Wokeness is White Supremacy's Last Stand

. . . and slickest move.

Correct me if I’m wrong: the most zealous enforcers of wokeness are white people. The Black superstars of the woke firmament, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates (a beautiful writer, by the way), are published, promoted, and lionized by the white cultural establishment. White wokeness may appear to be a kind of reparations, a voluntary self-abasement in penance for the crimes of, if not our literal ancestors, those from whom we inherit privilege. But if you look underneath that, I think you will see white people trying to get out ahead of the wave of nonwhite awakening—the backwash of colonialism, the others coming for their share of what’s been so cleverly fashioned from their resources—and keep control of the narrative.

You could look at it more charitably and say that by making themselves “allies,” they are simply trying to save themselves from a symmetrically unjust and even bloody wave of revenge. When the other political side points out that antiracism is the new racism, on the one hand yes, indeed it is; on the other hand, it’s awfully convenient to go all “let’s be colorblind” and “the content of your character” just as the stupid firehose of racism is turned around on you. It would be awesome if nonwhite people proved morally superior to white people and magnanimously forgave all the arbitrary crimes inflicted on their ancestors merely for the color of their skin. But it would be understandable if they didn’t. Revenge is terrible, but it’s also natural. We can stand in awe of an MLK or Desmond Tutu who tried to break the cycle. More such courage could save humanity, but we can’t demand it in the nick of time to save OUR necks.

As a white person (or, as I sometimes write in the “race” space, being Jewish, “white until they say I’m not”), I don’t feel personal guilt for being “born this way.” I do recognize with astonishment the vast extent to which Europeans, “euroids,” whether driven by cold or caffeine or crusade or whatever, have dominated, developed, and exploited the planet for the last 500 years. We can try and fail to imagine what the world would be like had some other cultural system—such as the all-encompassing Tibetan Buddhism I got a glimpse of in Sikkim—prevailed. This is the world we’ve got, and one thing you’ve got to give it—it has brought everyone together, for better and for worse. Our 30-year-old trekking guide in Sikkim was a yak herder with an iPhone—and a conservation filmmaker and a scholar of Buddhism. The last 500 years made his life possible too.

Let go and trust, white people. You don’t always have to be at the front of the room. Lay down that burden. You don’t have to be woke, and you don’t have to be anti-woke. Just be a mensch, okay?