"Stay Woke"

The origins of a controversial word

"Huddie Ledbetter from Lead Belly, A Life in Pictures" by trudeau is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

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In 1931, a group of black and white teenagers were riding a freight train in the Deep South of the US. Some of the white boys tried to push a black teenager off the train. He and the other black youths fought back and won. The whites jumped off the train and looked for a sheriff, telling him they were the victims of an assault. The sheriff rounded up a posse and stopped the train in Alabama. He arrested the black teenagers, along with a couple of white girls, who were taken to jail. Once there, the girls claimed they had been raped by the black boys.

The case was rushed through in three trials heard by all-white juries in Scottsboro, Alabama. Eight of the nine black boys were found guilty and sentenced to death, despite no medical evidence of the rape. A long period of appeals and retrials followed, backed by anti-racists and communists. Private investigations revealed the girls had probably been working as prostitutes. They would have been vulnerable under the Mann Act, which made crossing state lines for prostitution a felony.

Charges were eventually dropped against four of the nine defendants, particularly after one of the girls admitted she and her friend had made up the charges of rape to avoid going to prison themselves. Despite the cases collapsing, one of the black boys was shot in prison and permanently disabled. Two escaped from prison and another spent four decades in hiding before being pardoned. It was an ugly incident. In 2013, Alabama issued posthumous pardons to three of the men who hadn’t had their convictions overturned by that time.

In 1939, blues singer Lead Belly (Huddie William Ledbetter) recorded a song about the affair, called Scottsboro Boys, after meeting some of the victims of the mistrials. He had been born in Louisiana around 1888 or 1889 before moving to Texas. He served time in Louisiana, where his singing was recorded in prison by folklorist John Lomax. He was released soon afterwards and took a job as Lomax’s driver during the Depression before becoming a professional musician in New York. He is probably best known nowadays for his version of a traditional song In the Pines, which he recorded in the 1940s. Kurt Cobain’s spine-chilling version from 1993 on Nirvana’s Unplugged album was called Where Did You Sleep Last Night?

Lead Belly’s song about the Scottsboro boys is a warning to what he called coloured people (using the idiom of the 1930s): “go to Alabama and you better watch out.” At the end of the song, he discusses the history in a spoken-word passage when he expands the advice: “stay woke.” He warns American blacks, particularly those from Harlem in New York, to “keep their eyes open” in Alabama. This is one of the earliest uses of the word “woke” in the modern sense meaning “alert to racial prejudice.”

The origins of the word as common-sense advice to be aware that life is unfair and dangerous will probably be surprising to many people who have gone down anti-woke rabbit holes. The reason is simple. In the 21st century, “staying woke” has been adopted by social science departments at prestigious universities in the US and a new theory-heavy version of the worldview has spread from there. It has often gained associations with “cancel culture.”

In today’s essay, I want to present an argument that the issues with “wokeness” are much more due to serious problems in the social sciences rather they are to do with any question marks over being aware of injustices in an unfair world. The argument hinges on a distinction between a common-sense wokeness (CSW) that Lead Belly would have recognised and post-Marxist theorising (PMT) that would have had the blues singer, who was more familiar with rowdy gigs in red-light districts than he was with fancy university faculties, scratching his head.

Karl Marx, the prophet of communism, is considered one of the founders of sociology. His hedgehog-like theories about class conflict being the motor of history and the inevitability of a communist revolution are tremendously attractive for university lecturers in fields like sociology. It gives them a skeleton key to criticise actually existing societies and helps elevate their status to designers of a new and better world. There is one main problem: Marxism has a terrible predictive record, as has become clear since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, many sociology lecturers have increasingly sought to maintain the status that Marxism gave them with various theoretical constructions, including post-modernism and a very cerebral approach to power imbalances. The people who do this often try to set themselves up as a new power centre, who can decide which words other people can and can’t use.

Sterile debates about language are just the beginning, though. There is a straight line between obscure theories about the “decolonisation of knowledge” and leftists making excuses for terrorists slaughtering Israelis. This dangerous worldview was developed by academics who scorned the idea that we can use scientific tools to understand the world outside our heads while promoting relativism, Their unreflective attitude meant they were much too reluctant to test their ideas.

The power grab by social theorists is often hidden behind extreme verbosity and impenetrable prose. As the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in the 1880s: “They muddy the water to make it seem deep.” Physicist Alan Sokal made the point spectacularly in the 1990s when he successfully convinced a leading academic journal in the social sciences to publish a parody of its shallow and pompous style, which he later ruthlessly exposed.

More fruitful approaches for the social sciences could involve taking the hard sciences seriously, as Sokal and others (particularly the late biologist E.O. Wilson) have argued. At the very least, social scientists should think hard about feedback loops to strengthen their work, with the possibility of discarding failed ideas.

