The antics of woke anti-racism

If difficult social problems could be solved with simple slogans or gestures, history would be unrecognisable. In her Tuesday column, Janet Albrechtsen took a justly sceptical view of the practice of “taking a knee”. This was mandated by Cricket South Africa, and Quinton de Kock’s initial refusal to prostrate himself ended in a statement of apology. As Albrechtsen said, taking a knee is “an easy and cost-free exercise for many sporting stars who do little in their privileged private lives to combat racism”.

Of course, there are many other people in sport who do take practical steps to help bring about a more just society, and not always in a blaze of publicity.

The problem is not with anti-racism but with a recent, dogmatic and illiberal form of “social justice” ideology. It fixes upon symbolic struggles, mandates slogans, polices the language of others, and promotes performative gestures such as taking a knee. In the realm of culture, it dictates that privilege is a function of immutable race – so impoverished whites in rust-belt regions emerge as “oppressors” – and it is likely to deepen intercommunal conflict and distrust.

In the US, taking a knee became part of the identity politics project embracing the BLM movement and quite serious demands to “defund the police”. The result of this self-righteous campaign? Many black families are worse off after destructive inner-city riots and a predictable rise in crime as disillusioned police have left the force.

The neat moralising online, aided and abetted by woke censorship, cannot indefinitely suppress the messy, morally complex reality on the ground. In the same way, the multiple affiliations of de Kock – his statement of apology pointed out he came from a “mixed-race family” with “coloured” half-sisters and a “black” stepmother – do not fit into the simplistic tribalism of woke anti-racist performances.

So-called “critical” social justice is tailor-made for uncritical social media. Like many big corporations and institutions, Cricket South Africa wants to maximise “likes” and avoid the online shaming we have all seen meted out to those who prove less than enthusiastically compliant with the activist script. Genuine racism ought to be called out, of course, but on the basis that all human beings have intrinsic value. Respect and toleration can be encouraged, but not stage-managed and imposed from above. Especially when those suddenly dominant progressive elites are hypocrites, as Gerard Baker pointed out on Tuesday’s Commentary page. He’s dead right. Woke anti-racism is not about the hard work of enabling equality of opportunity; it’s the glib rationalisation of a new form of power.