuade people with this belief system that they’re wrong, but I’d like to at least explain to them why I don’t share these beliefs. This is interesting because there are probably many others who think similarly to myself in the main points below, perhaps even a majority of our society.
1. Personal experience
Woke ideology centers on a certain portrayal of what our society is all about. But before hearing this ideology, I already had a sense of our society based on my own experience as a member of it. And what the woke are saying about our society is just completely at odds with that sense. It’s sort of like if you live in New York, and one day someone tells you, “New Yorkers are absolutely obsessed with politeness.” You don’t know why the person is saying that, and you may not know how to argue against it, but you just know from living there that that is not true.
I have encountered both black and white people in this society over the last few decades. I’ve seen them interact with each other. I do not commonly see the white people mistreating the black people or showing hostility toward them in any obvious way.*
*What about 'systemic' racism? Let's save that for another post.
If white people commonly have hostile or otherwise negative feelings about blacks, you'd expect them to sometimes express those feelings, at least when there are no black people around. During the Jim Crow era and before (from what I’ve read), people said clearly racist things all the time. Today, I basically never see that. In individual interactions (not on TV or the internet), I believe I have heard clear expressions of racism on exactly two occasions in my life, both more than 20 years ago, perhaps 30. (One was a guy talking about “purity”, which he explained referred to people marrying within their own race; the other was a person using the n-word in describing rap music.) These cases were shocking. I would remember if there were any others.
In my job, I have served on search committees many times. No one has ever suggested that we should give preference to white or male candidates; it would be utterly shocking if they did. I have seen the reverse many times, though – people say we should favor black or female candidates all the time.
This doesn't exhaust my experience; those are just a few examples. As in the New Yorker example, I just have a sense of the values of my society that can't be fully articulated. My experience of America is not anywhere close to what the woke people seem to be portraying.
So the only evidence I have for wokism is that other people are telling me it's true. But I'm not prepared to take these claims on trust. Let's turn to that.
2. Expert opinion
What about the fact that most academics seem to subscribe to woke ideology, including most social scientists, who should presumably know about this sort of thing?
General point: The Condorcet Jury Theorem tells us that the majority opinion on a topic is more likely to be correct (or at least the best assessment of the evidence) the larger that majority is. However, this assumes that each person is judging the matter independently.
The problem: Empirically, human beings have a tendency to form large groups centered around radically false beliefs. Look at how Christianity took over Europe in the Middle Ages, how Islam took over the Middle East, how Marxism took over the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the 20th century. This has happened many times with mutually inconsistent belief systems, so you know that humans are unreliable about religion and ideology (which are very similar to each other; see https://fakenous.net/?p=2729). Condorcet doesn’t apply because people don’t form these kinds of beliefs independently; they get their religion or ideology from other people.
So you can’t trust what humans say about religious or ideological topics. But on this particular ideological topic, I am more distrustful than usual, because I have seen so many examples of radically false or misleading content. Let's turn to that.
3. Empirical evidence that I have seen
What about specific examples of the prejudice in our society? Surely this is the most important thing to look at.
Right, and I have looked at some of the most high-profile examples of the prejudice in our society.
Police shootings
First issue: police violence. Supposedly, American police are going around murdering black men due to racial bias. This is one of the most prominent examples – perhaps the most prominent example – cited by woke people of how racism is endemic in our society. So it seems fair to look at that case.
When you look into it just a little bit, you find that it’s factually false (https://fakenous.net/?p=499). There is strong evidence of excessive aggressiveness by the police, but there isn’t significant evidence that it’s racially biased. The racism claim rests on looking at number of shootings per unit of population in each racial group, but not controlling for anything else. When you control for number of police contacts, or number of crimes by each group, police are either equally or more likely to shoot white people.
The pay gap
Let’s turn to what is probably the single most prominent example of the endemic sexism in our society: it is said that women earn just 79 cents for every dollar that men earn.
Again, if you look into it a little more, the appearance of sexism disappears (https://fakenous.net/?p=2294). The statistic rests on looking at salaries of each group, but not controlling for anything. If you control for choice of occupation, seniority, and other factors, the pay gap disappears. Indeed, if you just look at never-married women without children, compared to never-married men without children, the women earn 13% more.
Now let’s turn to some individual cases of alleged racist or sexist behavior.
Kyle Rittenhouse
After the shootings in Kenosha, Kyle Rittenhouse was quickly denounced by the woke left as a racist murderer. When he was acquitted, woke sources denounced the verdict as showing the prevalence of white supremacy in America. Rittenhouse was planning on taking classes at Arizona State University after his acquittal. Students there organized a protest to get him kicked out, saying, “Even with a not-guilty verdict from a flawed ‘justice’ system — Kyle Rittenhouse is still guilty in the eyes of the people. Join us to demand from ASU that these demands be met to protect students from a violent, blood-thirsty killer.” (https://twitter.com/SFSASU/status/1465521663420690436)
However, if you look at the actual evidence in the case, including videos and court testimony, it’s just 100% clear that Rittenhouse was not guilty (https://fakenous.net/?p=2675). The video shows him running away from these people who are chasing and then attacking him.
Again, I think it’s fair to consider this case as evidence about woke beliefs, because the woke people themselves are still citing it as an example of how this is a white supremacist country.
