The Brooklyn Rail

Few terms have infected contemporary political discourse as completely, and at times confusingly, as the term “woke.” This is evident when considering just some of the ideas, practices, and institutions that have been criticized as woke in the last few years. Higher education, the heartbeat of critical race theory, is for most critics tautologically woke. So is Hollywood, for that matter, and any other industry focused on issues of “representation” or identity politics. Antiracism is woke. Climate activism, open borders, and LGBTQ rights are woke. Masking in public is woke. Checking your privilege is woke—and, admittedly, quite obnoxious. But while these can all be understood as belonging to a certain strain of “leftist” dogma, wokeness is clearly not limited to a rigidly progressive worldview. Corporations like Bud Light, John Deere, Lowe’s, and Target have also been labeled woke, as have Popes Francis and Leo XIV, investment companies like BlackRock and Vanguard, and the United States military. Murdering foreign civilians with drones is not an especially woke practice on its own, but apparently becomes so if the person pushing the button identifies as nonbinary.

BlackRock is a similarly confusing addition to the list. In 2024, the 11 trillion dollar asset manager announced it had scaled back its support for ESG, the investment strategy that prioritizes environmental and social causes. As reported in Forbes, BlackRock’s support for ESG initiatives fell to just 4 percent, down from 47 percent the previous year.¹ This reversal was undoubtedly a response to criticism that ESG funds are a form of “woke capitalism,” with treasuries from three US states—West Virginia, Florida, and Louisiana—divesting from BlackRock in protest. Vivek Ramaswamy, during one the Republican presidential debates, went so far as to call BlackRock CEO Larry Fink “the king of the woke industrial complex.” 

But what exactly is “woke” about Fink and the company he founded? Fink, after all, was instrumental in the development of the mortgage-backed securities at the center of the 2007–08 financial crisis. And while BlackRock may have positioned itself as a self-professed leader in ESG investing, it is hardly a beacon of progressive values (and, under even the broadest definition, cannot be meaningfully understood as “leftist”). Among the asset manger’s massive portfolio of investments are ones in fossil fuels, arms manufacturing, and companies blacklisted for human rights violations—to say nothing of the larger role BlackRock plays in our bleak, neo-feudal existence. Put another way, if both BlackRock and Black Lives Matter can be described as woke, what does wokeness really mean?

Definitions are notoriously slippery, and for a politically charged term like “woke,” this is especially true. Ultimately, as Musa al-Gharbi writes in his new book, We Have Never Been Woke, the utility of a term like “wokeness” is not really given by the conceptual boundaries its definition might provide, but rather by how the term functions politically—the contradictions it reveals, the social relations it obscures. Al-Gharbi argues that “Wokeness” is what Raymond Williams calls a “keyword,” which is to say its meaning is inseparable from that which it seeks to describe. “Insofar as it indicates a certain disposition toward social justice,” he writes, “then how one understands ‘social justice’ will significantly influence how one understands, evaluates, and deploys the term ‘woke.’”² In this sense, criticizing BlackRock for being woke has less to do with the precision of the term itself than with a political antagonism that BlackRock has come to represent. Corporations have always invested in social and political causes, it’s just that these have historically aligned with right-wing politics and “free market principles.” What differentiates ESG and “woke capitalism” is its explicitly progressive orientation, which has come to be associated with the top-down, anti-democratic politics of elites.

The core argument of We Have Never Been Woke takes this contradiction as its entry point: namely, the appropriation of egalitarian social justice rhetoric by elites to serve their own ends. Indeed, the conspicuous support for progressive causes by the beneficiaries of inequality seems directly at odds with the positions they occupy. As al-Gharbi asks:

Why is it that the people who benefit the most from what sociologists call systemic or institutionalized racism or sexism also happen to be the people most conspicuously concerned with “ideological” racism, sexism, and so on (i.e., people saying, thinking, feeling, believing the “wrong” things about gender, sexuality, race, and other “identity” issues)? How can elites whose lifestyles and livelihoods are oriented around the production, maintenance, and exploitation of inequality still view themselves as egalitarians?³

What’s more, not only do these elites view themselves as sincere champions of social justice causes (i.e., “true believers”), many go so far as to portray themselves as erstwhile victims of the prevailing order—no different than the marginalized communities they support. Victimhood, especially as it relates to trauma, plays a particularly important role in the mystification of social relations and the status obsession of elites.