When the social sciences are done well, they often harness the strength of reflexivity (and its cousin, reflective practice), as French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu realised long before the Berlin Wall fell. Sokal and Jean Bricman notably thanked Bourdieu for reading their manuscript on the book they wrote about the physicist’s prank in the 1990s. Social scientists should also read the thoughts of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein on what we can and can’t do with language.

There are parallels with the approach we suggest for dealing with populism - we should always be critical of the claims by narcissistic leaders to embody the true voice of the people, who will always be diverse rather than speaking with one voice. Instead,we should nurture institutions in the political realm. These can provide some limited political capital for a short time, but can also revoke it. In the academic realm, we should be critical of claims by academics to be the true voice of certain underprivileged groups; and ask them to test their ideas.

The excesses of PMT (unreadable prose; power grabs by academics; a serious absence of contact with the world outside our heads; shrill accusations of fascism against the likes of Wilson when he called for sociologists to read some biology in the 1970s; and developing ideas that can be used to justify genocide and terrorism) can often lead to rather strange positions. These are often exposed and amplified by anti-globalists and the propaganda arms of authoritarian governments to discredit any sense of solidarity or sympathy with those born into unfortunate circumstances.

The far-right strategy is based on picking culture-war battles around the worst excesses of left-wing academics in the hopes that some percentage of the population will start defending the right to be a bigot - something that is sold as being an act of rebellion against well-educated progressive elites. Conspiracy theories about “cultural Marxism” are an important entry point to the rabbit hole. These speculative narratives often have antisemitic overtones.

Bringing the superficiality of theory-laden social sciences into the sunlight, along with the far-right strategy of exploiting sloppy academic work, shows us a very simple way of sidestepping the rabbit hole. Life really isn’t fair. Maintaining a CSW and socially progressive attitude based on solidarity makes perfect sense. At the same time, we should be alert to the PMT power grab, while remaining aware that bigots and authoritarians who shout loudest about academic excesses don’t have our best interests at heart. The culture-war hysterics are part of the far right’s own power grab.

We can see something similar with feminism. Anti-feminist narratives are another gambit that can attract angry men (particularly those who have had a messy divorce). They will find far-right bigotry at the bottom of that particular rabbit hole.

There is a common-sense feminism, which quite rightly claims that women have had to fight for a seat at the table and that women remain at risk of male violence. Although a lot of the battles have been won, not all of them have been, particularly those around motherhood and the physical safety of women in a male-dominated world. It is perfectly possible to be broadly sympathetic to this point of view, as exemplified by the authors like Helen Lewis and Louise Perry, without accepting some of the stranger feminist theories to emerge from universities in recent years.

We can extend this general approach to the trans community. I have never mentioned trans issues on this blog before because I think it is a tragedy that attitudes to people struggling with their gender identity have emerged as a culture-war topic in the last few years. I want my trans friends to know that I have their back. It is also worth reminding readers that gender dysphoria is real.

As allies, we should listen sympathetically to trans voices when they tell us about their lives. The community’s testimony of moving between different worlds will always be fascinating. We can all learn a lot from their experiences - much more than we will ever learn from those gender theorists who think that their colleagues in the biology department are all fascists. We should be sympathetic when members of the trans community tell us how harmful they can find thoughtless language, without necessarily rushing to criminalise this speech.

Having said that, I think we should also be sympathetic to detrans people, as well as the parents of children struggling with gender dysphoria. It shouldn’t be considered “transphobic” if mothers ask for evidence that early transition is the best path for teenagers who find themselves struggling with their gender identity, particularly if we strongly commit to watching their backs, no matter what decisions they take.

The attitude suggested here is similar to the techniques used in open-source intelligence (OSINT). We should be open to listening to the testimony of a wide range of people about their personal experiences, while being slow to suggest a model that explains it all. It is important to avoid being judgmental on issues we might not fully understand yet. This evidence-heavy but theory-light approach is the opposite of the way that post-Marxist social scientists often work.

When it comes to feminism and the trans community, religious people have their own rabbit holes that can lead to far-right conclusions. The entry point is often based about concerns that modern society appears to be eroding traditional values. If you find yourself in this position, it is worth spending some time thinking about how the apostles treated people who fell outside conventional gender norms during Roman times. According to the Book of Acts, when Philip the Apostle met a eunuch from Ethiopia, he accepted him with an open-heart, taught him how to interpret the Bible and baptised him - a very different approach to the judgmental one suggested in the Old Testament. Philip the Apostle’s example deserves to be better known in these times of fierce culture wars!

It is also worth paying attention to Frans De Waal, a primatologist who has written about gender. He says that sex is indeed real. However, there are always some percentage of bonobos and chimpanzees (our closest relatives in the animal kingdom) who act in ways that are atypical for their sex. Their peers simply accept this behaviour, as well as including the atypical apes as full members of their groups. Rather than the black-and-white narratives of the culture warriors, the world outside our heads shows many shades of grey.

