Video: Opinion | Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off?

I have such a hard time with somebody hanging all of their politics on. Like, I want to be able to say the R word. I'm like, not even taxes. Did woke go too far? I've noticed people are saying the R word again. And pronouns in emails no longer feel so obligatory. Lately, it feels like we're being a little less careful about what we say and who we might offend, both on the right and now maybe also on the left. So where are we with language policing and are we done being politically correct. To find out, I talk to my friends, writer and culture critic Aminatou Sow and New York Magazine writer Brock Coylar. Hi, thank you so much for being here with me. We're going to talk about these shifts that feel like they're happening specifically around language and political correctness, things that some people might also call woke or not woke. And so to start, I wanted to play a game where I'm going to say a word, and you guys are going to tell me if it is alive, dying or dead. Let's do it. O.K. Problematic. Dead should die. Should die. But it's around. What I'm saying. It's like it's around but it should die. Triggered. That one's going to come back. It's going to come back, but it's dead. I still see quite a bit of that, especially on the internet, which is really disturbing because it's like trigger warning. And then here's a video of some horrifically violent thing. But it's why word does not work. It's why I love it. I'm just like, thank you for triggering me with the trigger. Yes, it's like the reaction came seconds before. So I love it. Microaggression. Dead. Dead. O.K. Safe space. Dead. Dead. Folks with an "x." Dead. Never alive. Never I mean, that one was. I mean, talk about a ridiculous like, that really makes me so mad. It makes me sick because I know people who have dutifully and earnestly used that, and it's like, oh my gosh. What about Latinx? I mean, I think that one's difficult because I think for a lot of Latin people or Latin queer people, it feels good. And for some of them, it actually doesn't. And they prefer and I think it can sometimes feel like a Western intervention onto them. I think that one's complicated. I think it should still be like, I think people use it. It can live if it wants to. O.K, this is the one that will get me canceled. I hate Latinx, and it's very - I talk about this a lot with immigrant friends. It's very much like a diaspora war thing for me where I was it's interesting that you need a word to signal, where you are from. So I don't like it. I would say most of the people that I know don't like it either, and it's just like imprecise to me. I'm just like, what are we. What are we talking about here. O.K, so since we're going to talk about language, I want to start by being on the same page about the language we're using. So when you hear the term politically correct, what comes to mind for you. What does that mean for you. And is it the same thing as woke. Are we talking about the same thing. I think that's what I was going to say. When I hear politically correct, I think I mean, I kind of hate the word woke, but I do think that woke has almost supplanted politically correct as the thing we're talking about when we're talking about this stuff. But yeah, I think yeah, I would say that woke obviously has had a lot of different transitions as a word and who uses it. And how and to mean what. And I would say that I felt like it seemed like a positive thing to be woke five years ago, and now it doesn't feel that way anymore. And I'm curious, have you noticed this shift and where are you noticing it. Have you noticed a shift Yeah I mean, I think when I'm trying to describe my politics to people, I often say that I have some anti-woke sensibilities. And by saying that, I think what I'm often trying to do is distance myself from the woke of five years ago, this kind of way too earnest, super PC, kind of cringe resistance culture whose politics I mostly support, but the way that it's carried out is cringe to me, I think cringe is the best word. What about you, Amina? Yeah, cringe. Cringe is a really good word. Thank you to the young people for that one. I do think that language moves very fast, and I think that sometimes too it when I hear people use certain words, all it does is like carbon date them for me. So if somebody says the word PC I'm like, got it. Like you're 1990 and before person. We love that last century. And if you say if you're saying if you're like a different kind of person and you say woke, I'm like, great, you're a new century person, but are we all. Do the words mean the same things to us. And that's not always. Does it go further than time. Like if a white person says to you, I'm woke, what do you think of that. I mean, I'm laughing. I am always, I am always like it has. It has been ridiculous since day one. I just want to be so clear about that for me because I don't know what they're saying. I was like, are you saying that I should trust you. Or are you saying that you are considerate about people, which is not what woke has meant in the Black community, at least where it originated from. So I've never known what that means. It's always just like it's very much like the dad from "Get Out." I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could best president in my lifetime, hands down. Cool I don't know what that means. And then also, now you have people on have people on the right. Also like using this word woke to mean something completely