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Home/Biblical and Theological/Four Fallacies of the Woke Prohibition of Cultural Arguments

Four Fallacies of the Woke Prohibition of Cultural Arguments

The cultural argument weakens the case for the grand shift in power that the woke pine for.

Written by David Bern | Friday, December 4, 2020

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.

 

A few years ago I was engaged in a discussion with a married couple, both of whom were professors of the humanities. I asked about the increasingly stifling intellectual environment on campus. They glanced at each other with unease, and hesitantly agreed that it was a problem. This was clearly a discussion they had in the privacy of their bedroom. Pushy as I am, I asked if professors and students could even broach the role of culture in explaining differences among groups. This time I got a look of utter horror. I had hit a third rail, which, in earshot of the wrong people, could be a career extinction event.

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.”

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  • The Culture War Must Go On
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  • Woke Christianity and Genuine Christianity Are Two Different…
  • Woke Math Is Coming to a Classroom Near You

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