Can ‘Wokeness’ Be Defeated?

Can ‘Wokeness’ Be Defeated?

What is “wokeness”?

I answered that question during my appearance on The Mike Slater Show on FirstTV. Here’s the show write up:

Mike Slater dives into the cultural shift that’s sparking heated debates: the decline of “wokeness.” From its rise in shaping discourse to the growing pushback against its influence, we explore what’s driving this change. Is it a return to free speech and open dialogue, or something else entirely? Join us as we unpack the social, political, and cultural forces at play, with insights from expert guests, real-world examples, and a look at what this means for the future.

You can watch below.

Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)

Slater:

Welcome back to Politics by Faith. End of Wokeness. Question mark, but I don’t want that question mark. I just wanted a declarative statement one day soon. Professor William Jacobson is here, Cornell University, law professor, founder of the website, please make it part of your daily reading, Legal Insurrection, and also the founder of the Equal Protection Project  Professor. How are you, sir?

WAJ:

Good. Thanks for having me on.

Slater:

Glad you’re here. I’m discouraged. Help me with this. I’m discouraged on the legal fight against wokeness. Should I be more encouraged or how, how should I be feeling about the status of it?

WAJ:

Well, I think it depends what your expectations are. If anybody expected this battle to be won in six months or with eight executive orders, they were unrealistic.

It’s something we’re in a state now that has been multiple decades in the making, and hopefully it won’t take multiple more decades to unwind it. But I think there’s been a lot of progress. I think there was progress prior to Trump 2.0. I think that’s one of the reasons he was elected. Not the only reason, but one of them was a backlash. And I think that a lot of what he’s done in the first six months has been very impactful, but nobody should have the expectation that by January one next year, this is all over.

Slater:

Maybe before we go any further, we should define wokeness. How do you define it?

WAJ:

Well, there’s many different ways, but the one that I use is: The exploitation of left wing social justice concepts to virtue signal as a means of exerting political control. That’s how I would define it. There are pieces to that. They manifest themselves in different ways, whether it’s the curriculum in college, whether it’s training sessions, whether it’s various ideologies. But that is the overwhelming concept to me.

I think it’s also fair to say that just like the famous comment by a Supreme Court Justice about what obscenity ‘you know it when you see it.’ And so we all know it when we see it, but it’s basically exploiting their own social justice concepts as a means of exerting political control.

Slater:

A lot of different ways you can go there. So the last guest we had on, and kind of my first instinct is to see wokeness in the culture, when it comes to like aesthetics or beauty and, you know, like our history and like tearing down statues and replacing them with ugly things. Stuff like, that’s kinda like my instinct. Just kind of go there and see it. Where di you go first, when you saw wokeness, you’re like, ah, like that’s my, that’s where I can I see it the clearest and that’s where I can contribute the most to stopping it.

WAJ:

Well, with me it’s mostly higher education related and education more generally. Because to me, what has happened in higher education is essentially the mother’s milk of so many of our societal problems. The concepts that 20 years ago people would’ve thought is completely insane, are now accepted concepts, various gender identity concepts, things like that. And so to me, the core cultural battle is taking place in education.

If you had asked me five years ago, I would’ve said higher education, but it’s now in K through 12. There has been a concerted effort, including by teachers unions, to push this stuff into kindergarten and elementary school. So that’s where the cultural fight is. It manifests itself in other ways. A lot of the people who learned those things in college now are in corporations, now are in government. But to me, it’s an issue of the education system.

Slater:

Do you remember the first time you saw it, whatever it was, 20 years ago or whatever, the first time you were like, whoa, because I’m sure you’ve been confronted with bad ideas for a long time, but what was the first thing you look back on? You’re like, oh, wait, that was actually woke.

WAJ:

I think I would go back even further. I think that when I first recognized the racialization of education, and nobody used the term ‘woke’ back then, was when I was in Harvard Law School in the early 1980s, these buildings of coalitions of color for political purposes, particularly against Israel and against Jews. That’s when I first noticed it. I only recognized that in hindsight. I didn’t really understand what was going on at the time, but I’d say you’d probably go back to the late 70, early eighties and the racialization of education, which then became critical race theory, which then became diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so it was a process over 20 to 30 years. That’s when I first noticed it with the benefit of hindsight.