different than what I think a mainstream Democrat is saying. So it is very confusing to me. But I also feel like there is something and it does have to do with age, but I feel like there's something generationally that is happening that is interesting in terms of how people think about the superficial signaling of their politics that is changing. And it's kind of what I want to talk about. I just I really want to know if you guys agree that there's something happened during Trump's first administration where people were like, this is not us. Like, whatever this man's values are, we need to prove that it's not the same as the values of white progressives. And so we're going to knit pussyhats and we're white people are going to do crazy things read books about anti-racism, and they're going to post black squares on Instagram, and it's all going to be about you're triggering so many bad memories right now, and it's all going to be about signaling and a very I think at the time, a very well-intentioned compassionate way that Trump's values were not the same as many Americans values and how could we draw those distinctions. And then I think maybe during the Biden administration, a lot of the things that signaled that became part of the institutions you had to put horrifying pronouns and the ways in which universities were grappling with all of this. And I would say maybe now, because so much of the signaling has been institutionalized, there's a rebellion against that from both sides. Do you guys see that. I agree with that. But I do think that black square moment. I think we're like that still happens. Like we still get stuck in these virtue signaling, woke social media cycles where it's like any issue that comes up, there's this pressure to post and then you post these infographics, and then all of a sudden there's a realization two months into whatever conflict it is that those aren't doing anything. So then we start to get mad at people who are only posting the infographics, and then it stops. And then the next time a big issue comes up, we do it all again. Like, it just feels like monotonous Yeah, I agree with that. Like, I remember the black square day so well because I didn't know what it was. And then one day I woke up and it was just and I was like, great, now you've told me exactly who I need to unfollow on this feed. I just I'm like, I don't need. This is so silly. It's like you're posting a picture because you don't know how to say, I don't have racist values. I'm like, for anyone who doesn't remember black square, can you remind us what black square were? Yeah the black squares were - what was that in protest. It was. Was it George Floyd? Maybe yeah, it was the summer of 2020. Yes the summer around the time of the imagined video. The summer of the troubles, imagine. So, to be fair, it was Covid. Like a lot of things were happening. You have George Floyd getting killed. You have a lot of other protests that are happening around trans issues. But I think that black square specifically was to signal that you were not a racist person, which what a ridiculous way to signal that Brock, how much do you think of this culture. This culture comes out of the internet specifically. And I think it's almost like when we were trying to define woke earlier. I think when I'm thinking about what that means, everything I'm thinking about is happening on the internet. Also, I think to what you were just saying, thinking about that black square moment, it seems silly in retrospect, but it felt very serious at the time to me. I remember getting confronted by a coworker like, I haven't seen you post yet and that post in general, or post the black square, that square. And then we had to have a conversation. And that was really difficult at the time. It was really intense. I also think what you were saying about the Biden years, I think the reason, it feels like we're having this kind of backlash to this culture right now is because of the institutionalization of it in our workplaces and on campuses. And, I don't think even good liberal people feel like the anti-racist training that they're doing in their office is helping anyone, I don't think. I think that there are even people who respect people's pronouns and believe in a non-binary identity or whatever. I don't think that they think that putting it in their signature is helping anyone, and I think they're rolling their eyes and laughing about it in private. Yes I want to know a little bit more the context of where you each come to this from for you. I think Trump being elected was your first semester of college and you had grown up in Tennessee. So how did you think about these things before coming to college. And, how did it change. I mean, I grew up in rural Tennessee, and so I was surrounded by Trump voters at the time. So there was and who pretty were pretty outwardly bigoted in a fairly rural Tennessee area. And arriving on campus in the heat of the 2016 election was I mean, it was just crazy. Like, and for me personally, having finally gotten to a more liberal place, yes, I could start experimenting with the way I looked. And nonbinary identity was really kind of bubbling up. And so I started using they/them pronouns and then pronouns became the big conversation on campus. I mean, you couldn't walk into a classroom without the first day starting with a pronoun. Go around, as they say, going around the circle and saying, hi, I'm Brock and I'm from Tennessee, and I use they/them pronouns. It really exploded in that moment. And