How the woke transmit wealth and inequality

On Wokeness

Al-Gharbi invokes French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's concept of "symbolic" (cultural, academic, political) capital that has real clout. You can parlay it into financial capital.

He himself is now a symbolic capitalist. You too, maybe, if even bothering to read him.

History rhymes. The Bible, al-Gharbi reminds, warns against "performative" righteousness. The Puritans had their Elect and Damned. "Noblesse oblige" and meritocracy paper over privilege.

"Woke" as a term supplants "politically correct". What does it mean? The author lists these kinds of indicators:

Identifying as an "ally" of special (disadvantaged) groups, "aesthetically embracing" diversity and inclusion, validating identity and subjectivity, "recognising" one's privilege, embracing "unconscious bias", tightly focusing on special-group disparities.

Ordinary people "don't talk or think like this" but symbolic capital can and does.

It has birthed supposedly altruistic professions like journalists, social scientists, economists, urban planners, human resources.

The super wealthy – top 1% – allow those in the next 20% a handy share of the loot. Contingent upon them "managing" economy and society, pro the 1%.

The Great Awokenings

Incidentally, this chapter underlines the perverseness of Labor ever-expanding university education.

Like Kaufmann, al-Gharbi locates Awokenings in the 1960s, 1980s, and 2010s. Even a fourth, from the late 1920s, ameliorated by Roosevelt's New Deal.

The root cause is "elite overproduction".

A surge of disaffected youth builds - wannabe symbolic capitalists. Though they protest vociferously – an Awokening – they don't shift unequal "institutions and allocations of resources". Things settle, as the economy somehow absorbs them. Rinse and repeat.