No End to Wokeness
Like decoloniality 1 or social justice generally, there can be no end to being woke in a world that is always changing and with shifting power relations and standards of acceptability. I understand wokeness as a social awareness of the everyday repressions in social, economic, and political life. The history of wokeness (as Kabir, 2021 provides so thoroughly, or see Rhodes, 2022) from African-American resistance to white power means that using the concept in various contexts should require a specific focus on race so that wokeness is not depoliticised and decontextualised. This broader adaptation (and my usage) of wokeness as social awareness focuses on race and gender, sexuality, class, ability, religion, language, and other various marginalised categories of identity and positionality. 2
Wokeness is not a state that can be achievable and there can be no end to wokeness; as the world changes, as systems of inequality change, and as our individual positions within these systems change, our social awareness will always be in the process of change. Wokeness is not something to be achieved but something to always be working towards. Wokeness cannot be achieved because it is not an individual’s process (their achievement); social awareness and social justice happen in the relation between the individual and others (the social) (further discussion below).
To take a lesson from decoloniality (see endnote 1), wokeness, defined as social awareness and working for social justice, must resist an “end-game mentality”, as this simplifies discussions and reduces complexities (Nakata et al., 2012, p. 133). The world and power relations between people are always changing so there can be no end to being aware of unequal power dynamics.
[… T]he continued unfolding of Western modernity is also the reinforcement, through crude and vulgar repetitions as well as more or less creative adjustments, of coloniality. This is reflected in contemporary “development” policies, nation-state building practices, widespread forms of policing, surveillance, and profiling, various forms of extractivism, the increasing concentration of resources in the hands of the few, the rampant expression of hate and social phobias, and liberal initiatives of inclusion, among other forms of social, economic, and political control. (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 1)
As the repetitions of colonisation and the mutually reinforcing systems of oppression continue and the adjustments emerge, “wokeness”, or being aware of these oppressions and their normalisation, must be a continual engagement and awareness-making with the context and milieu. As power changes, resistance must change too.
The process of social awareness cannot be an individual one. Not only do we require learning from each other to be socially aware, but understanding wokeness as an individual process would be a decontextualisation. Wokeness cannot just be an individual realisation of how the structure of society works; this awareness must be an awareness of the necessity of change in one’s social surroundings. Becoming socially aware and working for social justice means extending beyond your own experience of the world and the social, beyond your own experience of power and marginalisation. This is an intersectional claim (see footnote 9)—as oppressions intersect, so must resistance that aims for social justice. In the always ongoing work of wokeness, we require a response to context and to the social.
Individualisation, Internalisation
Angela Davis points out that social justice movements should not just be remembered through individual “heroes” (2016). Behind every Martin Luther King, for example, is a collective of unknown people who made the movement and the “hero” possible (2016, p. 58).
I think it is important for us to learn how to pay tribute to those whose names we don’t necessarily know, and to recognize that the agents of history are not so much the leaders and the spokespeople, but rather the masses of people who develop a collective imagination regarding the possibility for a new future. (Davis in Zaniewski, 2020)
We individualise social justice movements through hero figures; the same can be seen in the South African context with much of the idealisation around, for one, Mandela. If the success or the history of a social justice movement is individualised, we ignore all the unknown people who made that movement possible, even though that movement is from and for all these “unknown people”. Social justice requires an emphasis on the social—the collective and/or the community who are experiencing and resisting the injustice. The individual within the collective must be oriented towards the collective in working for social change.
Social awareness, or wokeness, requires this same kind of emphasis on the community. If we think of wokeness as an individual consciousness, we turn ourselves into this “hero”—we individualise social justice as a discourse for ourselves without reference to a context of the social sphere or working for social justice. We have to break this idea of learning and working for the self in the context of social justice: there is the context of people and work and movements that enabled social awareness; removing this relation undermines the responsibility of the self to reciprocate in some form. In academic social justice fields, such as this field of critical diversity studies, there is an added danger of trying to be woke for personal or professional gain—to obtain a degree or to maintain a career path or to publish articles. Outside academia, this trend of individual social awareness also exists; celebrities are pressured into taking public stands on political issues, as a form of branding of the individual beyond their experience, field of expertise, or even knowledge. 3 The issue is not that we expect public figures to be principled (we should), but that the talking points may matter more or carry more consequences than the actual structures which the individual participates in and perpetuates or resists.