I was confronting I was for the first time also, as someone who dreamed of going to a liberal place, confronting other problems within the left, suddenly finding myself amongst like minded people, but also discovering, oh, we don't think the same way about all these topics, and there's going to be pushback on voting for Hillary Clinton or any number of things. We're examples of that I mean, I think who you voted for in the primaries was such a litmus test at the time. The big debate at Northwestern at the time was a professor, had invited someone who worked for ICE to come speak to a classroom. There was a huge protest over that because we were trying to figure out, how open we wanted our dialogues. Was it all, was it O.K to be in dialogue with someone like that. And then, I mean, you grew up. I think you speak five languages. Is that right. Something like that. You grew up in a lot of different places. And then you came to America for college. What was that experience like. I went to an American high school in Nigeria that was very conservative like, run by missionaries, but American curriculum. And then I went to my first experience of being in America was I went to college at the University of Texas at Austin and Austin, I would say a very liberal woke 1.0, woke 2.0 kind of place. But you're still in Texas. And I graduated at the height I graduated high school at the beginning of the Iraq war. So my campus time was very much like a war, war, war, war, war. It was a Middle Eastern studies major. So that conversation's still going on. But I think watching George Bush just kind of sweep through office and be this kind of celebrated like buffoon was a big system shock to me. And I think that's my defining political heartbreak. But yeah. But to the point about language and stuff, I think that being kind of shaped in that late 90s PC madness I was like I was very woke to that because I was like, this is not working. It is so not working if you're just like a regular not addicted to social media person who is just trying to get through the workday. Of course you're upset that they're making you do all this signaling that you're not interested in doing at the place that you come to conduct capitalism to pay your Bills. Like, who cares about this stuff. And so it's a very intense feeling Yeah that's actually why I wanted to go next. The comedian Marc Maron made this joke. I'm going to paraphrase it, but basically like did progressives annoy people into fascism. And I mean, it's possible. It's very possible. And you've done so much reporting on the MAGA right youth movement. And I'm curious what you're seeing there. I mean I wrote a cover story for New York Magazine last year where I went to the inauguration and hung out with the new, young, upwardly mobile, kind of good looking influencer conservatives. And, I mean, language was policing was the thing that they brought up over and over and over again. They wanted the freedom to say the R word or the F word or this was their really their main concern. They wanted to find that to be sincere. Did you find it to be very sincere. I don't there is a bit of a pose to it. It's funny, I think I wrote in the piece, some of them seemed very earnest about it and some of them, it was performative. They were doing it for the bit. But I think largely they really felt that and something that came up over and over and over again when I was asking them to explain why they won, why they thought they won, they said, we talk like normal people. They just kept calling themselves normal. We're normal. We talk like normal people. And I mean, the truth is, they were not always talking like normal people. They were making really messed up and cruel jokes. But I do think that they were on to something. I think that's also the problem with so much of this woke language stuff. I think to the average American, it's read as elite and academic. It's the stuff of campuses and intellectuals. And that's a turnoff. I think there's also being transgressive. Feeling like you're being transgressive is gleeful, it's a place of joy. And I think that some of these people on the right are like this. We can rebel against this in a way that is powerful. Do you think that's part of what's going on, or is it like, pure just. Oh, I think it's why I asked you whether you thought it was sincere or not. Because I have such a hard time with somebody hanging all of their politics on, I want to be able to say the R word. I'm like, not even taxes. Like, this is what you're like, this is it. This is the pinnacle of what you care about feels like particularly lazy to me. And I do think that it's about being transgressive. And I think that it's also about being cruel. I think that it's something that I think about a lot. It's like there's language that I am asked to use that I find goofy sometimes. And I always ask myself, I'm like, does it cost me anything to do something nice for someone else. And if it doesn't cost me anything, yeah. Who cares. What I mean. I think people just don't enjoy being told what to do Yeah, but I guess I'm not really. It's not. I don't think that we're always being told what to do, but it's some of this is just like basic politeness to me. Like, before we started this interview, your producer asked me like how I would like to be referred to as id'ed. I was like, that's great. That's like a professional courtesy. People mispronounce my name all the time. It's fine to do that. So if somebody is like, please call me by these pronouns and they're asking you