Talking off on Rhonda West’s comment below, I’m thinking out loud: I’ve been very hesitant to assume the same (are white women most woke?) because I truly don’t want to be sexist - or sloppy in my thinking (availability/recency bias, etc). But anecdotally I’ve noticed the same: more affluent white women (and, again, certainly not all are white and not all are women), especially of course those who have imbibed this default, controlling narrative since K-12. It’s been well-documented that woke curricula are most common at elite liberal arts colleges and prep schools. But class and actual privilege of course also give these young women (and men) a lot of motivation to extirpate and transfer their guilt and “sin”, most aggressively onto actually less privileged whites. Many of the former have (in spite of millennial and Gen-Z angst) been handed a lot. Guilt over class privilege becomes transmuted into something far more convenient: “white privilege”. Admit their white privilege and become an aggressive “ally” and they needn’t sacrifice that plum admissions spot, or job offer a family member helped them get, or certainly the fat inheritance coming their way when the awful boomer or X generation of family that spawned them and showered largesse upon them finally pass. Most important, they needn’t sacrifice an iota of status. In many ways,(again anecdotally) privileged white women are the enforcers of wokedom. I so often see the assertion that their privilege in money and class and connections and access (social capital) is every white person’s. They stride the line claiming to both know and feel how much every moment every interaction is “harmful” and “oppressive” and “marginalizing” to PoC - and to know, first-hand, how privileged all white people truly are in every aspect of life. This is especially apparent among the very online, among whom a posturing sort of communal narcissism seems endemic. What this looks like to me is a sort of weaponized empathy, often misplaced and misdirected, even when it is sincere. If all you’ve been exposed to since childhood is “every moment alive for a black person is oppression” and you’re vaguely guilty about your own privilege (while simultaneously being inculcated in a grotesque class bias and bigotry toward “lower whites”) going woke and aggressive allyship makes sense as a way of protecting one’s status and image and one’s self-esteem, while also not just finding meaning, purpose, and community in an atomized world, but actually righting horrific present day wrongs. What gives this mentality and its means of manifesting it a darker twist is the fact that female aggression does more often find outlet in reputational destruction. That’s what gives weaponized empathy the sharp point at the end of its spear. Competing to promote yourself while taking other people down by gossip or social media-magnified smear and name-calling can be as satisfying as it is effective. You’re holding racists accountable after all! If someone won’t admit their white privilege and grovel about it enough, call them on it in front of a few thousand people.
Talking off on Rhonda West’s comment below, I’m thinking out loud: I’ve been very hesitant to assume the same (are white women most woke?) because I truly don’t want to be sexist - or sloppy in my thinking (availability/recency bias, etc). But anecdotally I’ve noticed the same: more affluent white women (and, again, certainly not all are white and not all are women), especially of course those who have imbibed this default, controlling narrative since K-12. It’s been well-documented that woke curricula are most common at elite liberal arts colleges and prep schools. But class and actual privilege of course also give these young women (and men) a lot of motivation to extirpate and transfer their guilt and “sin”, most aggressively onto actually less privileged whites. Many of the former have (in spite of millennial and Gen-Z angst) been handed a lot. Guilt over class privilege becomes transmuted into something far more convenient: “white privilege”. Admit their white privilege and become an aggressive “ally” and they needn’t sacrifice that plum admissions spot, or job offer a family member helped them get, or certainly the fat inheritance coming their way when the awful boomer or X generation of family that spawned them and showered largesse upon them finally pass. Most important, they needn’t sacrifice an iota of status. In many ways,(again anecdotally) privileged white women are the enforcers of wokedom. I so often see the assertion that their privilege in money and class and connections and access (social capital) is every white person’s. They stride the line claiming to both know and feel how much every moment every interaction is “harmful” and “oppressive” and “marginalizing” to PoC - and to know, first-hand, how privileged all white people truly are in every aspect of life. This is especially apparent among the very online, among whom a posturing sort of communal narcissism seems endemic. What this looks like to me is a sort of weaponized empathy, often misplaced and misdirected, even when it is sincere. If all you’ve been exposed to since childhood is “every moment alive for a black person is oppression” and you’re vaguely guilty about your own privilege (while simultaneously being inculcated in a grotesque class bias and bigotry toward “lower whites”) going woke and aggressive allyship makes sense as a way of protecting one’s status and image and one’s self-esteem, while also not just finding meaning, purpose, and community in an atomized world, but actually righting horrific present day wrongs. What gives this mentality and its means of manifesting it a darker twist is the fact that female aggression does more often find outlet in reputational destruction. That’s what gives weaponized empathy the sharp point at the end of its spear. Competing to promote yourself while taking other people down by gossip or social media-magnified smear and name-calling can be as satisfying as it is effective. You’re holding racists accountable after all! If someone won’t admit their white privilege and grovel about it enough, call them on it in front of a few thousand people.