White Wokeness
By: Teed Rockwell
Tags: Racism, Woke, Race, Sexism, Race Relations

I’ve got as much privilege as can possibly be crammed into a single human being. I have learned a great deal from perceptive people of marginalized groups, and I am going to continue to read and think about what they have to say. I don’t always agree with them, but I always end up seeing things differently from encountering their perspectives. However, one of the things that makes it hard for me to learn from those perspectives is the warped perspective created by “White Wokeness”. Not every white person who writes about these issues has this warped perspective. (I’d be condemning myself if I claimed that.) But I think these are pitfalls that any white person has to look out for if you are going to participate in this debate.

Because marginalized people live with discrimination all the time, they have to maintain their sanity by picking their battles. Consequently, when a genuinely marginalized person bring up something that hurts them, they do it regretfully, because the pain has become more than they can bear. When I sense this pain, I realize that this is something that I must take seriously if I am to be decent person.

Secondly, there is always an unstated expression of respect in such a communication. They are taking a risk when they express these feelings, which involves betting on the possibility that you will listen to them, try to understand their point of view, and change your behavior. Sadly, this is a bet they often lose, at the very least with me. I hate being wrong about anything, and I’m very good at defending myself. But when I remember the implied respect of these communications, I can sometimes do better than that.

It’s very hard to do that, however, when these authentic communications are surrounded by the proxy outrage of privileged people trying to speak on behalf of the marginalized. There is little or no genuine pain in this proxy outrage. For the privileged, this is merely an abstract game, with nothing that’s at stake but how many examples of discrimination they can dig up. The main emotion is self-righteous glee at being able to be on the right side of this issue for a few moments, while they focus on the guilt of someone else. For the same reason, there is no sense of respect for the person being shamed. Putting them down, and raising yourself up as being “More woke than thou”, is the whole point of the exchange. I find that I have to filter out the cliches and jargon in the posts of the privileged, before I can benefit from the insights that are grounded in the direct experience of the genuinely marginalized.

I realize that many marginalized people ask for this kind of help from privileged people. The marginalized rightly complain that it is unfair for them to have to do all the work of cleaning up injustices they didn’t create, and constantly suffer from. I have learned that it is wrong to expect a random marginalized stranger, or even a close friend, to explain why certain behavior is offensive. Nevertheless, there are some marginalized people who are very gifted at explaining such things, and their direct experience gives them a tremendous advantage over those who are similarly eloquent but privileged. I think, for better or for worse, that they are the only ones who can do the job right.

They ought to be compensated for this difficult and important work. If they work as writers, we privileged should read their books, and watch their movies and TV shows. And if a marginalized person tries to communicate directly with you on these topics, listen. You don’t have to refrain from replying forever, despite what some woke people seem to imply. But you should ask questions designed to get a better understanding of their position, rather than to weaken and counterexample it to death. And once you do feel you understand their points, think about them for a long time before you say anything about them, to yourself or to anyone else.