I heard a theory that woke is actually a class marker of manners, indicating that someone has the time and privilege to track the constantly shifting, baroque signals of what is and is not acceptable to say during any given season. If someone were to make that case, this could be evidence in favor.
It's a decent interpretation of at least some of the phenomenon. E.g. "latinx" has become an upper middle class shibboleth with close to zero participation from the people "being protected from harm" by the neologism.
Catherine Liu's short book Virtue Hoarders has this thesis, arguing that the class that this language is a marker of is the professional managerial class (PMC), a social class originally posited by the John and Barbara Ehrenreich in the 70s. I can't recommend the book too highly but I think it was correct in most of its observations.
> a social class originally posited by the John and Barbara Ehrenreich in the 70s
The professional managerial class was also identified and studied quite a bit earlier. James Burnham wrote about it extensively in 1941 in The Managerial Revolution, and that was based (in part) on ideas from Vilfredo Pareto in the early 1900s about "elite theory."
I always considered it ageist. Gen-X and above who have been using terms like "guys" since they were subversive are now targeted and made unwelcome. Younger "folks" meanwhile are fresh from the birth place of PC terminology--American universities--and therefore on the level by default.
That's an interesting perspective. This ageism makes me think of elderly people (both Black and white) in the 80s who could not seem to stop using the term "colored" to refer to Black people. It was the polite term when they were young and it was hard for them to adjust to Black, which had been up to then an outrageously rude term. I just dismissed them as racist, but thinking back, the people who used it otherwise expressed no animosity in their hearts. Ironic that things have come full circle today and the polite term is "people of color".
To be fair to the woke, sincerely, their hearts really are in the right place generally speaking.They are trying out the ancient idea that language changes thought, and if people speak only correctly they will think only correctly. Of course, it never has worked, will never work, and introduces bad unintended consequences, but the motivation is kind at core.
I really don’t think kindness is the root of this sort of thing. I’ve had the displeasure of working with folks in the past that push this sort of thing and I could hardly describe any of them as kind people, quite the contrary.
You know, we should introduce woke battles: they are a mix of public debates and rap battles. Participants take turns to berate each other and demonstrate wokeness. The jury watch the debate closely and try to get offended.
Nah. Each round should have the other side of the rap battle explain how they've been personally discriminated against by the elevated wokeness of the previous response.
