As we crawl toward the midterms, Republicans are increasingly fixating on “anti-wokeness.” This could prove wise, as more Americans regardless of party affiliation oppose an ideology obsessed with race and hostile toward dissent. But truly beating back the new illiberalism, not just showing it up at the ballot box, will depend on greater involvement from liberals.
The struggle over wokeism — especially critical race theory, elite censorship and political correctness — is in effect a battle for the soul of liberalism, with, on the one hand, those who see tolerance and pluralism as obstacles to their vision of a world cleansed of racism and producing equal outcomes for “oppressed” groups and, on the other hand, those who share woke concerns about equality and justice but see abandoning liberal means to do so as a source of more, not less, injustice.
Both, collectively referred to as liberals, predominate those institutions where the new illiberalism is proliferating, from public schools and universities to newsrooms and the arts, and they will decide among themselves what the makeup of these institutions will be.
Republicans might succeed in limiting woke’s spread. Idaho has banned the teaching of critical race theory, which asserts that America is endemically racist and we should all be judged by the color of our skin, and nearly a dozen other states have introduced similar bills. But this is more Band-Aid than cure. They won’t root out the illiberal, race-obsessed culture that gave rise to CRT’s spread in the first place. Only liberals, by confronting their fellow liberals by stirring up debate and reasserting liberal values from within, can do that.
And it’s liberals, not Republicans, who can force Democratic leaders to reform. As it stands, the Biden administration has signaled it is moving opposite to Republicans on wokeness, proposing a rule in April that would give priority to history and civics education programs with “diverse” perspectives like the New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project and Ibram X. Kendi’s “anti-racism,” which advocates pro-Black and Brown racial discrimination to make up for past discrimination.
Without greater liberal involvement, challenging woke supremacy will be especially difficult in divided or blue states, home to some of the most radical strains of wokeness. Even in red areas, liberals can be a vital ally in curbing woke’s excesses. In what was expected to be a close vote in Southlake, a suburb of Dallas that leans conservative in a county that went narrowly to Joe Biden, residents voted overwhelmingly for school board and city council candidates who opposed a “cultural competence action plan” that would require students to learn about their “bias and advantages” in order to graduate.
Synonymous with Trump’s politics of white grievance, conservatives are not suited to lead a defense of American pluralism. They’ve also abused wokeness for political expediency, leveling it as a catch-all to demonize Democrats and deflect self-accountability. Trump’s defense lawyers called his second impeachment trial a matter of “constitutional cancel culture.” Even racehorse trainer Bob Baffert blamed Medina Spirit’s failed drug test on “cancel culture.” Nonsense.
Defenders of woke have seized on the disingenuousness to mischaracterize opposition to it as monolithically Republican and hostile to minorities. Writing in New York magazine, Ed Kilgore described anti-wokeness as Republicans “seeking to defend their privileges and reverse social change,” while over at the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg described objection to critical race theory as an “absurd and cynical” ploy by Republicans who “felt shut out of national power.” Many of her liberal readers were quick to point out that they too are troubled by the new illberalism.
“As the parent of a child whose public school veered radically leftward this year,” read one comment, “I can tell you this is not a liberal versus conservative issue. In highly educated circles, it’s become a liberal versus liberal issue. I’m tired of The Times implying that only Fox News conservatives object to their children being manipulated into seeing literally everything through the incredibly reductive and divisive lenses of race and gender.”
The growing bipartisan consensus is reflected in a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll that found 64% of Americans feel cancel culture is a growing threat to their freedoms, and the Hidden Tribes study profiling Americans asserts that only 8% of us are “progressive activists,” those who are highly sensitive to issues of fairness and equity, particularly regarding race and gender, and pessimistic about institutional fairness in America. Compare that to 26% who are “traditional” or “passive” liberals.
“Wokeness is a problem and everyone knows it,” Democratic strategist James Carville recently told Vox. “It’s hard to talk to anybody today — and I talk to lots of people in the Democratic Party — who doesn’t say this. But they don’t want to say it out loud.” That will change when liberals start standing up for liberalism.
Gatsiounis is a freelance writer.