One passage that jumped out at me in De Waal’s book stresses the fundamental importance of motherhood for mammals:

The way mothers bond with offspring has been likened to falling in love. But this gets the evolutionary order wrong, so we’d better turn it around. Maternal love came before the romantic variety. Female mammals of all shapes and sizes, from mice to whales, have been giving birth to helpless young for millions of years. Under the influence of a hormonal cocktail of estrogen, prolactin, and oxytocin, a pregnant female’s body prepares itself for the new life…

All other social bonds piggyback on this ancient brain chemistry. It works for both genders, including nurturing fathers and the male-female pair-bond of some species, such as ours. When young people fall in love, they duplicated the mother-child connection…

Maternal attachment is the mother of all bonds… [and] it may have served as the crucible for the evolution of social intelligence. For one thing, a mother will be better at her job if she recognizes her offspring’s needs and knows what they can and cannot do…

Taking the perspective of others has traditionally been hailed as a uniquely human ability, but it is now well documented in apes and a few other large-brained species, such as members of the corvid (crow) family). A recent study showed that apes even grasp that their perception of reality might differ from those of others…

After a few examples of apes taking the perspective of others, the primatologist continues:

All this is to say that putting oneself in another’s shoes, which represents an enormous leap in social intelligence, may well have started with the mother-offspring relation. This also holds for the evolution of sociality and cooperation in general. I’m convinced, for example, that the amount of ink that scientists have spent on the “puzzle of altruism” could have been greatly reduced had we considered how mothers treat offspring. Altruism is a puzzle only because of our assumption that animals have no reason to worry about others. Egoism is the way to get ahead, so why should they care about anybody else? But most animals ignore this advice. They warn others against predators, share food with the hungry, slow down for limping companions, and defend each other against attackers. Apes have even been known to jump into cold water to save a drowning companion or to chase off a formidable predator, such as a leopard, which has attacked one of them. Afterward they lick their mates’ wounds and wave away the flies attracted to them. How to explain such concern for others?

De Waal’s words help tie together all the words in this week’s column. What we have called “common-sense wokeness” is really just ordinary mammalian solidarity. The anarcho-capitalist members of the far right, who want to remove any trace of solidarity from a market-based economy have a misguided mission. Not only do markets have limits, as we discussed here, but solidarity with others is millions of years older than the human discovery of the benefits of value creation and innovation.

Since mammalian solidarity is far older than humanity itself, it should be considered part of our factory settings. This explains why we so many of us feel troubled and fascinated by psychopaths and narcissists who lack empathy. The social scientists who want to rebrand solidarity and set themselves up as its high priests appear even more shocking in this context.

Despite many victories, motherhood remains a pressing issue for feminists. How can we support young women and their partners when they decide to start families? How can we help mothers who want to carry on working after maternity leave keep their careers on track? And how can we best help women who decide to re-enter the workforce after a period as stay-at-home mums?

Let me give you one small example from Spain, where I live. Mothers can claim full pay for 16 weeks in maternity leave. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends mothers breastfeed for the first six months of life (26 weeks). There is an obvious mismatch here that could easily be fixed without any need for poorly written social theory at all. More generous maternity leave would lead to healthier babies and happier mothers, which would be good for society as a whole.

To conclude today’s column, where does wokeness fit on the left/right spectrum? The more theoretical side clearly belongs on the hard left, but a more common-sense approach should be equally at home on the soft left or even the liberal-minded soft right. The most vigorous opposition often comes from other members of the hard right, particularly those of an anarcho-capitalist bent, who hate solidarity.

Strangely, hard-right separatists in places like Catalonia sometimes adopt socially progressive attitudes in order to draw a veil over the inherently right-wing nature of nationalism. Finally, it is worth mentioning that feminism (a progressive movement) is split on the best way to deal with the issues raised by the trans community and gender dysphoria - a topic that is far outside the scope of this column.

I want to avoid any follow-up discussions about this blog becoming transphobic, so the comments on this week’s column are closed. Stay woke, folks! But remember that it is possible to be an ally while also thinking critically about the theoretical side of progressive politics. See you next week!

Further Reading (Fiction)

Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Further Reading (Non-Fiction)

Time to Think: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock’s Gender Service for Children by Hannah Barnes

Learn to Write Badly: How to Succeed in the Social Sciences by Michael Billig

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste by Pierre Bourdieu (translated by Richard Nice)

Intellectual Impostures by Jean Bricman and Alan Sokal

Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault by Stephen R. Hicks

Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights by Helen Lewis

Crossing: A Transgender Memoir by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry

Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell

Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans De Waal

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by E. O. Wilson

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