The contradictions of wokeness
4/13/202653 min
What does it mean to be “woke”? It's become a catch-all term to smear or dismiss anything that has any vague association with progressive politics. So anytime you venture into an argument about “wokeness,” it becomes hopelessly entangled in a broader cultural battle. Today’s guest, journalist and professor Musa al-Gharbi, helps us untangle “wokeness” from its fraught political context. The author of the book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, al-Gharbi discusses what effects the movement is and isn’t having on our society. This episode originally aired in November 2024. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling) Guest: Musa al-Gharbi (@Musa_alGharbi) We would love to hear from you. To tell us what you thought of this episode, email us at thegrayarea@vox.com or leave us a voicemail at 1-800-214-5749. Your comments and questions help us make a better show. And you can watch new episodes of The Gray Area on YouTube. New episodes drop every Monday and Friday. Listen to The Gray Area ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Sean Illing· Host0:58
Hey, it's Sean. Today we're running one of my favorite episodes. It's with Musa Algarbi. He's a professor at Stony Brook University and the author of We Have Never Been Woke. The book, like the conversation, isn't really about the ideology of wokeness, whatever that is. It's more about the language and the symbols around the movement and how elites have co-opted them, which is to say this is much more than a superficial