Al-Gharbi is a sociologist by training, and his conceptual framing of these social relations, as well as his definition of “elites,” borrows directly from French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Specifically, al-Gharbi uses the term “symbolic capitalists” to describe the elites, or “professionals who traffic in symbols and rhetoric, images and narratives, data and analysis, ideas and abstraction (as opposed to workers engaged in manual forms of labor tied to physical goods and services).”⁴ Such cultural and intellectual producers occupy a contradictory position within capitalist relations: they are “economically dominated but symbolically dominant,”⁵ which allows them to think of themselves as not truly elite (if they are in the first place—more on this later). Unlike financially independent elites, symbolic capitalists depend on patronage from institutions such as universities and media outlets, where they nevertheless exert considerable influence over the production and reproduction of ideas. Politically and ideologically, al-Gharbi notes, symbolic capitalists are “overwhelmingly Democratic and liberal. All said, the lion’s share of symbolic capitalists are highly educated white liberals, and Americans who happen to be highly educated white liberals are quite likely to be symbolic capitalists.”⁶

All of this sounds a bit like Barbara and John Ehrenreich’s definition of the professional-managerial class (PMC), which al-Gharbi describes as “the term they coined for symbolic capitalists.”⁷ The difference, however, is that the Ehreneichs did not frame the PMC as “elites” in the way that al-Gharbi understands contemporary symbolic capitalists. For the Ehreneichs, the PMC occupied a distinct albeit contentious class position that “exists in an objectively antagonistic relationship to another class of wage earners”⁸: the working class. This is crucial because al-Gharbi’s analysis of symbolic capitalists, or elites, is decidedly less objective than theirs, and at times infected with a kind of subjective psychologizing that raises more questions than it answers.

The opening chapters of We Have Never Been Woke offer a genealogy of the term “woke” and its relationship to the similarly deployed term “political correctness,” which decreased in usage just as “woke” gained in popularity. Indeed, there is nothing particularly novel about wokeness as such, nor the beliefs and attitudes associated with it. To this point, al-Gharbi frames our ongoing “Great Awokening” as an iteration of earlier uprisings among cultural elites and elite aspirants during times of crisis: the student movement of the 1930s, the student movement of the late 1960s, and the overproduction of elites in the early 1990s. Our present moment, meanwhile, began in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when once again a large number of educated professionals and aspirational millennials found themselves with few job prospects and a foreclosed future. Specifically, and quite compellingly, al-Gharbi argues that our “Great Awokening” began with the Occupy Wall Street movement. This ostensibly populist uprising masked a deeper contradiction in class relations. As he writes:

In reality, Occupy was not class oriented. It was a movement that, if anything, helped obscure important class differences and the actual causes of social stratification. As David Autor aptly put it, “The singular focus of the public debate on the ‘top 1 percent’ of households overlooks the component of earnings inequality that is arguably most consequential for the ‘other 99 percent’ of citizens: the dramatic growth in the wage premium associated with higher education and cognitive ability.” That is, precisely what Occupy helped us avoid talking about is how symbolic economy institutions and their employment practices are some of the main drivers of contemporary inequality, and how people like us are the primary “winners” in this arrangement.⁹

This passage, I would argue, is central to both the strengths and weaknesses of We Have Never Been Woke. Like many of al-Gharbi’s claims, it’s at once totally right but also somewhat wrong, at least with respect to the way it’s being framed. That is, it’s absolutely true that Occupy was not a bottom-up populist movement comprised of traditionally exploited wage-laborers, but rather a protest driven primarily by educated professionals who had suddenly found their position in the hierarchy more precarious than it had been previously. It’s also true that the “1 percent versus everyone else” framing misses important aspects of capitalist class relations that educated professionals have reason to overlook: higher education—as I have written elsewhere, and as critics like Gary Roth have researched extensively—is central to the reproduction of class relations and the rationalization of inequality as a result of “natural endowments.”¹⁰

Where al-Gharbi begins to go wrong here is in framing symbolic capitalists (among whom he always includes himself) as the primary “winners” within capitalist class relations. The problem with the labor of symbolic capitalists is its place in the system of surplus value creation, not an abstract social “winning and losing.” This language carries with it two problems. First, it introduces a whiff of moralizing, and allows for what becomes a conspicuously slippery usage of the term “elites” that is not just confusing but occasionally dubious. Second, such language increasingly emphasizes motivated reasoning, despite al-Gharbi’s own admission that it is “not particularly revelatory to point out that symbolic capitalists are hypocrites.”¹¹ In other words, al-Gharbi is correct in his descriptions of the ways symbolic capitalists use social justice to their advantage, but his introduction of individual psychology into these descriptions undercuts his analysis by making the problem one of moral indifference and the “choices” elites make. Much of chapter five is dedicated precisely to the “cognitive processes” elites utilize to rationalize their actions that maintain the hierarchy.