This individualisation of wokeness perpetuates social injustice because if I am only responsible for my awareness and my actions, then my position relative to the society and the structural injustice which precedes me and which I participate in is not mine for which to take responsibility. Since it is particularly difficult to respond to large-scale problems, and an individual alone would be unlikely to have an impact on such a structural problem, it is much easier for the individual to focus on their ideas, their actions, and their individual “brand”. What is lost is the connection between the awareness of a social problem and our own positionality and responsibility within an unequal society. One individual’s awareness is almost irrelevant if not in combination with a collective who together work for change within the recognised systems of inequality. We must link our individual ideas and actions to a broader collective and, through this social connection, resist inequality and injustice.
Beyond our social awareness, there also can be no individualisation of systemic issues. As Angela Davis said with regard to the Marikana massacre in South Africa: “Racism is so dangerous because it does not necessarily depend on individual actors, but rather is deeply embedded in the apparatus …” (2016, p. 23). It makes sense then that social awareness cannot remain with the individual, systemic change will take collective responsibility and action. If the problem is systemic and the solution must be systemic, I would posit that a form of collective responsibility would have to be the solution.
I focus specifically on the South African context in my example of systemic issues and white people’s relation to these issues. My argument, from here on, is focused on privileged people becoming aware of their own privilege and positionality within a society of inequality and exploitation, using the example of white people in South Africa. I am making no claims about whether white South Africans identify as woke, but am rather thinking through what it would take for such a connection to be possible. This thinking arises from my own position within South Africa as a white person and from disillusionment with academia, but also more broadly, with the normalised co-opting of social justice within capitalism for less impact and for the perpetuation of ongoing inequality.
Whiteness and Empty Wokeness
As Dladla says, “there are no whites without whiteness and no whiteness without whites” and “there are neither of these things without white supremacy” (2019). Focusing on our South African context, I agree with Dladla—if whiteness were not a symbol of power relations, there would be no white people as the category would have become extinct. 4 Whiteness means power and, in South Africa, a racialised capitalism is perpetuating Apartheid-colonialism (Ngcukaitobi, 2021, pp. 25, 32). Racism, sexism, colonialism, etc., does not only, or primarily, exist with individuals; we must think of oppression as a societal structure/structuring. I therefore place my focus on whiteness, not on an individual level, but within the broader structure of inequality where white people are largely the beneficiaries of this structure.
The structural benefits of whiteness and of a society of inequality are ubiquitous. White people make more money than other racial groups, Stats SA compared the mean of salaries (employed people) between racial groups between 2011 and 2015 and amongst white people it was R24 646 per month, and R6 899 per month for Black Africans 5 (Stats SA, 2020 6 ). White people are employed at higher percentages than other racial groups and their employment is disproportionately higher within the “skilled” category as compared to the “semi-skilled” and “lower-skilled” categories (Stats SA, 2014, pp. 15, 16). White unemployment is lower in each category of education (separated into categories of “less than matric”, “matric”, and with “tertiary education”) (Stats SA, 2014, p. 34). In terms of land, 72% of individually owned farms and agricultural holdings are owned by white people, 15% by Coloured people, 5% by Indian people, and 4% by African people (Ngcukaitobi, 2021, p. 110). These are just a few examples of the continuation of material white privilege, which does not begin to account for epistemic justice, 7 a conversation which has been more prominent in the public realm since the #MustFall protests of 2015, 2016, and ongoing.
