Dr. Feser defines "woke" out of existence, part 1

In a not-so-recent post on his blog, Dr. Feser attempted to define the term "woke".  Unsurprisingly, he made several mischaracterizations, of which I will address a few.

We can begin in the very first sentence:  A common talking point among the woke is the claim that “woke” is just a term of abuse that has no clear meaning.  The correction would be:  “Woke” is just a term of abuse among right-wing commentators that has no clear meaning, but refers to any policies/facts/lesson plans about minorities that they don't like.  Feser proves the latter to be true in his attempt to defend the former.

I will use "woke" in quotes when talking about how right-wingers use the term, and remove the quotes when using the term as I would, which would be something like:  recognition that there are many ways, some not obvious, that oppression can manifest itself.  

It would be unfair to not include his definition:  "Wokeness" is a paranoid delusional hyper-egalitarian mindset that tends to see oppression and injustice where they do not exist or greatly to exaggerate them where they do exist. By this definition, no straight, while, cis, etc., male (such as me) can be "woke" because, regardless of how much we agree that society is fundamentally racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc., it favors me.  Feser would consider me pronoid instead, meaning I can't be "woke".  It's  a measure of Feser's privilege that he seems to think everyone who shares some common characteristics with him must agree with him.

Next, he gives  several examples of "wokeness", all of which are laughable. 

• Characterizing as racist “microaggressions” behaviors that in fact are either perfectly innocuous or at worst just ordinary rudeness; -- people exhibit much more "ordinary rudeness" to those they consider (perhaps subconsciously) of a lower social status, and in particular toward black people.  It's both day-to-day rudeness and racism working in tandem.
• condemning some economic outcome as a racist “inequity” despite there being no empirical evidence whatsoever that it is due to racism; -- to offer one example, racism dictates and has dictated where we live, with all the differences that creates in the ability to generate wealth through home ownership, environmental pollution, educational quality, availability of good food, etc.  where we live affects every facet of our life, hence, racism does by this facet alone.
• condemning as “transphobic” recognition of the commonsense and scientific fact that sex is binary; -- any time Feser can't justify a position, he calls it "common sense" as he does here, when the scientific fact is that there are multiple ways to specify sex, and any combination can be present in any individual; however, Feser seems confused by multi-factored analysis (as can be seen in his linear notion of causation, e.g., his hand-stick-stone argument for a first cause, when causes are more like lattices).
• condemning as “racist” the view that public policy should be color-blind and that racial discrimination is wrong whatever the race of the persons being discriminated against; -- Feser seems unaware that this claim is used by people who want to engage in de facto racism while maintaining de jure equality.
• condemning as “antigay” the view that it is not appropriate for grade schools to address matters of sexuality in the classroom without parental consent; -- matters of heterosexuality are discussed all the time in grade school classrooms, and Feser would eagerly join any protest if all depictions of heterosexual couples were banned, but he chooses not to be honest about others expecting equal treatment.

Feser does not adress address the scholarship behind these concepts.  By failing to do so, he renders his attacks on the people who know the scholaship irrelevant, and those who acknowledge the scholarly consensus are neither delusional nor paranoid.  Feser's definition of "wokeness" has no greater correspondence to reality than the definition of a jackalope; his definition of "wokeness" has no existence.

Feser nevertheless goes on to slur "wokeness" for a couple of paragraphs.  He touts two books, one his, one by two other conservatives, none of whom are trained in the study of sociology.  I guess when conservative lawyers pass for experts on evolution or climate change, this is right in line with the trust conservatives place in ignorance of the topic at hand.

I think this is a good stopping point.  In part 2, we'll see how Feser accuses the "woke" of several habits of poor thought, but succumbs to everyone one of them, a case of the pot accusing the table of being soot-stained.