Here, the word “elite” is worth examining. Again, definitions are slippery, but al-Gharbi’s use of the word is curious. While he’s right to note that “symbolic capitalists serve wealth, but we also have significant agency and power,”¹² such agency and power are not necessarily shared by all symbolic capitalists, nor are they always tied to “elite” status in neat ways. Someone like Paul Krugman, for example, undoubtedly has had considerable influence as a Nobel laureate and a columnist for the New York Times, and his status within both the media and academia afforded him a level of power not enjoyed by the vast majority of people. But what about your average college professor or journalist, both of whom al-Gharbi lumps under the umbrella “symbolic capitalist” and treats as though they reap the same rewards—financial and cultural—as Krugman? While they may partake in the status game of woke signaling in the attempt to position themselves among their peers, it’s unclear what this means if they don’t actually possess meaningful power. These distinctions matter, because without them al-Gharbi’s claims quickly seem to be rooted in interpersonal resentment rather than objective analysis.

Consider the chapter “Symbolic Domination,” which offers a kind of ethnographic study of symbolic capitalists that attempts to understand their behaviors, attitudes, and lifestyles. It begins with a simple question: “Who are the elites?” As noted already, they are overwhelmingly college-educated and liberal, but al-Gharbi extrapolates from this a number of head-scratching claims. For instance, he notes that symbolic capitalists enjoy a wage premium as a result of their education and that, because they tend to marry others with similar levels of education, “families often reach the upper quintile without either partner individually meeting or exceeding a six-figure income, leading many to erroneously assume they are not elites.”¹³ Here I can’t help but ask: are they elites?

The upper quintile of household income currently begins around 153,000 dollars, which is a little less than twice the median household income. This certainly makes for a comfortable life, but describing it as “elite,” a term typically associated with real economic and social power, is confusing. First, it neglects to take into account cost of living, especially in densely-populated urban areas where 153,000 dollars has significantly less purchasing power than elsewhere (the very urban areas, coincidentally, where, al-Gharbi notes, elites tend to work and live). Second, it neglects the fact that many trade professions pay just as much, and at times more, than those in symbolic reproduction. Plumbers and HVAC technicians, for example, can easily bring home an individual income of more than six figures, depending on their experience and location. They are not, however, what most people would call “elite.”

Neither, quite frankly, are most faculty members. As al-Gharbi himself notes, the average full-time college professor brings home between 66,000 and 73,000 dollars per year. This is more than your average wage laborer earns, but hardly worth noting as a marker of elite status—it is a difference in degree that, I would argue, has not yet become a difference in kind. And while al-Gharbi notes the plight of contingent faculty, who are exploited “relative to tenured and tenure-track professors,” he dismisses this by claiming that “the challenges they face generally pale in comparison to the kinds of problems that exploited nonsymbolic workers have to deal with.”¹⁴ In a book ostensibly marketed as a take-down of woke ideology, one which rightfully criticizes the culture of victimhood used by many professionals to gain cultural capital, this is an odd claim to make. There are important material distinctions to be made between the labor performed by a college professor and that performed by, say, a fast-food line cook, but comparing relative hardships to see whose life is “more difficult” shouldn’t be one of them.

The most frustrating version of this appears in al-Gharbi’s analysis of consumption habits. Symbolic capitalists, he argues, prefer lifestyles “premised heavily on the precarious and poorly compensated labor of non–symbolic capitalists—especially those who are immigrants, minorities, or women.”¹⁵ This is certainly true, but it’s hardly limited to symbolic capitalists. Every lifestyle is premised on this sort of labor—that’s ultimately what it means to live in a capitalist society! Yet, al-Gharbi insists on framing this as a kind of moral problem, a preference that symbolic capitalists blithely accept, and implicitly ought to change. As he writes again a few pages later:

Symbolic capitalists love intermediaries like Uber, Grubhub, and Amazon precisely because they carry out the requisite exploitation to enable symbolic capitalists’ idiosyncratic preferences and lifestyles, but they also help create a “distance” between symbolic capitalists and the workers exploited on their behalf. Clients are rarely forced to understand or confront the actual costs of the cheap and disposable labor they rely on.¹⁶

Say what you will about arrogant, educated professionals, but insisting they “love” Uber or Amazon because it funds their “idiosyncratic lifestyles” is both weird and wrong. I’ve never met anyone who “loves” Amazon (which reminds me a bit of conservatives claiming that people “love” their private insurance). And even if they do, it doesn’t matter how they feel—the relevant issue is that these services exist to fill a void left by decades of the hollowing out of public infrastructure. More importantly, there is nothing about using these services that is “elite” or “idiosyncratic.” Amazon is one of the five most powerful corporations in the world because hundreds of millions of people can be counted among its customers, not because it caters to the whims of educated professionals (even if, by virtue of their income, they are able to use it more often). That one is not forced to confront Amazon’s requisite cheap labor is, again, true for virtually every service, and absolutely not an experience limited to elites. Every day non-elite workers enter grocery stores and casually fill their carts, never having to think about how those goods got there: who picked the produce, who packaged the coffee beans, who drove it all to the store. This is precisely why Karl Marx begins Capital with the appearance of the commodity.

