It deals with various issues currently in discussion around "wokeism," the most recent label for what conservatives derided for decades as "political correctness." "Cancel culture" is a relative concept. Which mainly refers to efforts of people trying to be less racist and sexist and to criticize conditions and practices promoted racism and sexism.
It's an interesting survey of the issues connected to what we're calling "wokeism" these days. On the one hand, any left politics that carries on any part of the socialist or New Deal traditions would have to pay attention to class dynamics as a central issue. And I'm still part of the team that thinks the arc of the universe bends toward One Big Union by-and-by. So, if I were going to make an argument about what's True Left, I would insist on a hardcore pro-labor element.
Like pretty much every concept in politics practiced by mortals, concepts can used, abused, instrumentalized, altered, and condemned for a variety of purposes ranging from high principle to ultra-prgramatic and/or corrupt politics of a given moment. But since all practical politics requires some kind of prioritization and tactical calculation, finding the best balance of issues and approaches to support the labor movement, fighting against racial and gender discrimination, and other left and left-center concerns like combatting climate change, opposition war and nuclear weapons proliferation, and defending democracy and human rights.
He also takes on the arguments of pop philosopher Jordan Peterson and some of his nonsense about postmodernism and left "political correctness." The talk includes an interesting an informative discussion of the memory of the Holocaust in German politics, although I would describe what he calls German "guilt-pride" in a different way.
Here's a commentary from 2020 by the late Michael Brooks, The Problem With “White Fragility” (TMBS 146) 07/05/2020, dealing with a case he persuasively portrays as a "woke" business trend that actually does disconnect anti-discrimination politics from a particular subjective brand of "wokeness." Sadly, less than three weeks after he made this video, he died suddenly of a previously undiagnosed medical condition. Broadly speaking, it focuses on the way "wokeness" relates to politics as current practiced by the European and American left.
He makes reference to Cedrick-Michael Simmons' article, I'm Black and Afraid of 'White fragility' The Bellows 06/22/2021
This is another podcast on Wokeism and the left hosted by Ana Kasparian, who started and co-hosted this particular show before his untimely death, Wokeness Is Hurting Democrats 05/02/2021:
Here's a third podcast, this one about the versions of the discussion going on in Germany and Austria, put on by an Austrian social-democratic organization. The label more often used there is "identity politics," which of course is also used in the US and other countries, as well. Die Selbstgerechten und die linke Identitätspolitik BSABund 06/10/2021:
Kaveh Yazdani covers the German discussion in The poverty of mainstream universalism and exclusive identity politics Open Democracy 03/23/2021.
In the American context, the history of self-identified Black Nationalists like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and groups supporting types of minority ethnic nationalism is important background. That trend stressed that it was the responsibility of whites who wanted to support black civil rights to concentrate on changing the perceptions and actions of white people.
Even in contexts of multiracial civil rights groups and labor unions, it was considered very important that whites needed to recognize the reality of white racism and how it functioned. And fighting for civil rights has always involved confronting a very real white power structure. And part of the functioning of that white power structure, which broadly means the same as the common phrase "structural racism" today, has always been to persuade whites who are otherwise disadvantaged by existing conditions that siding with the ruling elites on the basis that the existing structures allowing them to not only feel superior to non-whites, but provided at least some kind of material advantage (white privilege).
One among many examples of this are the slave patrols in pre-Civil War times that used nonslaveowning whites to patrol for black people who might be escaped slaves, and in practice gave poor whites the opportunity to play "master" by arbitrarily abusing random African-Americans under cover of state authority. Another would be mine owners who employed only white workers but used African-Americans as strikebreakers during labor conflicts.
So it is important for activists on the left or anywhere else on the political spectrum to remember that even the most conscientious whites may have an unfortunate tendency to be convinced that downplaying the urgency of civil rights issues in order to spare the tender feelings of other whites. Racial and gender discrimination is very often intimately connected with class and economic conditions. But the notion that an economic "rising tide lifts all boats" will solve discrimination problems is false. Affluent African-Americans, for instance, are far more at risk of being arbitrarily executed by police on a traffic stop than whites of the same economic status.
That doesn't eliminate the inevitable prioritizations and tactical calculations of politics. But discrimination and institutional racism and sexism won't go away without opponents combatting them directly. And, yes, part of that means directly confronting whites with the reality of those problems. That doesn't means that politicians and activists have to be stupid or mean about it. But, yes, the only way to avoid pissing off any white people is not to oppose racist policies and practices.
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