James Damore
Back in 2017, James Damore became famous for writing a memo criticizing “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” The site that first released the memo, Gizmodo, called it an “anti-diversity screed”. Woke people reacted with outrage, denounced Damore as a rabid bigot, and demanded his firing, which demand was instantly satisfied. Damore had said women were incapable of programming, you see, and thus insulted all of his female colleagues. One commenter took the opportunity to complain about how “many … male colleagues did not see women as human beings” (https://twitter.com/catehstn/status/893870292338135041).
However, if you read the actual memo, you saw that it was (a) not anti-diversity (it explicitly supports diversity), (b) also not a screed but the most mild-mannered and reasonable questioning of woke ideology, and (c) not in the slightest questioning that women are capable of programming. (https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320)
What About George Floyd & Eric Garner?
Those were both people murdered by the cops. Surely that demonstrates the racism of America, or at least of the police, right?
Well, no, because I've seen no evidence that either killing was racially motivated, apart from the fact that the victims were black. If you start by assuming that America is full of racism, then you might find it plausible that they were racially motivated on that basis. But if you don't assume that, then you wouldn't.
Are we supposed to think it's a coincidence that both of these victims, along with several others we've heard about in recent years, were black?
No, it's not a coincidence. We're talking about these cases because they were widely reported. And they were reported because the victims were black. There are many more white people killed by the police than blacks, but the media don't report those cases. (See McWhorter & Loury on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9jqFSV3VRc.) I'm not guessing or opining on that; that is an uncontroversial fact. The Washington Post's database of police homicides records 3604 white victims from 2013-2020, compared to 2070 black victims.
Other cases
There have been many other cases like that -- cases falsely cited by the Woke faction as evidence of prejudice. Here are some other cases you can look up, in case you want more: the Duke Lacrosse case; the Rolling Stone rape case; the Jussie Smollett case; the Rebecca Tuvel case; the Jacob Blake case; the Trayvon Martin case; the Amy Cooper case.
I can’t look into every case, but when I happen to look into an example that woke people are citing of racism, sexism, transphobia, etc., it seems like it almost always turns out to be based on either outright lies or clear, culpable errors.
Aside: Of course someone is going to glance at this post and say, "He said that racism doesn't exist!" When that happens, you can add that to the list of examples in this section.
4. Other evidence
I have spent relatively little time looking into racism and sexism in our society. It isn’t a significant focus of my research, and the reason for that is that the evidence I have seen thus far gives me no reason to expect that I would find anything other than more ideological deception.
An analogy is why I haven’t spent many hours researching psi phenomena. I’ve just read a small amount about it, and that little bit gave me no reason to think that further examination was warranted. Life is short, you can’t learn even 1 millionth of everything interesting, so you can’t be devoting years to studying ideas that a first look gives you no reason to think are true and important. People are constantly saying false things, so you can’t spend time on everything that someone else assures you is super-important and true.
If I look at a few claims from some genre, and they turn out to be egregiously false or misleading, then I stop there, with the inference that the rest of that genre is probably pretty similar.
5. Experience of the oppressed
But, some say, non-minorities just don’t know what it’s like to be a minority in our society. We don’t see the racism, etc., because we’re not targets of it. One woman in the tech industry reports that she often senses the sexist contempt that men feel, even when there is no overt expression of it (https://medium.com/@catehstn/we-know-who-he-is-596fdd93d7c2).
So one hypothesis is that there really is all this prejudice that I am blind to because I am a light-skinned male. This might be a reasonable response to sec. 1 above.
But it doesn’t seem plausible in light of all the rest. Rather, in light of all my evidence, the most likely hypothesis is that the experience of frequently sensing oppression in America is caused by holding a particular ideology.
I am reminded of this joke. A patient goes to see a psychotherapist. "I'm going to give you a Rorschach test," the psychotherapist says. "I show you these ink blots, and you tell me what they remind you of." He shows the first ink blot. "That looks like two people having sex," the patient says. Then he shows the second ink blot. "Wow, that's three people having sex." He shows the third ink blot. "Oh my, I can't believe what those people are doing!" The doctor says, "Well, I think it's clear that you have a sexual obsession." The patient responds, "Me? You're the one showing me all the dirty pictures!"
This is a metaphor for SJW's.
Human beings tend to be extremely unreliable when it comes to ideological questions, so it would be unsurprising that this ideology would take hold even if it is objectively false. When you have an ideology, you interpret everything that you can in terms of it. Hence, if you hold woke ideology, it’s plausible that that would make you see racism and sexism around you, whether it was there or not. Note that the people who claim to experience pervasive prejudice appear to all be very left-wing. (If you can find any generally conservative person who claims to experience frequent and severe racism, sexism, or similar prejudice in our society, I want to know about it.)
Another way that I assess people’s reliability is by style and tone. This is part of why I've quoted some of the woke declarations above. You can also find woke people denouncing the "holocaust" that trans people are currently suffering, denouncing the "fascist" "violence" involved in people expressing anti-woke opinions, and so on.
People who use a lot of emotionally charged rhetoric and extremely confident, unqualified declarations about controversial political subjects are usually unreliable. The best explanation of their confidence is generally not that they have extremely strong justification for their views; it is that they are dogmatic.