Woke ideology has achieved a near total victory in crowding out cultural explanations for disparity in the world. It has become difficult if not impossible to speak about the effects of cultural differentiation among subgroups in the West, among rich and poor countries, or among regions of the world. No other question has plagued humanity more and caused greater resentment than why some people have more money, power and success than other people. The woke have successfully branded cultural explanations as racism.

The reason woke ideology was so dead set on de-legitimizing cultural arguments is that the woke want to disempower the people in charge and empower historically marginalized groups. Cultural explanations get in the way. The woke needed to demonize the cultural argument because it was the only other explanation for why society is the way it is besides structure. The cultural argument weakens the case for the grand shift in power that the woke pine for. If the cultural argument has any validity whatsoever, it means that differences among groups are at least partially a function of varied cultural traits and that people in power might not always be holding others down. Entertaining such a complex mix of factors is just not going to spark the desired change in power. The woke project requires an ideological monopoly.

In banishing culture, the woke prohibitionists leave only one viable explanation: structure. If you can’t explain disparity by differences in culture, then you are left to explain it by differences in power.In the words of Andrew Sullivan, “Woke activists have brilliantly managed to construct a crude moral binary to pressure liberals into submission. And it’s worked like a charm.”