My final publish on this collection on We Have By no means Been Woke by Musa al-Gharbi ended by mentioning one other type of symbolic capital very priceless to symbolic capitalists, notably with the arrival of victimhood tradition – what al-Gharbi calls totemic capital. As he describes the idea,
In sociological phrases, a totem is a sacred image that represents a individuals; it marks an essence they’re uniquely bonded to; it connects their previous with the current; it hyperlinks the fates of totem bearers and endows them with distinct social proprieties. If we perceive labels like “Black,” “LGBTQ ,” “disabled,” “woman,” and so forth as serving a perform akin to totems in modern victimhood tradition, then we will outline “totemic capital” because the epistemic and ethical authority afforded to a person on the idea of bearing a number of of those totems—that’s, on the idea of claimed or perceived membership in a traditionally marginalized or deprived group.
So as to wield this totemic capital, elites have a powerful incentive to put declare to as many of those totems as they will. However, al-Gharbi says, the lives and circumstance of elites from minority backgrounds are extra just like their fellow elites than to different minorities. Put one other means, a member of the elite who’s Black is has extra in widespread with an elite who’s white by advantage of being a fellow elite, than they’ve in widespread with a nonelite who can also be Black by advantage of their shared race:
In advantage of those background traits, these “representatives” usually grew up in communities and houses very completely different from these of most different African Individuals. Their social networks, schooling ranges, and professions are uncharacteristic of most different African Individuals. Their materials pursuits and worldviews are sometimes demonstrably out of step with most different African Individuals too.
Makes an attempt to achieve totemic capital additionally grow to be an escalating standing wrestle:
Removed from utilizing their elite place to meaningfully assist genuinely deprived members of the teams they declare affiliation with, symbolic capitalists usually try and leverage collective identities within the service of their particular person profit. Discussions activate what I am entitled to on the idea of my identification claims. These claims are, themselves, predicated on pitting ladies in opposition to males, Blacks in opposition to whites, LGBTQ Individuals in opposition to cisgender heterosexuals, whereby one occasion bears collective guilt, and the opposite collective entitlements, on the idea of previous or ongoing victimization. Even traditionally marginalized and deprived teams are sometimes competitively set in opposition to each other, with exchanges usually devolving right into a type of “oppression Olympics.” Who had it worse traditionally—Blacks, homosexuals, or ladies? Who has it worse immediately? What number of stigmatized identities can I declare in contrast with you?
This totemic capital is usually used to as a method of bolstering one’s credibility or enhancing one’s prospects:
Individuals try and leverage totemic capital by making claims launched by phrases like, “As a [insert totemic identification here], I think/feel/desire …,” beneath the implicit expectation that their private ideas, emotions, or wishes will likely be given extra weight than they in any other case would in advantage of their affiliation with a traditionally marginalized or deprived group.
Others try and exert totemic capital by suggesting that some slight to them personally is definitely a slight in opposition to their group – tied to the historical past of oppression, exploitation, or marginalization in opposition to “people like them” – or else suggesting that some sort of boon to them personally is definitely an incredible “win” for “people like them” extra broadly.
Different occasions, claims are made within the kind, “[Insert totemic identification here] people think/feel/want …,” the place the assertion of what the individuals in query want, imagine, and so forth is derived not from cited and strong empirical proof however apparently from some quasi-mystical connection that unites different group members to at least one one other—permitting the claimant’s personal ideas, emotions, preferences, and experiences to be held up as consultant of “their people” as a complete (and not using a must empirically examine and substantiate how most others within the group assume, really feel, or want with respect to the problem at hand).
