I went through DEI training in a very large, prestigious American corporation founded by mega dead white men. One training slide said that telling someone they spoke English well was a microaggression.....think how that landed with someone such as myself who didn't start speaking English until about 13 or 14 and whose parents never knew English with anything resembling slight proficiency.
I also remember a vignette with a young woman from a conservative, third-world country declaring that she would become a single-mother and how she had met with opprobrium in her country but acceptance within the corporation. It never must have struck the people putting together that training vignette totally undermined the notion of the white male world as racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynist....and instead showed that it was the formerly colonized third-word of the young woman of color where those things really reigned.
And at no point did any of the training in any way question any business model...which of course is why things like BLM, unlike Occupy Wall Street, were welcomed with open arms and showered with $$$$ by business.
My question is this: Time and again I've noticed that the advent of wokeness has meant, well, an inevitable dumbing down. In fact, Are there instances in which DEI/wokeness has meant an increase in rigor?
Given that, How is a hyper-first world country like the US to continue being first-world-like if its elite, and not just elite, is progressively dumbed-down?
also, i had to laugh at the picture you posted. that looks like my sichuan dinner crew. we go and sample authentic chinese in and around austin every few weeks.
Holy cow this Woodhouse fellow writes so very very well. He reminds me of Andrew Sullivan in his ability to communicate complexities with simple clear argumentation. Brilliant.
I think I buy the overall argument -- that elite moral authority has replaced elite meritocracy -- but the overall framing seems questionable. The framing of early US "vision" of classless society: I'm not sure how much more disingenuous and / or mistaken things get. It feels like an old-fashioned conservative "back then, we were purer, more innocent, better." No, there were very distinct classes back at that time. While the vision may have been for a more egalitarian society, you will note that plenty of people at the time were happy to draw that line at "white pseudo-aristocracy." Even aside from slavery, it's easy to see a landowner class vs. a working class, and the landowner class got an education, got to participate in governance and influence governance disproportionately. I don't think that the framing should be "once we didn't have class ideas" -- it should be "we have always had elites and class, but what constitutes an elite, and the specific mechanisms through which they assert their power have changed."
Great piece. I had one issue though. You write: "It [the university] does so by glorifying the cultural tastes and moral virtues of the upper middle class and celebrating them as the universal, transcendent values of civilization rather than as the arbitrary, parochial preferences they objectively are."
This is the post modern relativism that is allowing the Western canon to be replaced by the likes of Kandi and DiAngelo. Would you really argue that the Western canon only survived as long as it did because of arbitrary, parochial preferences of the elite? Or that it can only be viewed as superior to a "woke" reading list because of those same preferences?
That we have inherited a social hierarchy established in the structuring of the industrial revolution is not difficult to believe. Nor is it difficult to believe that we do not have a coherent collective memory from days before this major reshuffling of society. Leaving many of us here wanting to view that distant era through a modern racial lens. Ultimately lending credence to Leighton’s argument, and the success of the new PMC moral order. I can’t know that America strived to be a classless society pre-industrial revolution, but it’s nice to think about, and somewhat perfectly captures human hypocrisy: to try and maintain slavery and indentured servitude while aspiring to equality at the same time.
Leighton can you speak to what you see the role of ever increasing prices of a university education being? How does this affect the PMCs ability to replicate it’s moral ethic in society if a majority of society is priced out?
your sign in requirements for paying subscribers are getting annoying...content is usually great...cumbersome security measures not so much...this essay seems to point that you are moving away from that elitist community that has weened you...have you found shelter somewhere outside of a campus town?
I went through DEI training in a very large, prestigious American corporation founded by mega dead white men. One training slide said that telling someone they spoke English well was a microaggression.....think how that landed with someone such as myself who didn't start speaking English until about 13 or 14 and whose parents never knew English with anything resembling slight proficiency.
I also remember a vignette with a young woman from a conservative, third-world country declaring that she would become a single-mother and how she had met with opprobrium in her country but acceptance within the corporation. It never must have struck the people putting together that training vignette totally undermined the notion of the white male world as racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynist....and instead showed that it was the formerly colonized third-word of the young woman of color where those things really reigned.
And at no point did any of the training in any way question any business model...which of course is why things like BLM, unlike Occupy Wall Street, were welcomed with open arms and showered with $$$$ by business.
My question is this: Time and again I've noticed that the advent of wokeness has meant, well, an inevitable dumbing down. In fact, Are there instances in which DEI/wokeness has meant an increase in rigor?
Given that, How is a hyper-first world country like the US to continue being first-world-like if its elite, and not just elite, is progressively dumbed-down?
this is the sort of stuff where you shine bro.
also, i had to laugh at the picture you posted. that looks like my sichuan dinner crew. we go and sample authentic chinese in and around austin every few weeks.
Wonderful and insightful, thanks.
OK I’m a subscriber.
Holy cow this Woodhouse fellow writes so very very well. He reminds me of Andrew Sullivan in his ability to communicate complexities with simple clear argumentation. Brilliant.
I think I buy the overall argument -- that elite moral authority has replaced elite meritocracy -- but the overall framing seems questionable. The framing of early US "vision" of classless society: I'm not sure how much more disingenuous and / or mistaken things get. It feels like an old-fashioned conservative "back then, we were purer, more innocent, better." No, there were very distinct classes back at that time. While the vision may have been for a more egalitarian society, you will note that plenty of people at the time were happy to draw that line at "white pseudo-aristocracy." Even aside from slavery, it's easy to see a landowner class vs. a working class, and the landowner class got an education, got to participate in governance and influence governance disproportionately. I don't think that the framing should be "once we didn't have class ideas" -- it should be "we have always had elites and class, but what constitutes an elite, and the specific mechanisms through which they assert their power have changed."
Great piece. I had one issue though. You write: "It [the university] does so by glorifying the cultural tastes and moral virtues of the upper middle class and celebrating them as the universal, transcendent values of civilization rather than as the arbitrary, parochial preferences they objectively are."
This is the post modern relativism that is allowing the Western canon to be replaced by the likes of Kandi and DiAngelo. Would you really argue that the Western canon only survived as long as it did because of arbitrary, parochial preferences of the elite? Or that it can only be viewed as superior to a "woke" reading list because of those same preferences?
That we have inherited a social hierarchy established in the structuring of the industrial revolution is not difficult to believe. Nor is it difficult to believe that we do not have a coherent collective memory from days before this major reshuffling of society. Leaving many of us here wanting to view that distant era through a modern racial lens. Ultimately lending credence to Leighton’s argument, and the success of the new PMC moral order. I can’t know that America strived to be a classless society pre-industrial revolution, but it’s nice to think about, and somewhat perfectly captures human hypocrisy: to try and maintain slavery and indentured servitude while aspiring to equality at the same time.
Leighton can you speak to what you see the role of ever increasing prices of a university education being? How does this affect the PMCs ability to replicate it’s moral ethic in society if a majority of society is priced out?
your sign in requirements for paying subscribers are getting annoying...content is usually great...cumbersome security measures not so much...this essay seems to point that you are moving away from that elitist community that has weened you...have you found shelter somewhere outside of a campus town?
your sign in requirements for paying subscribers are getting annoying...content is usually great...cumbersome security measures not so much