Discrimination

Some familiar facts: people discriminated against on grounds of race, sex, age, gender identity, ethnicity, disability, or beliefs, and combinations of these, face barriers in employment prospects – either in getting a job in the first place, or advancing in it if they have one. A global study found that gay men on average earn 11% less than straight men^[i]; women earn 13.1% less than men in the UK^[ii]. Before working life they might and often do face barriers to educational opportunities. The social environment of both education and employment – informal networks of friends and colleagues and out-of-hours interactions, where the circumstances are fostered for mates to give each other a leg-up and mutual support – might exclude them. The atmosphere within the workplace or educational establishment might range from subtle exclusions to harassment.

Discrimination is also a major barrier to participation in civic organisations and political life. Women are hugely under-represented in both; globally women occupy only 27% of elected seats in national parliaments.^[iii] In the UK in the 2019 election 10% of seats in the House of Commons were won by members of ethnic minorities (who between them constitute 16% of the population. Two-thirds of these MPs were Labour)^[iv]. The nature and effects of discrimination go further – from the insidious (private distrust or distaste felt by some towards gays) to the openly accepted (the fact that an avowed atheist has no chance of elected office in the US) – one could cite many examples.

By themselves these facts amount to victims of discrimination being denied full participation in society on equal terms. Less often realised by those – the majority – who are not on the receiving end of discrimination is what else is involved. When stigma is attached e.g. to LGBTI people they can face harassment, bullying, violence, stress, depression, anxiety and fear. They live in constant expectation of discrimination and the possibility of abuse. They have to be hypervigilant, alert, guarding themselves against the risk of psychological or physical harm. One significant result is the effect on health outcomes. A global study of health among sexual minorities revealed a heightened risk of mental health problems, suicide attempts, and suicides.^[v] In countries where people of colour are in a minority and suffering systemic discrimination, abuse and violence can itself be systemic, as much-publicised instances of police treatment of African Americans in the US imply.

Taken together, these considerations explain ‘wokism’. ‘Woke’ is a pejorative term in the mouths of those who oppose ‘wokism’; it originated in African American self-adjurations to wake up to all the forms and effects of discrimination, and to stay awake. I shall henceforth dispense with the scare-quotes, and state the obvious: that woke endeavours are endeavours to draw attention to discrimination, and to end it. Anti-wokists make much use of those aspects of the rhetoric of woke endeavour that seem to them egregious – they chiefly select transgender examples: ‘they/them’ pronouns, such phrases as ‘women with penises’ – to ridicule, vilify and attack. Yet the more extreme end of what wokists are defending themselves against – far-right, White Supremacist, ‘incel’, masculist, racist etc. attitudes, rhetoric and behaviour, a great deal of it beyond vile – seem to get too much of a pass, a sort of tut-tut mournful attention even from those who study these phenomena. Anti-wokists focus a lot of attention on transgender issues because these provide them with an easier target, but their point is to generalise from them, with the result now evident in Trump’s US with the campaign against DEI, certain educational programmes such as Critical Race Theory and Black History, transgender individuals in the military, indeed universal roll-back of initiatives designed to address discrimination in its systemic form, together with addressing persistent effects of past discrimination in contemporary society.

The successes of woke endeavours over the period from the 1960s until the beginning of Trump’s second term have provoked the reaction now taking full effect. Until the 1960s most of those who were discriminated against for all history beforehand (think slavery, execution of gays, almost total disablement of women in education, employment, civic life and politics) did not even have the right to claim their rights as human beings. As the campaigns against racism, sexism and oppression of minority sexualities began to get real traction and a degree of success, empowering the discriminated-against to seek further inclusion, so the reaction set in. The ‘Political Correctness’ backlash of the 1990s is an earlier chapter of today’s wokism controversies. As anti-discrimination efforts made progress, so they enabled further progress; as the layers of the onion of discrimination have been peeled off one after the other, deeper and subtler forms of discrimination are revealed, so that where campaigners once protested against slavery and mob lynchings of African Americans, now they can protest police assumptions and behaviour, disproportionate jailing of people of colour, micro-aggressions and unconscious expressions of prejudice embodied in language. This is a mark of real progress – but the journey is far from over.

One big issue is ‘cancel culture’. Put this in context: the whole of history is about one group trying to cancel another: wars, religious persecutions, totalitarians suppressing dissidents, social ostracism, as well as racism and sexism, are all cancelling endeavours. Society cancels those who breaks its laws (crime itself is a social construct, in some cases justified e.g. rape and murder, in others not e.g. drug use, homosexuality) by imprisoning or executing them.

