John McWhorter on Woke Politics, Race, and Education

The Columbia University scholar discusses woke politics. Click "Show more" to view chapters. For more conversations, visit www.conversatio...
Chapter 1 (00:15 - 34:17): The Origins and Meaning of "Woke"
Chapter 2 (34:17 - 1:11:31): Woke Politics Today
A professor of linguistics at Columbia University and author of the recent book Woke Racism, John McWhorter has been an outspoken critic of woke politics. The appeal to wokeness, he argues, presents a simplistic view of race and attempts to discredit any contrary points of view about ideas and policies. According to McWhorter, “the woke end up having disproportionate power simply because of what social media allows them to do to people.” He argues that we should “stand up to them”-and focus on developing policies that can help people rather than shutting down debate.