that earnestly, I was like, it doesn't cost me anything to do that for someone. And so when I find this kind of wanton cruelty being the driving force because again, things are like everything exists in a context. I think that what I find particularly grating about the I want to be able to use the R word. I want to call women bitches, and I want to call people the N word, whatever. I'm like, why do you want to do that. Like, why is it so important to you. What is so important about being able to say that to someone who is telling you they don't want to hear that. At the same time, though, I do think there's I'm coming from a very I mean, I'm 28, and I live in Brooklyn and I'm surrounded by card carrying DSA members, but I including one right here, I do think, yeah, most people are willing to be polite, but so much of this has gotten so fraught on the example of pronouns. For example, because people do not allow people to learn, people do not give them the grace to try and figure out how to get these things right. I mean, people are militant about this stuff and will bite your head off, bite their professor's head off over a misgendering situation and that makes it really hard to move forward I but that's interesting because again, to me is I'm like, I hear you and I agree with you. Like, I've been in those meetings like I'm a member of the co-op. I'm a member of like I go to the meetings where the people are militant and at the same time, I'm just like, no one's killing anybody. There is a fragility built in on both sides of this conversation where I'm like, wow. Like, O.K, somebody says, call me this. You do like, we don't have to have a 10 hour long fight over this stuff, or you can just smile and move on. I think we can agree that that's very silly. It's like somebody yelled at you one time in college like that doesn't have any power over you. And then now I have to live the consequences of fascism is knocking at the door because of that is. That's a big leap. It is a big leap. But again, I think people just don't like being told what to do. And that's a very yeah, but welcome to society. Like the government tells you what to do. And also it's sometimes like, I guess I want to backtrack. To me, it's not about being told what to do. We have basic rules of decorum. I guess my problem is also, while the left is wrapped up in these debates about decorum and politeness, they're the right's reaction to this is to actually dismantle things. Like the things that we were doing in college you could not do on a campus. Women's studies have been destroyed queer studies, Middle Eastern programs like protesting, they reacted. We're having these silly little debates about that, and they're taking these big actions. That's sometimes my problem with the pronoun discourse, too. Like the left, the young queer people spent so much time enforcing all of this pronoun stuff and what energy was wasted why weren't we talking about health care or bathrooms or something that was not as yeah, I don't disagree with that. And you were just speaking at a university a few weeks ago on these subjects. Do you feel like it's changed on campuses now. This was at a Southern university and a very liberal university in the South, an artsy school on a mountain. And yes, the change was huge. These students were telling me, previously they felt like the school was 90 percent liberal kids and maybe percent conservatives, and they were estimating it was more 60-40. They said that Trump was elected all of a sudden, these frat houses were hotbeds of the r-word and all these things that we're talking about. They said the dress changed on campus. Like, all of a sudden, all these girls and boys are in salmon colored like button UPS the conservative. The culture at this very liberal school had gotten so, so much more conservative. They said they had about nine kids who participated in. It's a fairly small school, but only nine kids who participated in the pro-Palestine protests. Wow, that's really interesting. And do you think that's because youth movements are shifting are just the signifiers shifting, or is it like the youth shifting to the right. I think I mean, the numbers. I think we have the media talks a lot about the youth shifting to the right. I don't think that's what's happening. I think the youth are just shifting away from both parties and don't really want to be aligned with either institutionally. And that makes their politics really funny and hard to map onto MAGA or woke. There's Steven Pinker came up with this concept called the euphemism treadmill. That is basically the idea that we are always going to replace a word that has stigma attached to it with another word, because the word is just going to get too loaded the R word, for example, was the polite replacement for the word idiot. And we're just never going to be able to outrun the stigma because the word's always going to catch it. Do you guys think that there is a way off that treadmill, or is this just a thing that happens with language. I just think that's what happens every generation. I think queer stuff is really interesting about this. Like, obviously queer is the word that we're using right now to stand in for all L.G.B.T.Q. people. But it was not always that way, though. It was very popular in the 90s. And a lot of older gays and lesbians today are very uncomfortable with the word. And I just think it changes every. It will continue to change. And that's also why you can't quite police this stuff because it's so fluid and flexible, I