> If they actually made a positive difference- say, lowered the births out of wedlock/divorce rate among black US parents, thereby causing a slew of knock-on effects- if they actually solved the problems they complained about, they'd be out of a job

I get your sentiment, but this seems to be putting the cart before the horse, in multiple ways. Divorce rates and births out of wedlock do not have "a slew of knock-on effects"; they are the effects. There are only two reasons to care about those rates:

- They are easily measured, due to existing government accounting (birth/marriage/divorce certificates, etc.)

- Religious bullshit

I'll ignore the latter, since it cannot be reasoned with.

In the case of divorce, it doesn't happen without reason. Anecdotally, my parents divorced due to alcoholism and domestic abuse; my childhood, social mobility, earnings potential, etc. was improved by their divorce. Tackling alcoholism and domestic abuse may have "a slew of knock-on effects", including lower divorce rates; yet the reverse is not true, e.g. making it harder to get a divorce will not reduce alcoholism and abuse, it would merely subject more children to it for longer.

If we make the charitable assumption that the goal of what you're saying is for more children to receive more help and support, rather than the opposite described above, then that's several levels removed from what you actually said; and each of those levels introduces exactly the distracting, partisan rhetoric that you are arguing against.

- The first level of abstraction is focusing on the US. This seems fair enough, assuming you're in the US. Yet it's still important to note this abstraction, e.g. in the context of foreign aid. For example, it might be more efficient (i.e. give more help to more children) to spend more on foreign aid, since money can go further in poorer countries; alternatively, spending that money domestically might be more efficient (give more help to more children) due to targeting and accountability. If we want to give the most help to the most children, we should base policy on measured impacts; yet this is often framed as a "left vs right" partisan issue (pretending for the moment that the US even has a left wing), which distracts from actually achieving the stated goal.

- Next, you further narrow your focus to the black US population. This also seems fair, as they are a disenfranchised and oppressed group, and hence this focuses on a large number of large issues that need fixing. Even from a purely utilitarian point of view, it may be cheaper (or even reduce costs) to, say, tackle over-policing of black neighbourhoods; compared to tackling some more diffuse, less directly-controllable issue in other populations (e.g. suicide rates in white males). However, it's again worth noting the abstraction: in particular, a large improvement for the minority black population may have less impact than a smaller improvement for a larger population (e.g. the female population). Again, policy should be based on measurable impacts towards the stated goal, and again this has been turned into a partisan circus to distract from real change (e.g. with concern trolling about 'ignoring' white males).

- Next you split the focus between births out of wedlock and divorce rates. I've mentioned the impacts of divorce above; the partisan circus in this case involves 'traditional values', and bleeds into other areas like gay, trans and women's rights.

- The phrase "lowered births out of wedlock" is problematic, since (again) it is very far removed from the assumed goal of 'the most help to the most children', and hence puts the cart before the horse; and secondly it is charged with dangerous ambiguity. For example, lowering birth rates of 'undesirable' demographics (e.g. unmarried black people) could be achieved via eugenics; I'm hoping that is not what you had in mind, but that depends heavily on the reader's overton window; hence provoking both the far right and their opposition. Another way to lower this rate would be forced marriage; again, I hope that wasn't your intention, but again that depends on the reader, and the normalisation of such rhetoric stokes division.

I agree with your overall point that 'culture wars', 'wokeness', etc. are a distraction from solving real problems; yet what you are saying is itself an example of such distraction. I'm not aware of a word that sums up 'concern-trolling about how "wokeness" is concern-trolling', but that's how I would describe your phrasing.

In this case, I'm not aware of any person or group (e.g. Black Lives Matter, 'wokeists', etc.) who has asked for Github to change their naming policy, let alone demand it under threat of protest/boycot (AKA 'cancel culture'/'voting with your wallet', depending on which side of the circus one is sitting). Exactly the same can be said of Washington DC renaming Black Lives Matter plaza, and many other such real, measurable examples. Hence, when discussing such actions, any focus (for or against) on 'woke' individuals is itself a distraction.

Those who applaud such moves (if that's actually a thing; I've come across nothing but scorn for such actions) have been successfully distracted from the real issues that have sparked protest and boycot; whether it's GitHub's sexism and discrimination, or the US police system's racism and lack of accountability.

Those (like yourself) who scorn such applause (again, under the assumption that it actually exists in some non-manufactured/devil's-advocate form) have also been successfully distracted from those real issues of sexism, discrimination and racism. Complaining about 'wokeness' is a partisan circus, abstracted away from the stated issues themselves, fighting hypothetical slights from imagined enemies.

Of course, I'm not immune from such attacks myself. In this case, I'm grounded by the sheer prevalence of such backwards logic as you've expressed here, which I come across without seeking it out (cherry-picking smallfry posts scoured from Twitter/Tumblr/etc. is a perennial hobby of the 'anti-woke' distraction machine). On sites like Reddit I merely find it concerning (whether real or astroturfing to shift the overton window, the effect is similar). When it starts infecting sites like HN, which tend to reward thoughtful, reasoned content rather than knee-jerk memes, I feel a need to push back :)