Identity Issues: Probing Woke Culture

Randall G. Holcombe

We are all different and all unique, and I try to treat everybody as an individual rather than stereotyping them as belonging to some group. I do my best to treat everyone with the same respect I’d like them to extend to me. But I confess to being un-woke and not understanding the logic behind some aspects of woke culture and identity issues.

I’m focusing on two of those issues here, prompted by this article in The New Yorker.

The article begins by talking about cultural appropriation, relating a story about a blue-eyed singer dressed in Jamaican carnival garb, which apparently is cultural appropriation. Why is it “cultural appropriation” to admire and adopt the fashions that originated in a different culture? If this is cultural appropriation, would it not also be cultural appropriation if someone of African descent wore a suit and tie–a fashion that originated in Europe? Why should dressing a certain way be celebrated when done by some people and the object of criticism when done by others?

Cultural appropriation seems to apply to clothing, but not to music, as far as I can tell. Blues music has its origins in African American culture, but many white blues musicians are highly respected. Meanwhile, there is a push to increase the number of minority musicians in symphony orchestras, which is not considered cultural appropriation even though the orchestra repertoire is heavily European in its origins.

The main focus of The New Yorker article is not about cultural appropriation, however, but about people misrepresenting their race. The article focuses mostly on a George Washington University history professor who claimed to be Black, but as others discovered more about her background, was pushed into confessing she “assumed identities within a Blackness that I had no right to claim.”

The article also mentions Rachel Dolezal, the woman who headed the NAACP chapter in Spokane, Washington, until 2015, when she was outed as actually being white.

What seems illogical to me, an un-woke observer of woke culture, is that it appears that it is acceptable and commendable for people to be able to choose the gender with which they identify, but is unacceptable to choose their racial identity. People can grow up identifying themselves with one gender, and at any point in their lives can decide they now identify with a different gender. Not so with race. Why?

People decide they want to change their gender identity and have major surgery to alter their body to more closely conform with their new identity, all supported by woke culture. But, if someone changes their hair style to one typically identified with a different race, that is labeled cultural appropriation. Why?

One possibility could be that people want to identify with a race that is perceived to have advantages other races don’t have. Despite sustained moves toward racial equality, “white privilege” still exists. But that doesn’t apply to the two cases mentioned in The New Yorker article, because both individuals who were mentioned were trying to shift their identities from white to the marginalized and disadvantaged identity of Black.

They were both white women, and if they said they now identified as men, woke culture would accept and embrace that identity change. But woke culture strongly rejected their attempted change in racial identity.

As contradictory as these (and other) aspects of woke culture appear to me, I try to treat everybody as an individual and everybody with respect. We are all unique and all different. Don’t take anything I’ve said here as a criticism. I’m just making an observation about aspects of contemporary culture that seem to embody obvious contradictions

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Kenosha Riots Hit Minority Communities Hardest

Callous disregard of property rights creates long-term instability that scares away business investment and reduces economic opportunity

On August 23, the police shooting of an African American man named Jacob Blake sparked national unrest yet again, in a pattern that has become all too common. Blake survived the shooting, and the incident was murky—not a clear-cut injustice. Yet rioting and looting broke out in Kenosha, Wisconsin, nonetheless.

Now, as the dust settles and locals begin to sort through the rubble, the scale of the destruction that rocked the city after Blake’s shooting is becoming clear.

At least 56 businesses were damaged or destroyed by looting or arson, according to the Wall Street Journal. Current assessments report more than $50 million in damage.

“The destruction has left shop owners in one of Kenosha’s oldest business districts grappling with why their businesses became casualties of the destruction that has followed protests against racism and police brutality, and whether they will have the money to rebuild and stay in the neighborhood,” the Journal reports. “While Kenosha’s population is 79.5% white and 11.5% Black, according to census data, locals say the Uptown neighborhood is one of the city’s most diverse areas, with a majority of minority-owned businesses.”

It appears that in Kenosha, just as in Minneapolis and Chicago, the fallout from rioting and looting will disproportionately harm minority communities.

“I always think that people have the right to protest—to peacefully protest—but this goes beyond that,” La Estrella Supermarket owner Abel Alejo said. “They were destroying the neighborhoods that they want to protect.”

Even a local Black Lives Matter leader denounced this destruction, saying “We’re not into doing anything to damage our community… it waters down our message.”

This damage is significant, but defenders will no doubt seek to downplay it, explaining that “businesses have insurance.” Yet the damage goes beyond cold cash. There is also the enormous human and emotional toll involved in having your property destroyed and having to pick up the pieces that even a premium insurance plan can’t account for. What’s more, lost income and unpaid labor inevitably await any entrepreneur victimized by vandalism.

Plus, many small businesses don’t have insurance or are underinsured. They will have to bear the costs themselves.

Ultimately, the destruction in Kenosha and its disproportionate impact on urban, minority communities reminds us of a timeless lesson: Property rights are the fundamental basis of a market economy. Yet, despite how critics often portray them, property rights are not simply a matter of protecting the wealthy and big corporations. The protection of private property is what ensures immigrants, minorities, and poor people are not derailed on their climb up the economic ladder in pursuit of the American dream.

Moreover, the protection of property rights uplifts everyone by setting the stage for long-term economic success that benefits all. It is the engine of our prosperity and is integral to freedom.

Nobel laureate economist and philosopher Friedrich Hayek once wrote that, “The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.” Similarly, the economist Thomas Sowell has said that property rights, “belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.”

What this means is quite simple: Callous disregard of property rights creates long-term instability that scares away business investment and reduces economic opportunity. Often, this manifests itself in the form of lower property values, higher insurance rates passed on to consumers, reduced tax revenue, and fewer jobs in an area.