There are two kinds of cancelling: one is to stop someone or some group from doing harm to others (call it ‘protective cancelling’), the other is to maintain privilege and power by blocking the challenge of those seeking to loosen the grip of the privileged and powerful on their privilege and power (call it ‘privilege-protective cancelling’).

Privilege-protective cancelling is a target of social justice endeavours because it is the very definition of discrimination. But although this can justify some acts of protective cancelling, it does not do so unqualifiedly, especially if it is effected by mob justice, without due process, without observance of the principle audi alteram partem (‘hear the other side’) and without possibility of reform and reparation by the cancelled party. This happens when a spiralling social media pile-on has the effect of imposing a life-sentence on some individual thereafter branded, unemployable and excluded. There are doubtless cases where this is justified, but doubtless cases also where this is excessive and unjust: discriminating between such cases is best done by a process itself just.

Cancelling (and ‘no-platforming’) endeavours have thrown petrol on the fires of ‘freedom of expression’ debates, and – as used by some woke campaigners – have handed the anti-wokists a weapon, which they gleefully wield. Since wokists themselves require freedom of expression to make their case, this threatens to be an own-goal. Freedom of expression is fundamental to education, creativity, the rule of law, democracy, and all forms of campaigning for rights, and is therefore fundamental. But ‘fundamental’ does not mean ‘unqualified’; there are cases where, for specific and constrained purposes, it has to be qualified – as in time of war, so that the enemy doesn’t get information, or in cases where its exercise is deliberately used to cause harm (the standard ‘shouting Fire! in a crowded theatre’ case). It is a fundamental right that has to be used responsibly and maturely. In some jurisdictions (e.g. the UK) certain forms of speech – hate speech – are punishable at law; that is a limitation of the right to free expression that is arguably justified.

In the US the Constitution’s First Amendment right is often treated as a license to say (and do) hateful things. But in one way this is an advantage to the opponents of hate-speakers: denied speech goes underground and festers – it is better to know what your opponents think, so that you can combat them with better arguments, facts, even ridicule.

In my forthcoming Discriminations (April 2025) I argue that the ‘woke wars’ would be peacefully and constructively ended if all individuals were accorded their human rights. That looks too simple, too idealistic, right? But in fact that is precisely what the concept of human rights is for. Just think: were it to happen, there would be no discrimination. None. The idea of human rights is the idea of a level playing field, of opening a space around each individual to allow each individual to make and pursue a life chosen in light of whatever talents, interests and energy the individual can bring to bear, subject only to observance of the rights of others: a very important rider. Utopian? But that is what the formulators of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 hoped for, and with them all the societies where regimes of rights and civil liberties have been promulgated. The ‘woke wars’ are fought by those who wish to see this vision realised – or at very least, approximated as closely as possible. Seen in that light, wokism is an educational endeavour as well as a social justice endeavour, premised on the idea that it is not just possible, but necessary, to bring discrimination to an end. It is an endeavour conducted by and on behalf of those who, for most of history, massively suffered – and in too great a degree still suffer – cancellation.

What those on the woke side (and I count myself among them) need to consider is whether the best means is to employ their opponents’ weapons of cancellation, exclusion and marginalisation, or whether it can be done on better principles and by more just means. That seems a hard call – do we want Nazis and racists etc. to be allowed their say? Our guts say No: our heads say – Defeat them with better arguments, facts about effects and consequences; call them out, expose their agendas, mobilise against their programmes. To repeat: it is better to know what they say and intend than to let them operate in the dark. Defeat them in the open, in daylight; in the longer term, to have done it this way ensures a more stable – one hopes a permanent – peace, because (and this is a universal truth) peace ultimately depends on the prevailing of justice.

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^[i] Ozeren Emir, “Sexual Orientation Discrimination in the Workplace: A Systematic Review of Literature. Procedia, Sexual and Behavioral Sciences,” Procedia-Sexual and Behavioral Sciences 109 (2014): 1203-1215, 1208-10

^[ii] Office for National Statistics 2024

^[iii] UN Women 2024 https://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/explainer/2024/09/five-actions-to-boost-womens-political-participation

^[iv] House of Commons Library https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN01156/SN01156.pdf

^[v] Martin Ploderl and Pierre Tremblay, “Mental Health of Sexual Minorities. A Systematic Review,” International Review of Psychiatry 27, no. 5 (2015): 367-85.