This additionally creates an incentive for individuals to attempt to declare membership in a gaggle with higher totemic capital than the group into which they had been born. Rachel Dolezal is probably probably the most notorious case lately, however al-Gharbi additionally describes many extra such situations, akin to Margaret Seltzer, BethAnn Mclaughlin, Satchuel Cole, Natasha Bannan, Raquel Saraswati, Jessica Krug, Kelly Kean Sharp, Andrea Lee Smith, CV Vitolo-Haddad, and Tom MacMaster. Summing up these instances, al-Gharbi notes:
Throughout the board, these actors had been engaged in social justice–oriented work. In all instances, they might have accomplished the identical work as white individuals—however they acknowledged that their work wouldn’t be obtained and interpreted the identical means had been it not for the ruse. It will be unlikely to have the identical influence. It will be unlikely to be as nicely revered. They wished the ethical and epistemic authority that comes with being a totem bearer.
And these behaviors are each enabled and incentivized by woke tradition:
Sure parts of latest “victimhood culture” facilitated their ruses: the insistence on accepting identification claims uncritically and nonjudgmentally, the taboo in opposition to doubting (not to mention demanding proof for) victimization claims, the extra common tendency to put subjective interpretations and expertise largely above scrutiny. Whereas meant to serve the genuinely susceptible, these norms allow – and the rewards of possessing totemic capital create the incentives for – performances like these of Sharp, Vitolo-Haddad, and who is aware of what number of others (there may be some proof that these behaviors could also be pretty widespread).
Totemic capital additionally creates a scenario the place elites typically “consecrate” particular elites of minority backgrounds. As al-Gharbi has mentioned, woke elites of minority backgrounds share way more of their worldview with fellow elites than with “normies” of the identical identification traits. This creates an ungainly scenario for elites – the poor and susceptible populations in whose identify they declare to behave overwhelmingly reject the woke framework and the values of progressive elites. In response to this, elites will insist that the true voices of the struggling communities could be discovered amongst their fellow elites, moderately than from among the many unwashed lots:
Insofar as they affirm their most well-liked narratives in regards to the world, elites from majority teams have a powerful curiosity in “consecrating” elites of different backgrounds as “authentic” voices for “their people.” Elites from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds have robust materials and emotional incentives to grasp themselves on this means as nicely. Because of this overlap, as we are going to see, elites from traditionally marginalized and deprived teams find yourself enjoying a pivotal function in legitimizing broader elite makes an attempt to counterpoint themselves and undermine rivals within the identify of social justice.
These “consecrated” elites assist the values and narratives which might be dominant among the many (principally white) progressive elite class:
As a result of the work produced by consecrated voices is usually cosmetically radical or subversive—usually extremely essential of the US, or varied symbolic capitalist establishments, or white individuals, or males, or cisgender heterosexuals, or socioeconomic elites or liberals—it may be straightforward to fall beneath the phantasm that consecrated creatives are producing genuinely edgy work or talking uncomfortable truths to energy. In actuality, they’re usually producing precisely what their major viewers needs.
The extra these consecrated elites proceed to push this most well-liked progressive narrative, the extra assist they acquire from the prevailing elite institution:
The upper they rise, the extra mainstream elites aggressively defend them from challenges by dissenters, the extra they get softball questions in more and more fawning interviews and profiles, and the more cash they make. They might accumulate a rising listing of haters, notably amongst these aligned with the Proper, however they grow to be largely untouchable nonetheless—not less than, as long as they hold telling elites what they wish to hear.
However this assist for intellectuals of minority background depends of whether or not or not these intellectuals are talking in assist of the popular narrative. However not each mental with the correct totemic attributes really toes this line:
Ought to consecrated minority voices produce content material that’s genuinely difficult or threatening for mainstream symbolic capitalists—one thing that’s really disagreeable for them to have interaction with, one thing that powerfully calls into query moderately than affirming their most well-liked values and narratives, one thing that threatens their pursuits—the offending intellectuals and creatives will usually discover themselves instantly going through harsh criticism from the individuals who used to reward them and, sooner moderately than later, widespread neglect from mainstream symbolic capitalists. Pissed off elites typically reply to unacceptable deviance not by rethinking their very own positions however by consecrating and subsequently deferring to another person as an alternative – somebody perceived to be extra congenial to producing the sort of narratives they wish to hear. And there may be all the time some bold “diverse” particular person ready within the wings to do exactly that.
