Being ‘woke’ is the first step in teshuvah

Why isn’t everyone “woke?”

Maimonides declared that hearing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a reminder to “awake, sleepers, from your slumber . . . Search your deeds, return repentantly, and remember your Creator.” (Teshuvah, 3:4). Thus, it is our mission during the High Holy Days to be roused from spiritual and moral unconsciousness and to stay awake throughout the year.

As Maimonides teaches, being “woke” is a spiritual objective, causing one to wonder why the concept is viewed by some with such emotional antipathy.

“Woke” is decried in political discourse as a synonym for narrow-mindedness and intolerance even though it means precisely the opposite. Being “woke” is about awareness. It is about consciousness of those bitter parts of ourselves and our society that we would rather not confront. It is about realizing that failing to confront the misdeeds of the past leads us to rationalize or justify those behaviors, and instead of pushing us forward in our pursuit of remedying historical injustice pulls us back to transgress again.

In other words, “woke” is the first step in the process of teshuvah, repentance, which requires acknowledging wrongdoing.

Unquestionably, some who claim to be “woke” are just as unconscious to their own brand of bigotry as those they disdain. Self-proclaimed progressives are not the final arbiters of what it means to be “woke” any more than they are the last word on justice and injustice or right and wrong.

However, the misguided usurpation of a word by some should not become an excuse to dismiss an important and valuable concept.

The excesses of moral pretentiousness are not grounds for denying that the US has a lengthy history of inequitable treatment of certain people based based on race, religion, sex, gender and sexual orientation. Failing to recognize this history is morally and intellectually dishonest.

To further deny that inequitable treatment of these same groups continues to exist in the present day is, well, living in denial. Being “woke” is about honest engagement with this history, its present-day consequences and the realization that these inequities have not been remedied.

One of the most feared “woke” ideas has been reduced to its initials and used as an archetype for the threat posed by the so-called “woke mob,” is Critical Race Theory (CRT), a collection of ideas that have been around for decades, but that have more recently become the backbone of conservative backlash against any notion that challenges the existing racial hierarchy. The vitriol it elicits is so great that even teaching about it in schools precipitates an earthquake of rage and terror.

For the purpose of this column, event though it may be over-simplifying, CRT is built on two premises that are frankly unrevolutionary and a third prescriptive principle that is decidedly more so.

The first premise is that race is a social construct, meaning that although we use race as a way to categorize differences between people that derive from factors like culture, history and circumstance, there are no actual differences between one human being and another.

In other words, this is a restatement of the Jewish principle that all human beings are created in G-d’s image. Thus, the inequity that exists in our society between people in different racial categories has nothing to do with the inferiority of one group relative to another. Instead, societal inequity is caused by inequitable treatment of disempowered groups at the hands of those who have power.

The second premise is that racial bias is endemic in our institutions and culture, meaning that even when overtly racist policies and practices are eliminated, the systems themselves ensure that the existing racial hierarchy is preserved.

CRT posits that even if individuals make decisions that are not superficially racist, the rules that have been created for supposedly race-neutral decision making ensure that there continues to be a racist outcome.

Anyone who self-reflectively recalls growing up in public schools where accelerated or college preparatory classes and gifted and talented programs were populated with white students, but not black ones except for a few who grew up in white neighborhoods, knows that such placements were supposedly about objective criteria like academic achievement, but served to reinforce the obstacles to achievement that already existed.

If the life experience of growing up in America is not sufficient to prove the point, plenty of statistics illustrate it.

The Dept. of Justice reports that the incarceration rate for adult black men is 1 in 15 while the rate for adult white men is 1 in 106.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the black unemployment rate during the pandemic in 2020 was 11.4% versus 7.3% for whites.

Similar results are reported for educational attainment and participation in managerial and professional occupations that would generally be considered higher income.

“These disparities, among many others, demonstrate that even as our society has eliminated racist laws and discriminatory rules that purposely enforced the racial hierarchy, their legacy remains, and their damage has not been undone.

The third, much more controversial, idea of CRT is found in its answers to questions about how to remedy this legacy.

When considering these answers, it is important to remember that CRT emerged as an overtly political legal theory and scholars of CRT self-consciously advocate for their conclusions.

As the editors of Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed The Movement put it, CRT “rejects the prevailing orthodoxy that scholarship should be or could be ‘neutral’ and ‘objective.’ We believe that legal scholarship about race in America can never be written from a distance of detachment or with an attitude of objectivity.”

Moreover, CRT is a Marxist ideology, meaning it argues that evolutionary change is impossible, and that equity and justice can only be achieved through revolutionary deconstruction of existing power structures in favor of new, race-conscious structures, which will be more just.

Revolutionary deconstruction, particularly in the form of slogans seeking a policy like “defund the police,” are incredibly problematic and frankly dangerous, but the smokescreen of extremism should not be allowed to obscure a fundamental question that requires consideration in our schools and homes. Can a society plagued by generational injustice reconcile itself with its past and create positive change? Or, must that change be imposed upon it through acts of revolution by the mistreated?

CRT does not have to be the only answer, but it is waiting for other answers that are not merely dismissals steeped in bigotry and fear of the reality it describes.

American teshuvah can only be completed by acknowledging our history of racism, bigotry and injustice while self-consciously working to change the legacy of that history. CRT is not the last word on how this can be achieved, but it is without question a voice in the conversation.

There is no danger in listening to that voice, but there is danger in ignoring its anguished tones as we learn nothing from unconsciousness. Awake, sleepers, from your slumber. It is time for everyone to be “woke.”

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