We should all be woke, says Perry Bacon Jr in The Washington Post. After all, the central agenda of wokery isn’t to force more people to use funny terms such as “Latinx” or read books about “white fragility”. Instead, it’s a rebalancing of society “that will bring more cultural, economic and political power to those who have been historically marginalised”. And, let’s face it, America needs rebalancing. Currently, the median wealth of a black family is $24,000. For a white family it’s $188,000 – and Jeff Bezos, the Post’s owner, is worth $192bn. “Is the problem that we are too woke or that we are insufficiently woke? This is not a hard question.”
Of course there have been “excesses” – cancel culture and Twitter spats have torn people limb from limb. Alexi McCammond was unceremoniously removed as Teen Vogue’s editor after the publication of tweets she sent at 17. Although “I didn’t agree with her ouster”, these may just be teething problems: “Every political movement has its learning curve.” In its purest form, wokeness is spurring on exciting change – from making voting more accessible to reducing income inequality. These are all steps towards fairness. Once you define it properly, woke is a force for good.