How the woke transmit wealth and inequality

By Stephen Saunders

Suddenly, America's having a war-on-wokeness. Down Under, where we deny the consequentiality of woke, war on voters continues.

In three days President Trump pulled America from the Paris Agreement and "net zero" emissions, declared a national "energy emergency", suspended "alien invasion", and kiboshed federal "diversity, equity, inclusion" (DEI) programs.

Now check the steady Labor platform and analogous Liberal plan. Regardless of Election 2025, voters get "energy sellout, regressive education, unfair taxation, mega migration, and housing hunger games".

Both sides affect "net zero" – but each refuses to disrupt our ruinous gas-cartel. Though acknowledging immigration to be 70% higher than ever before, Liberals refuse to offer voters low migration.

Yet woke commentary paints Peter Dutton as an ominous Mini Trump of far-right fantasy and hard-right push.

Al-Gharbi's opus (We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, Princeton University Press)offers a reality-check.

Reportedly his book-tour includes Australia. In my dreams, ABC Laura Tingle would showcase him at her Press Club. His book's better marshalled than Eric Kaufmann's The Third Awokening.

Once an Arizona shoe-salesman, the late-blooming biracial author is now a New York sociology-prof. A log-cabin story unlike those of Mr Dutton or Mr Albanese.

Let's tour his chapters.

Introduction

Freshly immersed in Big Apple's racialised "caste system", al-Gharbi was unsurprised by Trump's 2016 victory. His privileged fellow-students were inconsolable.

Though recognising protest upheavals (Great Awokenings) of this century and last, he didn't see these making much difference. Hence "we" [educated classes or professions] have "never really" been woke.

How could elites be egalitarian, when their social-justice hobbies don't solve social problems? Despite "unambiguous" gains for identity-groups, high inequality persists.