How do you know what he means by “woke”
Because I have a brain with functional memory and basic pattern recognition. The only people who use “woke” like that are using it to cover for what they really want to say. I’ve seen this plenty of times from MANY right wing shitheads, so if he uses their vernacular, he gets painted with the same brush.
I read it as “people who virtue signal and don’t actually care”
Yeah, that’s the exact mentality I’m talking about. Right wingers have used that exact line on me, because they assume all “woke” actions are performative and aren’t based in real beliefs.
I’m not willing to give people the benefit of the doubt when they use the same speaking style as those who want to hurt me and mine. If he meant to say something else, he should have said it without virtue signalling to the right.
Edit: reading Paul’s original article doesn’t really change my original interpretation. @patatahooligan@lemmy.world summarized my feelings better than I could at the moment:
In context, it is clear that Paul Graham regards any public protest for social justice to be performative and born from a need to feel morally superior to others. “Racism […] is a genuine problem”, but you are only ever allowed to “quietly” help marginalized groups. His examples for the birth of “wokeness” are people starting to report sexual harassment and racist language. Paul is very mad that people told him it’s not ok to call black people “negros” and it shows plainly in his writing.
He does not give one example of what would be a real racist thing that you are allowed to get mad and vocal about. He does not give one example of proper not-“woke” activism. This is the telltale sign of a fascist pretending to be a moderate worried about the “intolerant left”. Social justices exist, but I won’t name a single one. Helping minorities is good, but every time I see it happen it’s bad and I’m going to call it out.