How the woke transmit wealth and inequality

In the US, also here, relatively privileged persons may cosplay at black, first nations, transracial, traumatised, even disabled. They do this for a payoff.

Al-Gharbi characterises symbolic-economy firms as "less diverse" than other workforce sectors. They can compensate via DEI hires.

Mystification of social processes

Like, how symbolic capitalists muddy the waters.

Racial privilege works for affluent whites, al-Gharbi contends, not poor whites.

Being "aware" of privilege doesn't help the underprivileged, hypocrisy being the "ultimate power move".

Mastering woke speak and frameworks can "signal elite status" and "enhance professional flourishing". The symbolic professions can "cancel" non-elites - the reverse rarely applies.

Liberal whites zealously "identify and prosecute" obscure forms of racism. Using twee labels, such as Latinx or BIPOC (black, indigenous and people of colour).

Their policy-discourse expands to embrace minority-elites - yet restricts approval to groups (voices) deemed "credible or authentic". These are forms of moral cleansing.

Large American cities are "more segregated" now than in 1990. This new division derives from deliberate political choices – it isn't a legacy from Mr Nobody.

Similarly, nobody remotely takes the rap for shattering the Australian Dream. Gee, what a wicked problem, sighs federal government and its million-dollar mandarins.

"Wokeness," the author concludes, "does not seem to be associated with egalitarian behaviours in any useful sense."

But, as he also acknowledges, any theories (not excluding his own) are children of their time and place, perhaps handling "some things well and explaining other things poorly".