White people’s individual choices have limited effects on the structures and perpetuations of this racial inequality. Alcoff speaks about breaking the rules of race, of “white treason”, but these acts only hold meaning within a political movement that is publicised (Alcoff gives the example of white people who joined bus boycotts against the Jim Crow laws) (1998, p. 16). Outside such a movement, individual choices of “white treason” may have harmful effects, for example, a choice of living area and schools may contribute to gentrification (Alcoff, 1998, p. 16). As an individual, you cannot disavow whiteness nor avoid its history nor its privilege (Alcoff, 1998, p. 17). Individual political acts, such as voting, are not enough because the political extends beyond the public sphere. The personal is political, which means that we must combine our personals into a form of collective responsibility, which is collective action. Another lens, a class analysis of race, is not sufficient, although it is definitely part of the general structural privilege of whiteness (Alcoff, 1998, p. 19). Alcoff discusses some attempts of white people to address their whiteness but the difficulty is bringing together social and historical context with class analysis with identity formation as well as reparation and redistribution (Alcoff, 1998, pp. 21–23).
Alcoff argues for a form of white double consciousness wherein there is
an everpresent acknowledgment of the historical legacy of white identity constructions in the persistent structures of inequality and exploitation, as well as a newly awakened memory of the many white traitors to white privilege who have struggled to contribute to the building of an inclusive human community. (1998, pp. 24–25)
I do not agree with this adaptation of a white double consciousness. I do not think such a specifically originated concept as double consciousness, developed by Du Bois about the experience of African Americans who have two irreconcilable identities within the specific context where the society is antagonistic with the Black individual, should be taken into social justice discourse about whiteness (Du Bois, 1903). Our society (South African but also more broadly in the world) is not antagonistic to whiteness, white people, nor white supremacy and we cannot therefore claim this split within identity. Alcoff’s use of double consciousness, a splitting of white identity between historical positioning and potential ideals, is a focus on identity when the result of these unbalanced power relations should rather be a focus on social justice. I do think Alcoff is theorising for social justice, but her focus on white identity for this aim is, in my view, misplaced. White people’s attempt at social justice should not be an attempt to reconcile their histories; related identities; and its present perpetuation with social justice—such an effort would only be possible if the perpetuation ends. White people’s process of wokeness and work towards social justice must be a collectivising of resources and work towards collective responsibility. The notion of white double consciousness places the conflict as an internal difficulty when the conflict is between awareness (wokeness) and materiality (social injustice).
I am not arguing that the macro must come before the micro, necessarily, just that there is an emptiness to an individual mental “wokeness” which does not translate into material structural change. Alcoff’s conception of white double consciousness focuses on identity, on the individual experience, and, although this is related to the social structure, the focus must be grounded in the societal structuring. It is an empty “wokeness” to talk about racism and privilege without discussing and working towards changing racist societal structures. There can be no white woke person because whiteness is the structure of the “sleep” (of the ongoing material and epistemic structuration of power and privilege and oppression and deprivation). In order to be white and woke, we would have to live in a transformed society. Alcoff says the aim is “to transform the basis of collective self-respect from global, racial vanguardism to a dedicated commitment to end racism” (Alcoff, 1998, p. 25). I agree with this, but a dedicated commitment must start by relating the self to the social injustice and then working to change this relation towards material and epistemic justice.
Vice, acknowledging her ongoing benefit as a white person in post-Apartheid South Africa, builds an argument in which she focuses on the moral (which she explicitly discusses from Western history as an individual concern) as an internal factor. Vice considers what white people have to do to become morally good in “post-Apartheid” South Africa, and she separates the moral from the social: “For despite our context, no life and no self is only political; no one can think of herself as only a citizen or as only and essentially constituted by factors external to her” (2010, p. 323). This inward-directed project is motivated by the idea that white people see themselves as the problem and, to summarise, Vice focuses on the moral concern, arguing that guilt and shame are appropriate feelings of processing for white people in “post-Apartheid” South Africa (2010, pp. 326–329, 337). I disagree with Vice that the moral can or should be separated from its context (the personal is political, as discussed above), so I do not think that the individual internal project does much towards changing the conditions which keep white people as the beneficiaries who experience these moral dilemmas. Furthermore, the responsibility should be to do more than to be silent in the political sphere as white people are not only beneficiaries of Apartheid, but are overwhelmingly at the top of the racist-capitalist hierarchy which actively reproduces social stratification and marginalisation through race. As racism is ongoing on both a personal and structural level, Vice’s proposed action—silence and learning—does not do enough (2010, p. 335). There is a faux wokeness to being quiet in the political realm while money and its accompanying power disproportionately sit with white people. I do not think that Vice overcomes the accusation that being silent is a method of avoiding responsibility and allowing ongoing unequal power relations (Alcoff & Fine in Steyn, 2001, p. xxxiv). Although humans may be driven by their feelings, there is an absolute impotence, when becoming aware of one’s benefit and privilege and violent history, in focusing on one’s feelings about being an oppressor while it is still ongoing. We cannot, even in discussions about whiteness, centre white individuals and feelings while the systemic issues at hand are harming Black people, poor people, and other marginalised people (Ramsden, 2015). With respect to feelings, let us not empathise with our own power so that we silo our social justice.
