A Cooling Fire

Over at HxA, a new paper suggests that academic Wokeness may be burning out.

In Compact Magazine I recently argued that, by several measures, the “Great Awokening” seems to be winding down. Starting in late 2021, and continuing throughout 2022, there appeared to be a moderation trend across many social indicators. I was curious whether this pattern could be observed in academic research as well. I was also eager to replicate Rozado’s general findings in alternative data sets. 

Analyzing trends in different academic databases (described below) over the last 23 years, I found roughly the same patterns of behavior that Rozado observed. There was a significant uptick in research focused on various forms of bias and discrimination starting in 2011 and persisting through 2020. Rozado’s findings were therefore not an artifact of the specific data set he used but replicated across a range of scholarly databases. 

However, the additional two years of data I was able to analyze were also quite revelatory. After 2020, there were declines across the board in published research focused on identity-based bias and discrimination. Academic scholarship seems to have passed peak “woke.”

It would not be difficult to guess why 2020 would have been the point at which people began to rethink their commitment to this course of inquiry, and its wisdom. That was the year that riots on these issues erupted around the country, the police went into hiding in large parts of the nation, and crime began to surge -- as it continues to do. Over almost the same period, rape is up 38%(!!); aggravated assault, 29%(!) murder, 26%(!); violent crime overall, 12%.

This coincides, by the way, with a marked decline in property crime. People aren't stealing more; they're stealing less. They are raping, assaulting, and killing more. 

It may seem ironic that this correlates with an intense period of interest in justice, and opposing traditional prejudices. The correlation would not surprise a Traditional Conservative of the 19th Century, of course; he might have pointed out that the whole point of social controls, which are often found oppressive, is to corral and shape the parts of society that are otherwise inclined to violence. 

I think it offends contemporary conservatives to suggest that policing is or ought to be oppressive, let alone that its function is to oppress rather than to gently guide, serve, protect. Yet I observe that it does so: if the police bother to show up at all, the best you can hope for is that they will leave again without taking any actions that are harmful to people on the scene. They may arrest, taser, shoot, beat; they may initiate a process that leads to chains, fines, or imprisonment. Your life is never going to improve by meeting a police officer, not as such things are done these days; if you're as lucky as possible, they'll just go away again and leave you alone.

[Contrast with the Fire and Medical services, which often help people they encounter. I have met many people who were heartily grateful to see rescue or paramedic personnel.]

One can guess how academics, inclined to thought and -- increasingly -- trained by their education towards sensitivity of feelings, would be deeply moved by a sober assessment of how awful policing is. Even more so, our prison system, which is massive and undisciplined, full of sexual assault and rape that it barely addresses which much of society seems to regard as an additional part of the intended punishment. Full, too, of racist gangs that further the worst sort of the very impulse that 'social justice' thinks it intends to counter, not always noticing that they usually end up feeding the ideas of racial solidarity and resentment rather than cooling those things.

No, it's the Gods of the Copybook Headings again, which a famous 19th century Traditional Conservative warned of in his poem. It may not seem right; it may not seem kind. It may in fact not be in any sense kind or merciful. Societies do it anyway because, well, the alternative is that 'the Gods of the Copybook Headings/ with terror and slaughter return!'

Perhaps some day we might find a better way; but this was not the one. Yet as the article notes in closing, the end of the fire only means living among its ruins; it won't put anything back the way it was, if indeed it were right to do so.