Slater:

Yeah. That checks out with Bork’s book, Slouching Towards Gamora. If I recall correctly, there’s a part in there where he talks about how you just cannot criticize. You could not at back in the day criticize a black history professor and a black history professor could say the most absurd, like just chronologically doesn’t even make any sense claim. And you could not question it in any way.

WAJ:

I, I think we see that in current politics. The quickest way to get called racist is to criticize a black politician over policy. How many people were called racist for opposing Obamacare healthcare policy. But because it was Obama, you were called racist.

And that’s really, politically for me, the first time I experienced it and, and saw it. Because prior to starting my website in 2008, I wasn’t political at all.  I obviously could read and hear, but I didn’t participate. It was only once I started participating in the 2000 9, 10, 11 timeframe that I recognized the exploitation of racial issues as a means of exerting power. Not because anything you said about Obamacare was racist, but because that’s how they exerted control.

And I think it was the third blog post I had in October, 2008, if I’m remembering the title correctly. It was the, you know, exploitation of racial politics as a means of control or words to that effect. [Note: “Race” As Political Weapon] That was the third thing I wrote at the website in 2008. And I said how poisonous it was and how it would really rip apart the country. And everything I said then was true. So it’s really in the context of Obama and his politics, that it got forced onto everybody.

Slater:

Well, and now look at you and now look at legal insurrection. Look where y’all are now. Okay.

So we’ve identified the threat or the problem. We’ve lived it, we see it, everyone gets it. It’s waning in ways, or at least the obviousness of it, perhaps the blatantness of it. But it’s, it’s still hiding there. So what do we do? What do we replace it with or what, what do we lift up so that regular people would never even think of going the woke direction? What do we lift up instead?

WAJ:

I think you have to lift up the rights of the individual, the dignity of the individual. Stop classifying people by identity group, treat an individual student not as a black student, a white student, a Hispanic student, an Asian student, but as a student who is entitled to be treated fairly without regard to race or ethnicity. That has to be become the overriding goal and the overriding ethos of our educational system.

It’s what the affirmative action case, Students for Fair Admissions, pointed out. That a lot of the problems that we have stem from gross racial negative stereotypes, which lead to things like affirmative action.

And so that’s really the answer. We have to change the culture. We have to get ourselves back to a culture which mirrors the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, the Equal Protection Clause, which is that each individual is entitled to equal protection of the laws.

That’s why we named our project the Equal Protection Project, because that’s what we’re seeking to uphold, is the dignity of the individual and the worth of the individual, without regard to group identities.

It’s going be tough because at least on college campuses, group identity is everything. It’s what drives everything on college campuses. It drives admissions, it drives hiring, it drives just about everything.

And so the steps that the Trump administration is taking to get that out of the education system, to get it out of the grant funding, to get it out of the hiring process, that’s critical. It’s going to take a number of years. I don’t know if it can be accomplished in the remaining three and a half years of his term. If there is a successor Republican who continues those policies, I think it’s very likely if this push to it out of our system, to get wokeness out of the system continues for 6, 8, 10 years, I think it can be successful. Serious progress can be made in two to three years, but that battle can’t be won in two to three years.

Slater:

Yeah. About 30 seconds. You know, your data set is probably mostly Cornell University, which is great. But everything else you’ve seen, do you see college kids maybe starting to push back against the wokeness that they had to live through, whether it’s Black Lives Matter or COVID or all these other things. Are you starting to see some of that in the hearts and minds of young people?

WAJ:

I think that’s happening. I think people recognize it. I think students are afraid to speak up about it. But I think the whole concept, and I think virtually every survey shows this, the whole concept of treating people differently based on skin color is abhorrent to most Americans. Most Americans, including non-white Americans, don’t want that. But that’s what’s being forced.

But there’s a huge price to pay on a college campus from speaking up. There’s a huge price to pay on a college campus for even attending an event where that is challenged.

So I think there is a backlash building, but I don’t think it’s enough right now. But I think it’s definitely building, but they’re not going to give it up. The DEI Industrial complex is like survivors from a shipwreck clinging to a lifeboat hoping for help to arrive. And I think they think that help is going to arrive in the next election. We’ll see if it does or it doesn’t.

Slater:

Great point. Professor William Jacobson Cornell University, go check out legal insurrection every single day and the Equal Protection Project as well. Professor, good to talk to you, sir. Thank you.

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