Both Alcoff and Vice speak of the difficulty for white people to attach themselves to liberatory futures when their positionality in the ongoing problem is realised (Alcoff, 1998, pp. 18–19; Vice, 2010, p. 337). I do not agree with this position. White people should be attached to liberatory futures rather than to whiteness. An attachment to a liberatory future with the condition of maintaining a respectable whiteness, one of the structures of power within racialised capitalism, is contradictory. There cannot be a white woke person, because if a white person could be free from all the material and epistemic racism-capitalism then the identity itself would be meaningless. White people should be trying to undo “whiteness” in the sense of an ongoing system of inequality and oppression. White people may have gained a lot economically but they have lost more morally, culturally, and socially (although this is not to say that white people should work for Black liberation for their own gain). White feminisms, white queer liberation movements, and white socialist or anti-capitalist movements (whether they recognise themself as placing white interests at the forefront or as universal issues or not) must attach themselves to racial liberation—an intersectional practice 8 is required to undo systems of inequality. Liberation movements that are not intersectional cannot undo systems of harm; oppressions are and power are intersectional so a resistance must be too (see endnote 9): racism-capitalism-sexism-homophobia-marginalisation cannot be resisted one at a time. We do not merely think of the intersectionality of identity, but of the “intersectionality of struggles” (Davis, 2016, p. 26). To move from whiteness, patriarchy, heteronormativity, ableism and other intersecting power practices, we should be working towards material redistribution and restructuration for equality, meaning material and epistemic justice.
Steyn speaks of the difficulty that white Afrikaners 9 have in finding their place post-1994, since Apartheid was committed in their name (2004, p. 150). I do not think this difficulty will end until whiteness as white supremacy does. Our commitment cannot be to refigure white identity if it is not first to change white privilege and Black disadvantage, to change systems of inequality. Whiteness was deliberately created, after all, as not-poor. As part of white Afrikaner nationalism, fixing the “poor white problem” was part of an assertion of a positive white Afrikaner identity contra the British and contra Black people, so that class and race together have become a “naturalised” hierarchy for white and white Afrikaans South Africans (Sachs, 2012).
… Whiteness is already at once white supremacy. This is because whiteness is a political category, historically established through the racial subjugation of other human beings on the basis that their humanity is defective in relation to that of whites. (Dladla, 2019)
Alcoff speaks of building a positive white identity but I doubt, again, if this focus on identity is possible in South Africa while the structural harm is ongoing (1998, pp. 22–24). Let the white supremacy end so that whiteness as a category no longer makes sense, so that the “white” of the people is no more. 10 In this ongoing “post”-Apartheid with shifting white identity, my position is that we must attach white positionality and power with responsibility as a response (Steyn, 2001, p. xxix). Without essentialising what “whiteness” is, white people can attach themself to a political ideal of collective responsibility (as, of course, should anyone) (Steyn, 2001, p. xxxi).