One such instance al-Gharbi describes is the sociologist William Julius Wilson, who identified that whereas the coverage measures supported by the woke akin to “civil rights laws and affirmative action” had managed to “significantly improve the prospects of upper-middle-class and wealthy Black people, there seemed to be little to no measurable socioeconomic benefit to working-class and poor Blacks.” This discovering was not in assist of the narrative most well-liked by the elites, and moderately than rethink their place they shunned Wilson in favor of different writers who affirmed their preexisting beliefs.
Thus, woke assist for the voices of minority intellectuals relies upon critically on if these intellectuals flatter the political beliefs of the woke:
Those that defy symbolic capitalists’ preferences and priorities are deemed unworthy of being taken critically. Opponents of “Latinx”—together with (maybe particularly) if they’re Hispanic or Latino—are forged as homophobic, misogynistic, and transphobic and due to this fact worthy of being “dismissed.” More and more, racial and ethnic minorities who reject symbolic capitalists’ most well-liked narratives on race, or who vote for the “wrong” political candidate, are branded as “multiracially white” or “politically white”—that’s, they stop to be minorities in any respect. As then–Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden memorably put it, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re voting for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
When surveys revealed the overwhelming majority of individuals of Hispanic or Latino background had by no means even heard of the time period “Latinx,” and of those that had, the overwhelming majority hated it, this didn’t trigger woke intellectuals to reevaluate their very own use of the time period. As a substitute, a correctly concentrated member of the elite arose to bolster what the woke wished to listen to:
In an interview with the New Yorker, one Latinx-identifying symbolic capitalist described detractors of the time period because the “weakest link toward true progress, reciprocity and inclusivity.” “For that,” he continued, “you are dismissed. Vamoose. Begone. Get to steppin’. Corran camino. And take your ****** misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic family members with you.”
One other case could be when Out journal, a long-running homosexual publication, launched an article arguing that whereas Peter Thiel may sleep with males, he can’t be thought of actually homosexual as a result of he didn’t correctly assist left wing politics. In keeping with this mindset, being homosexual wasn’t merely a matter of an individual’s non-public sexual orientation or preferences – it was a full-fledged political undertaking to result in leftist objectives, and anybody who wasn’t on board with this political undertaking due to this fact didn’t be actually homosexual.
Nevertheless, al-Gharbi additionally factors out that this doesn’t imply such consecrated elites don’t really imagine what they are saying. He factors to the case of Ta-Nehisi Coates, somebody whose writings are held in very excessive regard by woke elites. Nonetheless, Coates himself struggled to simply accept the reception to his work – discovering himself bewildered over the truth that the viewers most receptive to and in assist of his concepts was…wealthy white individuals – the very individuals Coates thought his work would undermine. Unable to make sense of why the message he thought of to be subversive was additionally precisely what rich white institution elites wished to listen to, this “ultimately led Coates to resign from his post at The Atlantic in favor of a faculty position at flagship HBCU Howard University.”
General, al-Gharbi sums up the dynamics of totemic capital on this means:
Nevertheless, orthogonal to any aspiration to uplift hitherto underappreciated voices and views, honest although it might need been, these strikes had been additionally clearly a gambit by aspiring elites to delegitimize institution rivals and improve their very own picture—efforts sustained via the fixed appropriation and policing of others’ “authenticity.” The express politics of deference usually serve to masks the precise energy dynamics at play. Consecrated intellectuals and creatives should not those steering the ship—their prosperous, extremely educated, white, liberal audiences are. And so they have by no means been woke. And neither have we.
However this leads us to the massive query connecting al-Gharbi’s work collectively – why is it that the ostensibly woke have by no means actually been woke, within the sense of making an attempt to deliver a few fairer and extra simply world? That will likely be reviewed within the subsequent publish.