Some of this is related to al-Gharbi’s discipline—as a sociologist, his consideration of psychological motives is to be expected. But it’s also evident that al-Gharbi is committed to understanding the problem of wokeness through a lens of identity, even if it isn’t quite the crass identity politics he otherwise criticizes. Despite his insistence that faculty, even contingent faculty, do not face the same sorts of challenges faced by non-elites, he nevertheless criticizes the whiteness of symbolic capitalists by noting: “Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and female scholars, meanwhile, are especially likely to occupy part-time and contingent faculty positions, with much lower pay, benefits, job security, institutional authority, and academic freedom.”¹⁷ Among other things, this is a curious claim to make about a class of elites that has been framed as central to the reproduction of inequality, and who, as al-Gharbi as frequently notes, appropriate the language of social justice for self-serving aims. Why, suddenly, should we care if such elites are not as powerful as their peers? More importantly, this remark seems directly at odds with an excellent passage that appears later:

In short, symbolic capitalists tend to advocate for a form of social justice that jives well with, and indeed enhances, meritocracy. The objective is to eliminate barriers against immigrants, women, LGBTQ people, and racial and ethnic minorities so the “best and the brightest” can rise to the top. But notice, this language about “rising to the top” implies a hierarchy, not egalitarianism. The goal, at bottom, isn’t to make everyone equal. It’s to ensure that inequalities are based on the “correct” (meritocratic) attributes.¹⁸

This is a beautifully succinct summary of the ways identity and culture work to obscure, and ultimately rationalize, class inequality. And yet, by the way he notes the racial and gender disparities among contingent faculty, al-Gharbi seems to suggest the problem isn’t that such faculty are exploited by the universities that employ them, but that they are being exploited to a greater degree than their white, male counterparts.

Trying to square these two lines of thinking is frustrating, but maybe it shouldn’t be that surprising. Despite its strong analysis of wokeness and its surrounding discourse, We Have Never Been Woke is not just unclear about what it means to be elite. It is also unclear about the sort of power symbolic capitalists actually have. Their expertise in and control over symbols suggests their power is significant. As al-Gharbi notes, “We shape the system in accordance with our own tastes and desires, independent of, and sometimes in conflict with, the preferences and priorities of superelites.”¹⁹ And indeed, this class of professionals is treated at times as if they’re not merely influential, wielding their beloved cultural capital, but as if they are the equal of the small class of financial elites that steer the global economy.

At the same time, however, the book’s critique of woke signaling suggests that symbolic acts are ineffective at achieving the symbolic capitalists’ self-professed aims. Al-Gharbi writes in the book’s final chapter:

Overstating the power of language leads symbolic capitalists to conclude that their symbolic gestures toward antiracism, feminism, and so forth mark significant contributions to addressing social problems when, in fact, they change virtually nothing about the allocation of wealth or power in society, and there is not really a plausible account for how they could.²⁰

This claim is both true and, in a culture ever-obsessed with discursive rituals, absolutely necessary. But if it is true, why have we spent so much time discussing these professionals as if they rule the world?

Here, I would argue again that al-Gharbi is totally right and at the same time wrong. Yes, symbolic gestures do nothing to address real inequality, and the virtue signaling among professionals—even those who are not functionally elite—is both tedious and ultimately self-serving. But—and this is where I think al-Gharbi could be clearer—this is precisely the point. Whatever you feel about the symbolic gestures that have been widely mocked as woke and litigated to death in the media—if you’re a true believer of these causes, or an “anti-woke” crusader that yearns for the end of DEI—it doesn’t really matter. The outcome is the same regardless. Because, again, the utility of wokeness is how it functions politically, and how it functions politically is to encourage us to think about inequality in a certain way: namely by thinking about identity instead of class. It is in this light that wokeness really does matter. Because once you accept its understanding of the problem, the politics you do will always be the politics that benefit the ruling class.

We Have Never Been Woke closes with a useful provocation in this light. Equality, al-Gharbi writes, “is not something to be believed in but rather something to be enacted. It’s not a cause to be supported in the abstract. It’s something we do.”²¹ On this point, thankfully, al-Gharbi isn’t confused at all.