How wokeness weakens the West but empowers China

We met the same day as Musa's Canberra event, his best attended. Would some see his much-discussed We Have Never Been Woke (WHNBW) as validating their attitudes?

"Lots of people start from the assumption I'm on the same team as them," he rejoined. Others imagine it's "kind of a right-wing tract."

Reviewing WHNBW for Australian Population Research Institute and The Australian, I'd tagged al-Gharbi more as a curiosity-led scholar, driven by data and evidence.

In his observations, woke is a definable set of attitudes and behaviours developed in US (and other wealthy nations) among the supposedly altruistic "symbolic capitalists" (or top 20%) of the knowledge economy.

This elite, he writes, aligns with the top 1%. The second allows the first to "opportunity hoard" an attractive share of the loot. Wokeness justifies this appropriation.

The top 20% self-identify as "allies" of disadvantaged groups, aesthetically embracing "diversity" and "inclusion". Focusing on identity and subjectivity, they "recognise" their privilege but work on "unconscious" biases. Theirs is a "tight" focus on disparities between identity (race, gender, sexuality) groups, not on inequality at large.

Instead of arresting widening post-1970s inequality, these DEI tropes camouflage and extend it. Rather than lubricating the social-mobility ladder, Musa observes, the woke "just want to make sure people at the top of the ladder are appropriately diverse".

About the author

Of Arizona military family, al-Gharbi switched from Catholicism to Islam, from shoe-selling to New York academia.

Fresh from his (Columbia) PhD, Musa got a fly-back, for an Arizona position. "I was overqualified". After his cultural and class shift, how to stay grounded? There's a book for that, Jennifer Morton's Moving Up without Losing your Way. Also, "I do events at churches, I've done events at resource centres for senior citizens."

Currently he's a journalism/sociology prof at Stony Brook University on Long Island NY. Where would he do sabbatical? Rather than nominating a top European school, Musa parries, Perth's Forrest Research Foundation would like him back.

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