Welcome to Woke America
Introducing Habi Zhang, evidence-based scholar
wokeism, informal term
(woʊkɪzəm IPA Pronunciation Guide)
Progressive or left-wing attitudes or practices, esp. those opposing social injustice or discrimination, that are viewed as doctrinaire, self-righteous, pernicious, or insincere. Hence: such attitudes or practices are seen as constituting a collective social movement or agenda; an ideology associated with left to far left leaning academics and cancel culture in the humanities; the dominant consensus narrative on most university campuses.And as ideologies progress (and regress), there is Woke 2.0 arising over the last ten years. A new Cultural Revolution for the 21st century?
Woke means to be aware of the dynamics of marginalization and power by social category.
An important distinction is made between Woke 1.0 and 2.0.
Woke 1.0 raises awareness about these issues, but it does not moralize or police language and thought.
Woke 2.0 moralizes, polices language and thought, and leads to ideology-based cancel culture and worldview, i.e. a Maoist-like new Cultural Revolution that conservatives are currently canceling (US universities are rapidly divesting themselves of DEI elements).
Habi Zhang is a young scholar from China who is not a product of the U.S. of Americans education system nor its culture. She has lived in and studied at American universities. Her prior knowledge of America was a book written by Chinese scholars published in China who had traveled in America in the 1990s called Chatting About America.
America and its schooling system has changed dramatically since then, within academia since the 1950s-1980s, and then within elite (mostly white) culture. American products of their schooling system do not have the context to understand themselves nor their culture. Those homeschooled before being schooled at Liberty University likely don’t either. While conservative Americans may be the only Americans who can find value in Zhang’s scholarship, that doesn’t mean she is a fascist MAGA megaphone (and racist Asian supremacist) who is wrong about everything.
Evidence-based scholars having all prior cultures and existing cultures understood within a context of human and natural history, can have, can endeavor to iterate towards, a better view. Currently the West is dominated by ideology-based pseudoscholarship. [Note: there is evidence-based science and belief-based pseudoscience. Ideology is an abstracted system of beliefs, so ideology-based thinking is pseudoscholarship loudly pretending at book length not to be.]
The left-leaning academics are approaching 100% ideology-based thinking. Evidence that supports their conclusions/worldview may be cited but merely as an externality (their conclusions determine what their sham reasoning shall be). The right-leaning academics (13% with maybe 25% self-identifying as centrist) are subject to the same pathology but cannot fully embrace and celebrate being innumerate and inecolate ideologues.
Almost all American scholars from the last 60 years that I’ve run across or been run over by (e.g. an uncle who was a history professor) are anything but remorselessly evidence-based scholars. I have to wonder if anyone who is a product of the American education (schooling) system could be a person who would rather know than believe.
Please allow Habi Zhang to introduce herself:
Transcript
I am seeing the replication of Maoism in Woke America. Many of my American classmates, I don’t think many of them are very interested in learning. For instance, when you, when you claim there is systemic racism in America,…
Various speakers: “Systemic racism is a stain on our nation’s soul…. It’s about a structure built on systemic racism…, the systemic racism and injustice that follows America around like a shackle.” [Note: A more important concern should be systemic consensus narrative damage secondary to modern education that fails to recognize ideology as a cognitive pathology.]
Give me the facts. Give me the data.
They do not question. They just listen. Okay, if you say so, then that must be the truth…. I think for conservative Americans, if you want to save America, you really should teach more about Mao’s China.
I’m from China, and I was born and raised in a very remote, small, very, very poor town in Sichuan Province. We do not have industry in my hometown. So half of people, they work in government, institutions, other bureaucrats or teachers, doctors and the other half they just, like my parents, really just street vendors. I remember I, when I grew up, I cleaned my body maybe once a month, because it was a real challenging task. You have to heat up the water and put the water in a bucket. So that’s how I did shower when I grew up.
My father was born in 1955, and a couple years older than my mother. Both of them are illiterate, so they literally struggle putting food on the table throughout their lives. For American audience, you have to understand, in China, they don’t really think about a government. For instance, my parents, they never read a newspaper in their whole life, and so they don’t talk about a government. They just obey the authority.
My parents and I, we, we visited my uncle and aunt, and we were on our way back back to our home, and then I saw in an open yard a group of policemen, they were beating a civilian. This man, he was just lying on the ground and defenseless, begging for his life. I remember I said the exact word, “this is wrong.”
And my mother, she was so scared, she shushed me, and she said, “Stop talking. Just keep on walking.” You know, in high school, I just, I became a complete radical rebel. I just revolt against the Chinese education system. I refused to play their games. Instead, I, I find a heaven in a bookstore. In our town, we had only one bookstore, but for whatever reason, there are actually some good books. I remember we have a selection of the Chinese translation of English novels.
So I spent much my spare time in that bookstore, and one day I just came across this book. It’s called Chatting About America. So it’s written by a, I think, two or three, Chinese scholars who visited America in the 1990s.
They just depict a general pictures of American society. I was so mesmerized in that book. It’s just drastically different from the society I was living in. It’s almost like beyond the imagination.
I had my college, four year college in China in the city of Guiyang, that is, that’s in Guizhou province.
And 10 years later, I attended a master’s program in the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University in California. After I graduated from Pepperdine, I went back to China in 2017, I was staying there for more than a year before the fall of 2018. That’s when I started my current doctoral program.
I was actually surprised to see many of my American classmates, I don’t think they are, I don’t think many of them are very interested in learning. I don’t understand why those people choose to enter into a doctoral program if you are not interested in ideas. They are not. They don’t want, they don’t question, they don’t ask questions.
When you, for instance, when you claim there is a systemic racism in America, give me the facts, give me the data, give me evidence. They do not question. They just listen. “Okay, if you say so, then that must be the truth.”
You know, Chinese schools, we call this Chinese education in ke ju, which means test oriented education, everything is about credential. I think this credentialism is happening America as well. Honestly, I really think today’s American school has almost no difference from the Chinese school where I lived up with.
I think before Xi in the 1980s, 1990s, I would characterize Chinese politics as a authoritarian regime. Xi’s predecessors, they did not invest so much energy and time in thought control. But now, with Xi rising to power, he really is trying to resurrect Maoism in China and mandate the official ideology in China.
Xi actually just issued an edict asking all primary schools to teach a course. It’s called Xi Jinping Thought, you know, before we have the Mao Zedong Thought, now we have Xi Jinping Thought. And every Chinese student is required to study this course.
America and also the Western societies, they have been thoroughly educated about Nazi’s Germany and some parts of Stalin’s Russia, but they are so mind bogglingly ill-educated in Mao’s China. I just don’t understand why those academics who are well versed in atrocities of the 20th century, they don’t talk much about Mao’s China, even though Mao has created the most deadly regime in human history.
During the period of the Great Leap Forward and followed by the Great Famine, according to a historian Yang Jiechi’s documentation, that campaign starved 36 million civilians at least within just three years. And somehow, American academics, they don’t really talk much about Mao’s China.
Identity politics is really a very effective tool to divide people, to inculcate hatred and resentment. This trajectory really reminds me of of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Mao’s famous struggle sessions.
One characteristic of a totalitarian regime is to issue one official standard thought, the correct thought in society. And this is happening in both countries, in Xi’s China, and also in today’s America.
In Woke America
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