Higher education is still in the grip of wokeness, writes Naomi Schaeffer Riley:
Ballots went out last month for leadership positions at the American Sociological Association. Here’s some advice for candidates: Emphasize your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion credentials. Among the past 13 ASA presidents, 11 were women, and 2 were black men.
Among the past 11 vice presidents, 10 were women. One was a white man. In addition, the criteria the ASA outlines for all of its awards make clear that “wokeness” in higher education is still deeply entrenched, notwithstanding efforts by the Trump administration to eliminate it.
The Environmental Sociology Teaching and Mentorship Award “honors faculty members who demonstrate a notable dedication to teaching and mentorship through …actionable attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
The notice for an award for best article in a professional journal declares that “Women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and people with disabilities are especially encouraged to submit.”
And when considering an award for articles “that advance the field of sociology of science, knowledge, and technology,” the ASA calls for more applications from “scholars who identify as Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC).
Woke indoctrination is common in the public schools, even in centrist areas, because school officials tend to be left-wing even in areas where most people are moderates or conservatives.
Woke people often despise America — claiming racism is “baked into” it — and they praise foreign tyrants while demeaning heroes who made America better. BLM protesters tore down the statue of Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco on Juneteenth in 2021. Grant is the general who did the most to defeat the Confederacy in the Civil War. Later, as president of the United States, he appointed black people and Native Americans to office and tried to protect blacks against racist violence in the South, even though keeping federal troops in the South to protect blacks was costly and unpopular in the North. Grant’s contributions to black freedom were so great that he was celebrated by the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. “To him, more than to any other man, the Negro owes his enfranchisement,” Douglass said. Douglass eulogized Grant as “a man too broad for prejudice, too humane to despise the humblest, too great to be small at any point. In him the Negro found a protector, the Indian a friend, a vanquished foe a brother, an imperiled nation a savior.”
The reason for tearing down his statue was that he once briefly owned a slave that he had been given. But he voluntarily freed that slave in 1859, before the Civil War, and long before slavery was abolished.
By contrast, BLM protesters have left alone the Seattle statue of Soviet Communist dictator Lenin, who relied on slave labor and forced labor on a vast scale.
Wokeness has destroyed some charter schools that previously were a lifeline for students of color, turning “no-excuses” schools where kids learned a lot into chaotic places where kids get into fights and learn little. Obsessed with “social justice,” progressive “educators turned away from the commitments that drove their success — high expectations, relentless attention to great teaching, and safe and orderly classrooms,” an educator observes. “New conceptions rooted in critical theory — trauma-informed pedagogy, a culture of student fragility, and racial essentialism — overtook the K-12 sector.” Students were told they were oppressed and incapable. “Outcomes nosedived.”
Some schools became obsessed with “antiracist” pedagogy. “Antiracist” pedagogy often teaches kids to hate the free-market economy and to support racial discrimination. “To love capitalism is to end up loving racism. To love racism is to end up loving capitalism…Capitalism is essentially racist; racism is essentially capitalist,” claimed Ibram Kendi’s best-selling book, How to Be An Antiracist. That book was praised as a “comprehensive introduction to critical race theory,” by the leading progressive media organ Slate. The “key concept” in Ibram Kendi’s book was that discrimination against whites is the only way to achieve equality: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” wrote Kendi in that book.
