Echoes of a catechism
Helen Lewis says social justice crusades are a kind of substitute religion for The Young.
In the U.S., the nonreligious are younger and more liberal than the population as a whole. Perhaps, then, it isn’t a coincidence that they are also the group most likely to be involved in high-profile social-justice blowups, particularly the type found on college campuses. They’ve substituted one religion for another…
…Many common social-justice phrases have echoes of a catechism: announcing your pronouns or performing a land acknowledgment shows allegiance to a common belief, reassuring a group that everyone present shares the same values.
See also: those annoying yard signs (I bet you don’t have them in the UK – you luckies) that advertise the inhabitants’ virtues. The one I hate most leads with “IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE” and then lists the pieties. The pieties are mostly quite acceptable pieties, but I’m extremely tired of the smug self-admiring advertisement of them.
As politics has usurped religion, it has borrowed its underlying concepts, sometimes putting them into new words. John McWhorter, a linguist and Atlantic contributing writer, recently published a best-selling book reflecting on what he sees as the excesses of America’s racial-justice movement. Its working title was “The Elect,” after the Calvinist idea of a group chosen by God for salvation. (In the end, it was published under the more provocative name Woke Racism.) “The hyper-woke—who were firing people right and left, and shaming people right and left—think that they’re seeing further than most people, that they understand the grand nature of things better than the ordinary person can,” McWhorter told me. “To them, they’re elect.”
And being elect means they need to chastise the unelect.
Helen points out that Trump fans are another kind of elect.
There’s no escape.
Yeah, those yard signs — “Holier Than Thou lives here.” Like little social media bio’s for the lawn.
Too often these discussions throw around the phrase “virtue signalling,” and assume that it’s all about preening for one’s peers and accumulating social clout by appearing to be good. That’s certainly part of it. But as Lewis correctly diagnoses, there’s also a strong element that it just feels good to be self-righteous sometimes, putting aside any reputational benefits.
The one part that I really take issue with is her lament that people factor politics into dating choices:
I’m with Turner on this one. How is it bad to choose your partner based on their values? Would Lewis (and Owolade) say that I really should date someone who thinks Trump is a great president, that child separation is a terrific policy, and that women shouldn’t control their own bodies? That’s a far better basis for making such decisions than most of the reasons people apply.
Screechy, I’m with you on that. I am married to a Republican, but he hasn’t voted Republican in a long time. He believes global warming is real and we need to do something major about it. He believes children should not be put in cages. He believes in saving species, and donates to groups that try to. Between us, we give quite a bit to the food bank, both the local city one and the one at my school for the students.
Could I have seriously loved someone who thinks like Trump thinks? NO. Frankly, not even how the so-called “moderate” Republicans think. My husband’s political views have been evolving; he gives me credit for a lot of that, but I think a lot of it was seeing the worst case scenarios becoming mainstream as much as it was me. He plans to register Democrat once we move, but wants to remain Republican while we’re in a red state, because he feels he might have some little say in things here. He gives himself partial credit for keeping the Trumpista off the November ballot; the Trump candidate lost the primary.
Politics seems like a great reason to not date someone to me. I dated a libertarian for a few weeks; I would never do that again.
Of course, I also think religion can be a damn good reason. I don’t think I could live with someone pious, even if they were a liberal believer.
I didn’t agree with that part either, to the surprise of no one; that’s why I didn’t quote from it.
See, I think the dangers of ‘woke racism’ are vastly overblown, anyway. The only thing that drives me up the wall is the co-opting of racial justice struggles and language for other, poorly analogous fights (like TRAs like to do, or the whole Karen meme, which is really just misogyny hiding behind an anti-racism mask). I rarely run into an extreme position that is utterly indefensible from actual anti-racism activists–and even when I do, I can usually see where they’re coming from without having to beat myself about the head a few times to kill the brain cells, like I do to even begin to see how someone can justify, say, putting a non-op trans woman into a women’s prison.
McWhorter, in particular, often comes across as the sort of black speaker who white people like because he makes them feel okay about inheriting the benefits of systemic racism. I respect the man’s obvious field of expertise (languages), and like what he’s done there, and his views outside of that realm are often aligned with my own. But when he takes on something like White Fragility, he’s clearly taking aim at low-hanging fruit–that book may be insipid and poorly written (as has been demonstrated in this very blog), but it’s not the holy text of Wokeism–rather, it’s a bad fanfic by someone who hasn’t really studied the issues and is just trying to cash in.
Yes, the yard signs proclaiming allegiance to all kinds of liberal values. But just try and put a homeless shelter or multi family housing nearby, then it’s all about “property values”. Phil Ochs skewered these kinds of liberals back in the day. “Love me, I’m a liberal”.
Amy, people have posted examples of the same yard having the “Housing is a Human Right” sign as well as a “Oppose the Pine Street Whopper” (which is whatever apartment building someone is trying to build in their neighborhood).
Screechy, so what they really mean is “housing in someone else’s neighborhood is a human right”.
Our neighborhood is pretty mixed; we have several college and professional people living there, side by side with people who are renters, possibly on food stamps, or whatever. The only problem I have with that is the Battling Bickersons across the street who prefer to fight outside, after midnight, at the top of their lungs. And after three visits from law enforcement in the spring, I haven’t heard a peep from them this summer, so maybe they moved or got their act together and took it inside.
My husband and I actually prefer these eclectic neighborhoods. They’re more interesting, less sterile. But I personally wouldn’t want to live by a large housing development mostly because I prefer a street without constant traffic noises. That being said, I don’t think touting your virtue and your selfishness at the same time is a good look.