agree with that. I think we're not going to make new words. So we are going to recycle all the same words. I was talking to somebody in their 80s recently and I used the word horny and he got so offended. He was like, your generation loves to use that word. And I was like, I have never had a reaction to this word before. And it was very instructive and very funny. But do you think that there's a way off the treadmill, do you think language is always just going to. I think that language is always going to do this because we, it's like the political mood shifts. People reclaim words. I think a lot. And I think particularly like we're in an era of people taking words that meant bad things or were replacement for something that was bad and really bringing those back to the core. And we're seeing real generational anxieties about that. And I don't again, as a words person, I love all of it. I was like, I just love to see how language is formed and how we do that. And I think you could be scared by it, or you could be really intrigued and see what we do with the language Yeah and sometimes I get confused. I mean, as a white woman, let me make this about me for a second, a white woman. Is this your coming out. I love it, no. But as an editor also, I'm like, we're constantly making lists of people to do things, and I have to be like, we've only put white people on this list. We need some people who are. And then I don't know what to say because I've heard from a lot of people that person of color feels so corporate and everyone's a color. But I'm like, just add some people who are not white. But then that centers whiteness and it actually comes out of a genuine desire to be like, what is the word that means what I want it to mean and is the most respectful at the end of the day. Also, it's like, just do the thing what I mean. I hear this in the summer of 2020, I will never forget the summer of the troubles. I was on a call and somebody said they used the word BIPOC, which I had seen written, but I had never encountered before. And I'm a fairly online person, and I had seen it, but I guess, my brain had registered that it meant something else. And I was like, wait, who's the BIPOC on the call. And this woman was like, oh, you. And I was like, oh, I'm not bisexual. But thank you so much for thinking about me. I really thought he meant bisexual person of color. And I was like, that is so that is so niche. But like, I love that for you guys that you've done that. And she's like, no, no, no. It means black Indigenous person of color. And I was like, oh, me. I was like, I'm just Black. I just identify I don't need this thing. But I remember it made me laugh so hard because I was like, this is not God bless whatever you guys are doing over there. And again, it's like. And then when I was really thinking about that call, I was like, this is somebody that I've worked with for so many years who's always like, how do I get more Black people to be involved. And then never does. I'm like, just do it. At this point you're talking so much about how can you do it. What's the list called. What's the thing. And I was like, where's the results. If you're still not doing it like it doesn't, this thing doesn't matter. Totally intent matters so much more than language. But language is how we communicate. Like language is important. Also, we are all three writers who care about it. And so I think that showing curiosity and asking questions about it is better than being definitive. So even in a place where it's like if somebody says to me like, what do you identify as. That is automatically like a easier like, I think so much about trans friends who have corrected my identification of their pronouns. And it was never done in an aggressive way. It was always like, thanks. Like actually like this is the pronoun I like. And then you move on. And I think about that a lot in this debate where sometimes I'm like, yeah, you said someone's pronouns wrong and they have now told you how to say it. You don't have to wallow in shame. You say, thank you for telling me that. And then we both Yeah you like, keep it kind of pushing. If the conversation goes that way, the conversation goes that way. But I think a lot of times the conversation is not going that way because it's not an invitation like and on both sides, there's so much like shame and self-loathing and it's like, well, no, let's be correct and let's move on. Let's have a dynamic conversation about it Yeah, I guess I don't know. Thinking about all this. I don't support the loose and free. Say whatever you want. Cruelty of the young Trumpers. But I do think that once you start parsing what people how we say all of these things like it has a chilling effect. And, I don't know if the young people I know are also a good sample size to talk about this, but I mean, it feels like more fraught and policie than ever in my social circles. There's a slight fascistic thing about the way of what we're doing. Like, can you say you didn't like this movie. Can you say that you like Lana Del Rey oh, but wait, she dated a cop a couple of years ago. Like, can you like her. And she has tradwife aesthetics, all sharing on Instagram. Like, who exactly you should rank in the New York elections. And if you don't rank it exactly that way, then get out of the circle. When I wrote about the cruel kids for New York Mag at the end of the piece, I kind of copped to some of this, because I felt that I was becoming vaguely more anti-woke, and I admitted to making bad jokes and stuff. And