The construction of race has been used to skew this society over centuries. If we prematurely banish it from our analytical framework, we serve the narrow interests of those previously advantaged, by concealing the enduring need for redress. To deal with the expressions of power, we have to call it by its name. (Steyn, 2001, p. xxxii)
For clarity, I am not making a “colour-blind” argument, but exactly saying that we should be working to undo whiteness as a system of racial inequality and white privilege. False claims about an “Afrikaner genocide” are really just the baulking of white Afrikaners to participate in material restructuration, as misleading links are created between “farm murders” and land expropriation (see Pogue, 2019). White Afrikaners must attach themselves to liberatory futures by ending an attachment to a racist past as necessarily a white Afrikaner state of being and thereby holding themselves as non-reactionaries at the top of the hierarchy. There is nothing preventing white people and white Afrikaners from attaching themselves to a restructuration of society and using this attachment to the past as something that must be responded to, something to take responsibility for, for white people have the resources and thereby the response-ability. This country will not be as “strange a place” (as Vice says) if white people do not keep themselves strange and separate. White Afrikaners are not the “uitverkore volk” (chosen people 11 ), but perhaps white people can choose what kind of people to be by honouring a collective responsibility, beginning with epistemic justice and material change—redistribution and restructuration starting with the land. I do not even wish to discuss the smaller everyday actions that white people may participate in to undo, what Steyn calls, the “normative invisibility” of whiteness because, as easier steps which do not undo structural harm, they will become the focus (2001, p. xxvii). “South African whites can play a part in creating a postcolonial South Africa only if they themselves, their own identities, become postcolonial spaces” (Steyn, 2001, p. 170). Whiteness attached to responsibility within society means a restructuring of hierarchies and working towards social and material equality. As Butler says, identity and agency do not live with the subject or with the object but in the repetition of relationalities and discursivities—we must change our repetition and our thinking around whiteness, class, and hierarchy ([1990] 1999, pp. 184–185).
In relation to decoloniality, Maldonado-Torres critiques social justice where “[e]verything takes place at the level of knowledge and with the liberal values of supposed distance and neutrality” (2016, p. 7). If our “wokeness” is only at a distanced academic level, about sloganeering or individual branding, about unlearning only to the extent that it does not affect our material reality or actions, then we are stuck in a dream. A level of “wokeness” that does not cause material change, is just another dream; you cannot “unlearn” your social and economic positionality. Again borrowing from Maldonado-Torres on decoloniality, “wokeness” cannot be “a project of individual salvation but [must be] one that aspires to ‘build the world of [the] you’” (Fanon in Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 29). Wokeness must link to the building, must link to the collective.
Decoloniality is the dynamic activity of giving oneself to and joining the struggles with the damnés, beyond recognition, to bring about community and the formation of an-other world. (Maldonado-Torres, 2016, p. 30)
Similarly, wokeness as an awareness of the power relations of the world and of our contexts, must be an intersectional action towards restructuring society.
Saying Does Not Make It So
A speech act is an act where saying something makes it so (Green, 2021). For example, saying “I resign” is the very action of resigning or saying “I now pronounce you married partners” is the act that officiates the marriage (Green, 2021). Wokeness, or social justice, is not generally the same as a speech act. Putting #BlackLivesMatter in a bio online, wearing a Free Palestine T-shirt, or calling yourself an “intersectional feminist” is not the same as undoing systems of oppression. There is a difference between awareness-raising and individual branding; that difference will usually lie in collective work. In academia, within the colonial, racist, sexist, oppressive institutions, wokeness and learning cannot be our only striving—structural change is required. We cannot claim wokeness without changing our lives.
Conclusion
I use the example of white people in South Africa as a privileged group to demonstrate that wokeness must be attached to social justice action, that individual social awareness cannot be detached from collectivity. Wokeness has to be an ongoing process as the world and power relations are always changing. This social awareness requires an emphasis on the social—wokeness cannot be an individual achievement but is rather a method for engaging with the world and with power relations. My example of white people in South Africa demonstrates how the awareness of power relations does not lead to social change if social awareness is claimed only to the extent that it does not affect material reality. Rather than claiming wokeness through slogans and self-aggrandisation, privileged groups such as white South Africans, must start seriously thinking through collective responsibility and changing the structures of inequality. In the process of wokeness, social awareness is only the first step.