You don’t have to just take my word for it. Studies examining the long-term economic impact of the 1960s Civil Rights Era riots and the 1990s Los Angeles Rodney King riots document these exact effects.

So, when looters descend on urban communities like Kenosha in a wave of destruction, even liberal supporters of criminal justice reform shouldn’t fall for the narrative that rioting is harmless, justified, or helpful. The evidence is clear. “Social justice” agitators who cross the line past peaceful protest and engage in violent vandalism are only sabotaging the same minority communities they claim to care about.

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Uh Oh: High-Ranking Democrat Takes Aim at Ilhan Omar

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and “The Squad” – consisting of her, Reps. Rashida Tlaib (MI), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) – have made a name for themselves as progressive darlings. They’re a firebrand that has ignited grassroots progressives. While that’s great in theory, it also exposes one issue: the middle-of-the-road Democrats, you know, what the Democratic Party used to be.

In the past, Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN), Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, defended Omar’s comments about 9/11, when she said “some people did something.”

“I think she was trying to say that some people in her community feel like they’re being targeted,” Peterson said last year.

Earlier this week the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) asked Peterson why he defended Omar’s comments. Now, it looks as though he’s doing his best to distance himself from the freshman congresswoman, the New York Post reported.

“Do you have any comment as to why you defended Ilhan Omar?” an NRCC staffer asked.

“I don’t defend her. She doesn’t belong in our party,” Peterson, who has served Minnesota’s 7th Congressional District since 1991, told the NRCC.

Peterson was asked to clarify and expand on his position.

“She doesn’t belong in our party,” he said as he walked away.

It’s clear that Peterson is attempting to distance himself from Omar and the rest of “The Squad.” He’s facing a tough election against Republican Michelle Fischbach, the former Minnesota Lieutenant Governor.

It’s not surprising that people like Peterson are distancing themselves from people like Omar. The Squad’s rhetoric and policy stances are harmful to people to rural America. The Green New Deal threatens farmers’ way of life. “Defunding” the police (when it is really about abolishing law enforcement) gives small towns and communities across the Midwest anxiety. It means that riots like what took place in Kenosha, Wisconsin, can come to a place near them. It’s no longer just something that happens in major cities. It’s now something that can – and will – happen in small towns and cities no one has ever heard of. Embracing people like Omar means they support this kind of agenda, even if their constituents don’t. That’s a liability in an election year.

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Pastors Promote Workplace Training as Alternative to ‘Divisiveness’

“It is so important that our pastors, especially in communities of color, begin to offer an alternative to the narrative that is being pushed by certain groups [and] we can’t really quantify what [their] goal is besides anarchy and divisiveness,” the Rev. M.J. Reid says. (Photo illustration: Getty Images)

A group of minority pastors is asking employers to adopt a new training program that counters the narrative promoted by Black Lives Matter activists.

The group, called Conservative Clergy of Color, developed a six-step “Getting to All Lives Matter” in what it calls a fact-based program that operates on the “assumption all Americans want to build a better society.”

The group wants to offer the program to both government workplaces and those in the private sector, the Rev. Aubrey Shines, founder of Conservative Clergy of Color, said Wednesday at a virtual press conference.

“We have already contacted numerous corporations, simply saying we have an alternative as it relates to this type of divisiveness that we are seeing unfolding, unfortunately lived out, in our agencies. Not just federal agencies,” said Shines, pastor of Tampa-based Glory to God Ministries, or G2G.

“We are seeing it in the athletic realm, in various corporations that are indoctrinating employees to what we believe is something that has no historical basis, that requires historical revisionists to speak to these types of issues,” he said.

Many corporations, particularly in light of the demonstrations and riots sparked by the May 25 killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, adopted diversity training programs based on “white fragility” theories presuming an “implicit bias,” according to Conservative Clergy of Color.

Both such training and the lecture circuit on anti-racism issues reportedly has become lucrative for white academics.

The six steps in the program offered by Shines’ group are:

—Why the ‘All Lives Matter’ approach means stronger teams.

—“How we get race wrong.”

—How responsible is the media?

—Fact-based talk on equity and opportunity.

—What’s working, what didn’t, and what should be tried.

—Focused minds and open hearts.

The Rev. Francisco Vega, an Atlanta pastor with Awakening and Reformation Center, said the conservative clergy’s curriculum will challenge notions of the liberal view known as critical race theory.

“We have to deviate from the rhetoric of critical race theory, which is now being coined as critical social justice,” Vega said at the press conference. “It is really embedded through Marxism and European socialistic ideas.”

“And, really, we need to remember American exceptionalism and all of the one becoming the whole,” Vega said. “I believe that will bring a better perspective of honor and respectability among whites and African Americans and Latinos.”

The Rev. M.J. Reid, of Detroit, said he sees little reason for the divisive narrative that groups such as the main Black Lives Matter organization push.

“We understand that many people that are in corporate America also sit in pews,” said Reid, pastor at The River Church. “It is so important that our pastors, especially in communities of color, begin to offer an alternative to the narrative that is being pushed by certain groups [and] we can’t really quantify what [their] goal is besides anarchy and divisiveness.”

“The purpose of this curriculum,” he said of the clergy’s program, “is to put tools in the hands of leaders [and] anyone who is an influencer, to give the information that will counteract and diffuse this chaotic state we see America go into more and more.”

Shines said his organization has seen “pushback,” but that was to be expected:

In the words of Booker T. Washington, ‘There is a group of individuals that need race problems to continue. Why?’ He asks and answers the question. He said, ‘It keeps them lucrative. It keeps them prominent.’

We are seeing pushback because we are upsetting the narrative, not because we are pushing an agenda. We are simply saying, ‘Look at the facts.’

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American “liberals” often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America’s educational system — particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if “liberals” had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. Email me (John Ray) here.
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