Woke croaks: “peak woke” has passed
Checks and Balance from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2024
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Summary
Over the past decade a form of wokeness arose on the illiberal left, characterised by extreme pessimism about America and its capacity to make progress. Analysis by The Economist of how influential these ideas are today finds that wokeness peaked in 2021-22 and has since receded. Why is America becoming less “woke”?
John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon. They’re joined by The Economist’s Ainslie Johnstone and Sacha Nauta, and Professor Musa al-Gharbi of Stony Brook University.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. Carmen Kyrooga spent months at the end of 2022 preparing to open a breakfast cafe in Coventry, a small town in East Central Connecticut. |
| 0:19.0 | She painstakingly renovated a building and carefully considered the name. |
| 0:25.0 | Something that would make people think of breakfast, |
| 0:28.0 | preferably with an O in it, so she could use a fried egg in the logo. |
| 0:33.2 | She reckoned she'd struck gold with the word she thought just meant to wake up in the morning |
| 0:37.6 | and proudly opened her new business, woke breakfast and coffee. |
| 0:57.1 | That's when the uproar began. breakfast and threatened to boycott the cafe. Kyiroga had migrated from Mexico a number of years earlier and had no idea she had named her cafe after one of the most triggering words in American politics. |
| 1:01.9 | Luckily for Kyiroga, most people were supportive and locals can still |
| 1:05.6 | head to Main Street for their woke coffee and eggs. |
| 1:11.8 | With 39 days to go until the 2024 election, I'm John Prido, and this is checks and balance from the economist. |
| 1:21.0 | Each week we take one big theme shaping American politics and explore it in depth. Today, why is America becoming less woke? Over the past decade a form of wokeness arose particularly the liberal left, which is characterized by extreme pessimism about America and its capacity to make progress, especially regarding race. |
| 2:00.0 | Analysis by the economist, looking at how influential these ideas are today, |
| 2:04.0 | finds that wokeness peaked in 2021 to 22 and has since receded. |
| 2:09.0 | What will come after peak woke? |
| 2:11.0 | And what does this all mean for American politics? We'll meet this week to discuss the passing of Peak Woke and what comes next are Idrice |
| 2:33.9 | Kaloon in Washington DC and Charlotte Howard also in Washington this week. |
| 2:38.3 | Charlotte what takes you to DC? I am in Washington because Adres and some of our other colleagues did a live event that I helped |
| 2:47.3 | organize last night with several hundred people there to talk about the impact of elections |
| 2:52.3 | around the world it was really great and it |
| 2:54.1 | was great to see in particular certain listeners who lend me some moral support for my |
| 3:00.9 | performance in trivia. I continue to get a kick out of the fact that I spent 20 years |
| 3:05.4 | with the economist writing cover stories on Saudi Aramco and the only thing I'm known for is being bad at quizzes, but moving on. |
... |
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