I mean the way I felt socially ostracized among my friends for just admitting that I thought it would be relatable to people. Sometimes, we do these say these bad things in private, but I don't know among my social circles, there was just a huge backlash to that. Like, I and yeah, I don't in some corners of the world, I think woke is more alive than ever and it's getting more intense. Oh it's coming. That's how they're transgressing. It's definitely coming back. That's really interesting. O.K, so it's these two completely different spheres then that you navigate between both of when you're reporting on the MAGA right youth movements and when you're moving through Brooklyn, it's two completely different worlds. Is that right. And I would say pretty comfortably that having open debate amongst the young conservative influencers I know is much easier than doing it in Brooklyn. That's so interesting. O.K, so is woke over? Are we done being politically correct? No woke is coming back. Woke is always coming back. It just comes back in a new like it's like new clothing, new iteration, whatever. And also new for a New generation. So new leaders of the woke what I mean. I'm just like this. Something's definitely brewing. So I'm like, I'm curious to see what it's going to look like, what it's going to feel like, but, I'm really ingesting this thing that you've said too about the opinions that you're allowed to have online and how much it's like shaping all of us. Like, I know that for me, it shapes my writing a lot, and it drives me nuts when I'm like, oh, this is not from a place of honesty. This is from a place of not wanting to get yelled at or whatever. So like that feels like genuinely like palpable. But yeah, I think woke is on woke is on its way back. We have a socialist mayor, it's going to look, I do think it's on its way back, though, I do. I also find that there's a certain corner of the internet that is always insisting that it was like never dead and that it's alive, and I find that a bit. I mean, I feel like it's like funny. Like what. Look what's happening to this country right now, these policies have lost and maybe it shouldn't come back in the same way. And it's interesting because I mean, we only I think any person that we could ask these questions to would have their own very specific answers that might be completely different. And that's a really interesting thing about this kind of conversation, because you're like, this is what's happening in Brooklyn, but you're also describing this formerly liberal college campus where things look a lot different than they did a few years ago. And so I think it's such we live in such like atomized little bubbles. And when we're talking about social movements, so many different contradictory things can be happening at the same time. I know there has been such a big switch. It's like when I think about the fact that it's like football is now a left thing and family. I was like, yeah, it's like all the gays are married. Like we're watching the Super Bowl, whatever. And on the right they're doing like, no vaccines, the weird milks that I'm just the weird kinks with the Republican husbands. I was like, this is very I mean, it's very weird to observe. I mean, look at who people are listening to I wrote a profile of Candace Owens in December, and I mean, I and sometimes I think that politics are heading in her or Joe Rogan's direction. Like she's such a pro-Palestine but super anti-trans. But like, against the war started as a Vogue intern, it's completely mixed up. And her audience is young and it's a lot of women and it's a lot of women who, I think we're heading in those directions. O.K, so just to end, I want to play a game and the three of us are going to be the language police and we are going to get to ban a word and I'll go first. For me, I was at the supermarket and I heard a woman say to her boyfriend, honey, should we get some cados. And she meant avocados and that is banned. No one can say "cados" for avocados. Like the food, girls generally should be banned. The white women that make up the backbone of the food writing industry. I think they all need to go. The baby talk. The baby talk. The "ayos" and the -- what does "ayos" mean? I was like banned, banned, banned, banned. What happens when bad writers have too many words to give people. No thank you. It's just started happening. But I'm already done with the "maxxing" or whatever. You can add any word onto "maxxing" and that's already completely annoying, it was too easy and it went too fast, it's too much. I want to ban straight people using partner when they mean husband or wife. I'm just like, I don't like this signaling of your politics. I really hate it because it's very sinister. Actually, I was hiding there. It's like they're doing some. I'm like you're literally participating in the most heteronormative institution a person can participate in, and you don't get to rebrand it. You just don't get to rebrand it. I was like, partner is. Partner is out. This always bugged me as a queer person. And I would like anytime, because anytime someone would say partner, I'd be like, oh, cool, they're gay. And then I'd be like, no, they're just an ally. No, no. When somebody says partner to me, I was like, this is a straight person. Now I'm like, only now it actually is useful because I'm like, oh, you're straight cool. You're a straight person who says, partner. No, gay people say that anymore. Thank you both so much for being here with me today. Thanks for having us.