The Right can’t be woke — or at least that’s the claim made by some folks on the Right. However, this refrain is reminiscent of another refrain on the woke Left: “Minorities can’t be racist.”
Of course, the debate surrounding “woke Right” versus “woke Left” is a question of definitions. The definition of the term “woke” is where the arguments exist.
For some on the Right, “woke” is merely a synonym for leftist ideology. Therefore, based on this simplistic definition, it would be impossible for a non-leftist to be “woke.” However, the term “woke,” while being birthed on the left side of the political aisle, is meant to convey the awareness of (read: obsession with) racial prejudice and discrimination — primarily where none exists.
In the context of leftist politics, being woke is to embrace race-based social justice, which frames white supremacy as the overarching social ill that needs to be eradicated. However, it has also expanded to include a litany of other special interest minority groups, all under the neo-Marxist metric of oppressed vs. oppressor. Therefore, in this context, racism is narrowly redefined as the exertion of white supremacy against minority racial groups.
So, the Right can’t be woke, right? Well, when it comes to the broader application of the term “woke” as a catchall for radical leftist identity politics, then no.
Yet if one takes the original expression of the term to refer to obsession with racial prejudice and discrimination, then yes, the Right can be woke.
To put it another way, wokeness produces and advances identity politics. Logically, that then produces tribalism. It pits groups against each other based purely upon their ethnic or racial demographics. Leftist wokeness promotes the simplistic and false idea that white supremacy is the tool of oppression; Right wokeness promotes the simplistic and false idea that racial minorities are society’s destructive agents.
Sadly, the spread of leftist woke tribalism is now resulting in a backlash of woke right-wing tribalism.
Two recent events highlight this dangerous progression and un-American spread of woke tribalism. The first is the murder of Austin Metcalf by Karmelo Anthony at a high school track meet in Frisco, Texas, early last month. In the immediate wake of the incident, the races of the two teenagers involved became the primary focus of national attention. Since the victim, Metcalf, was white and the perpetrator, Anthony, was black, the narrative was quickly spun up into a race issue, despite the lack of evidence supporting such a framing. Indeed, the pleas of Metcalf’s own grieving father were ignored as racial tribalism reared its ugly head.
Understandably, given the mainstream media’s biased commitment to promoting leftist woke ideology, the coverage of the slaying was mostly ignored by the national press. A black teen killing a white teen doesn’t advance the false narrative of white supremacist oppressor vs. oppressed.
However, in the wake of the killing, a growing tribalism on the Right, tired of the mainstream media’s double standards, called out the incongruent response. They noted how the Leftmedia used the death of George Floyd to stir up resentment and anger and cries of racial injustice, which somehow was evidence of the woke Left’s white supremacy claims regarding the U.S.
They further point to the trial of Daniel Penny in New York City. His restraint of a crazed black man on a subway led to the black man’s death. It was a clear case of a justified use of force, and yet because Penny was white, he was charged with murder.
Meanwhile, where’s the media outrage when a black person kills a white person? It is this lack of balance or equal coverage or commitment to actual justice that stokes the anger of tribalism. Instead of seeing these individuals as fellow human beings who should be judged solely upon their behavior, irrespective of their ethnicity, wokeness demands that their ethnic identity trumps any concern over individual culpability.
As noted above, Americans — especially white Americans — have grown increasingly tired of this leftist woke ideology. Unfortunately, some white Americans, instead of resisting the siren song of woke identity politics, have embraced it. Effectively, the logic goes, if you say I’m a racist for simply being white, then why resist it? Why not simply fight fire with fire?
This is where we come to a second incident in Rochester, Minnesota. A young white mother, Shiloh Hendrix, was filmed as she was confronted by a Somali immigrant who rebuked her for calling a young black child who had supposedly taken a toy from her child the N-word.
In the video, rather than deny or apologize, Hendrix simply doubled down. After the video was posted on social media and began to go viral, Hendrix started a fundraiser, similar to the action that Anthony’s family took after he killed Metcalf. And it is here where the evidence of a growing racial tribalism comes home. Both Anthony and Hendrix have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in their defense.
What is clear in both cases is that the primary motivator for people’s “charity” is racism. These are both expressions of people identifying with their racial tribe. Their giving is picking teams based on their own identity, regardless of the specific facts surrounding these two instances.
Given the evidence thus far, only the second incident is blatantly racist.
However, what has given fuel to the woke Right is that it is an inevitable backlash against the anti-white racism promoted by the woke Left. Neither of these is reasonable or excusable, even if they are understandable.
Some have praised the development of Hendrix, seeing massive fundraising success as an overall good thing because it may represent the end of the Left’s cancel culture. They conclude that this is a victory for free speech, a corrective measure, while not explicitly defending Hendrix’s racism.
There’s some merit to that argument. The larger concern, though, is where this ends up going. The goal for conservatives is to see an end to racism and the toxic nature of identity-based politics. How is that goal achieved by embracing white racism against black racism?
Furthermore, the whole foundation for supporting freedom of speech is so that bad ideas can be confronted for what they are, challenged, and rejected by society.
Far from signaling an end to leftist wokeness, what these two incidents present is a growing racial grievance culture that too many people are eagerly joining.
