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Comment by SpicyLemonZest | Hacker News Reader

On one level, sure, I'm definitely with you. The term "woke" is vague, subject to toxic stereotyping, and it'd be nice if people didn't use it.

But I don't think we can overlook the pressures that push people towards it. The problem is that a lot of movements that get grouped under "woke" self-identify with vacuously positive labels that can't be negated. If I go around telling people "anti-racism is bad", they're going to think I mean "racism is good", and they're not going to believe me when I clarify that I'm referring to specific policy ideas promoted in books such as Ibram X. Kendi's famous How to Be an Antiracist. Unless you're talking to people who are so politically engaged you can name-drop specific authors to start with, I'm not sure what term other than "woke" you could use.

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I was about to write "The Problem we both have is mislabeling" but then i realized that we dont have the same problem.

From my perspective, conservatives/rights often stand out with blatant and harmful falsehoods. Even in your last post is a central self contradiction.

>movements that get grouped under "woke" self-identify with vacuously positive labels that can't be negated

>If I go around telling people "anti-racism is bad", they're going to think I mean "racism is good"

Looks like your "anti-racism is bad" statement is not meant to be negated. I think, what you meant is "racism is bad but what you are doing is too", which, from my perspective, is not equivalent to "anti-racism is bad". Your mistake here is, that you use their "racism"-label and invert it, to make it suit you. By doing so, you reduce the conversation to labels and discard similarities between you (which is actually the most harmful part).

A slight difference in phrasing is deciding if i agree or disagree with you. Is it my fault or yours?

"Anti-racism is bad" is meant to be negated. It would be totally reasonable for someone to respond by saying "well, I actually think anti-racism is good, and here's why".

There's a risk of labels getting in the way, no doubt. But there's a lot of things that seem straightforwardly impossible to reason about without labels. How could we discuss what the abstract principles of race relations in the US should be without identifying and naming the major strains of thought on that topic?

Black people were discriminated in the US from the beginning. This discrimination continued long after civil rights reforms in public and private institutions.

Even if you could magically eliminate racism in every human brain on earth with a snap of your fingers, the socio-econimic factors, inherited from the beginning would continue to be disadvantageous for blacks. So the racism back then, even when not present in minds today, would persist. This is called systemic racism, because we discriminate indirectly, not by skin color but by education, vocabulary, human capital in general. And on top, racism will of course prevail in minds.

From that, you can easily advocate for some sort of compensation, some kind of counter discrimination, anti-racism.

I find that term troublesome too, because you actually asking for support for all poor people, not just blacks, but i would never call it a ideological label and bad, because i can see the reason behind it. Using it as a label and associating it with (group) identity is unfortunate but not my mistake.

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