Need a reason to tell your kid’s woke teacher to “knock it off” in the next parent-teacher conference? Well, the CDC weakened its COVID vaccination findings (save more lives by putting the 65+ age group ahead of essential workers), adopting a “woke” panel’s advice; “racial and ethnic minority groups are under-represented among adults 65 and over.” Thus, only Americans over 75 got the first vaccines – a clear case of putting woke before science. Ouch!
I reject woke-ism and identity politics as anti-American: our social fabric was woven by Christians and humanists, who shared a belief in the value and agency of all men (equal, independent, and free to make their own choices). This social ethos made America the vanguard in mankind’s march away from identity (all roads lead to Rome) toward humanity (one world). Sadly, IYI (intellectual yet insular) academia has “un-learned” this truth.
A so-called expert on medical ethics at Penn, Harold Schmidt, argued the woke position: “older populations are whiter, society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer, [and we should] level the playing field a bit.” His identity politics blinds him to the real world, where poverty is color blind but the root cause of bad health and short lives. Schmidt’s “level playing field” means to exclude poor whites in red MAGA hats.
Schmidt is an identitarian, who sees poor black “victims” and poor white “under-achievers.” His woke morality seeks a radical shift in welfare; away from the “merely” disabled, orphaned, un-employed and widowed. What if the CMS (Medicaid and Medicare) levels the playing field? The guess here is those (mostly white) open-up Michigan folks become a national movement, and angry guns on the Capital steps (a bad idea) goes from “liberal” made-up fear to probable.
The sad irony here is that US academics drank the woke Koolaid, rejected the Enlightenment and Reformation as “racist” constructs, and pushed the 1619 Project as a complete history. This pot party sophistry is ha-ha funny in Animal House, but unforgivable at Penn, and it won’t end well for IYI academics. US history is the study of ideals espoused in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution – not the footnote of Monticello’s reliance on slave labor.
If black Americans are discomfited by the Jefferson Memorial, cancel culture is the wrong solution because racial/ethnic majorities resent minority over-reach. This was the case in South Africa, where a black majority (87%) rejected Apartheid, and in Iraq, where a Sunni minority (29%) couldn’t sustain Baathist control. Forget the moral arguments, because the “might” of sheer numbers determined what was “right” in both countries. Fair or not, minorities are obliged to assimilate, not insinuate.
The cancel culture of the 1619 Project is unworkable in an America that is still 65% white and rapidly adding Asians and Latinos, who bring their own cultural traditions. These minorities willingly assimilate; happily adopting English, seeing opportunity, and wanting the American Dream for their kids. It’s absurd to think Asians care even a little about the 1619 Project when “leveling the playing field” means their kids can’t get into Harvard. C’mon man!
That expression is the quality that makes Joe Biden a tolerable Democrat. He rejects woke ideology and socialist vision, owing his election to being a “middle-class guy” that worked with Dixiecrats and blue-collar Catholics. Wanna take Washington off the dollar? C’mon man! Wanna deny a retired redneck Medicare? C’mon man! I may not have voted for Biden, but I trust him to dope-slap woke ideas with C’mon man. Sure, it’s a bunch of malarkey, but C’mon man!