We Have Never Been Woke Part 8: Totemic Capital and Consecrated Elites

My last post in this series on We Have Never Been Woke by Musa al-Gharbi ended by mentioning another form of symbolic capital very valuable to symbolic capitalists, particularly with the advent of victimhood culture – what al-Gharbi calls totemic capital. As he describes the concept,

In sociological terms, a totem is a sacred symbol that represents a people; it marks an essence they are uniquely bonded to; it connects their past with the present; it links the fates of totem bearers and endows them with distinct social proprieties. If we understand labels like “Black,” “LGBTQ ,” “disabled,” “woman,” and so on as serving a function akin to totems in contemporary victimhood culture, then we can define “totemic capital” as the epistemic and moral authority afforded to an individual on the basis of bearing one or more of these totems—that is, on the basis of claimed or perceived membership in a historically marginalized or disadvantaged group.

In order to wield this totemic capital, elites have a strong incentive to lay claim to as many of these totems as they can. But, al-Gharbi says, the lives and circumstance of elites from minority backgrounds are more similar to their fellow elites than to other minorities. Put another way, a member of the elite who is Black is has more in common with an elite who is white by virtue of being a fellow elite, than they have in common with a nonelite who is also Black by virtue of their shared race:

In virtue of these background characteristics, these “representatives” typically grew up in communities and homes very different from those of most other African Americans. Their social networks, education levels, and professions are uncharacteristic of most other African Americans. Their material interests and worldviews are often demonstrably out of step with most other African Americans too.

Attempts to gain totemic capital also become an escalating status struggle:

Far from using their elite position to meaningfully help genuinely disadvantaged members of the groups they claim affiliation with, symbolic capitalists typically attempt to leverage collective identities in the service of their individual benefit. Discussions turn on what I am entitled to on the basis of my identity claims. These claims are, themselves, predicated on pitting women against men, Blacks against whites, LGBTQ Americans against cisgender heterosexuals, wherein one party bears collective guilt, and the other collective entitlements, on the basis of past or ongoing victimization. Even historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups are often competitively set against one another, with exchanges often devolving into a form of “oppression Olympics.” Who had it worse historically—Blacks, homosexuals, or women? Who has it worse today? How many stigmatized identities can I claim compared with you?

This totemic capital is often used to as a means of bolstering one’s credibility or enhancing one’s prospects:

People attempt to leverage totemic capital by making claims introduced by phrases like, “As a [insert totemic identification here], I think/feel/desire …,” under the implicit expectation that their personal thoughts, feelings, or desires will be given more weight than they otherwise would in virtue of their affiliation with a historically marginalized or disadvantaged group.

Others attempt to exert totemic capital by suggesting that some slight to them personally is actually a slight against their group – tied to the history of oppression, exploitation, or marginalization against “people like them” – or else suggesting that some kind of boon to them personally is actually a great “win” for “people like them” more broadly.

Other times, claims are made in the form, “[Insert totemic identification here] people think/feel/want …,” where the assertion of what the people in question desire, believe, and so on is derived not from cited and robust empirical evidence but apparently from some quasi-mystical connection that unites other group members to one another—allowing the claimant’s own thoughts, feelings, preferences, and experiences to be held up as representative of “their people” as a whole (without a need to empirically investigate and substantiate how most others in the group think, feel, or desire with respect to the issue at hand).

This also creates an incentive for people to try to claim membership in a group with better totemic capital than the group into which they were born. Rachel Dolezal is perhaps the most infamous case in recent years, but al-Gharbi also describes many more such instances, such as Margaret Seltzer, BethAnn Mclaughlin, Satchuel Cole, Natasha Bannan, Raquel Saraswati, Jessica Krug, Kelly Kean Sharp, Andrea Lee Smith, CV Vitolo-Haddad, and Tom MacMaster. Summing up these cases, al-Gharbi notes:

Across the board, these actors were engaged in social justice–oriented work. In all cases, they could have done the same work as white people—but they recognized that their work would not be received and interpreted the same way were it not for the ruse. It would be unlikely to have the same impact. It would be unlikely to be as well respected. They wanted the moral and epistemic authority that comes with being a totem bearer.

And these behaviors are both enabled and incentivized by woke culture:

Certain elements of contemporary “victimhood culture” facilitated their ruses: the insistence on accepting identity claims uncritically and nonjudgmentally, the taboo against doubting (let alone demanding evidence for) victimization claims, the more general tendency to place subjective interpretations and experience largely above scrutiny. While intended to serve the genuinely vulnerable, these norms enable – and the rewards of possessing totemic capital create the incentives for – performances like those of Sharp, Vitolo-Haddad, and who knows how many others (there is some evidence that these behaviors may be fairly widespread).

Totemic capital also creates a situation where elites in general “consecrate” specific elites of minority backgrounds. As al-Gharbi has discussed, woke elites of minority backgrounds share far more of their worldview with fellow elites than with “normies” of the same identity characteristics. This creates an awkward situation for elites – the poor and vulnerable populations in whose name they claim to act overwhelmingly reject the woke framework and the values of progressive elites. In response to this, elites will insist that the true voices of the struggling communities can be found among their fellow elites, rather than from among the unwashed masses:

Insofar as they affirm their preferred narratives about the world, elites from majority groups have a strong interest in “consecrating” elites of other backgrounds as “authentic” voices for “their people.” Elites from historically underrepresented backgrounds have strong material and emotional incentives to understand themselves in this way as well. As a result of this overlap, as we will see, elites from historically marginalized and disadvantaged groups end up playing a pivotal role in legitimizing broader elite attempts to enrich themselves and undermine rivals in the name of social justice.

These “consecrated” elites support the values and narratives that are dominant among the (mostly white) progressive elite class:

Because the work produced by consecrated voices is often cosmetically radical or subversive—often highly critical of the United States, or various symbolic capitalist institutions, or white people, or men, or cisgender heterosexuals, or socioeconomic elites or liberals—it can be easy to fall under the illusion that consecrated creatives are producing genuinely edgy work or speaking uncomfortable truths to power. In reality, they’re typically producing exactly what their primary audience wants.

The more these consecrated elites continue to push this preferred progressive narrative, the more support they gain from the existing elite establishment:

The higher they rise, the more mainstream elites aggressively defend them from challenges by dissenters, the more they get softball questions in increasingly fawning interviews and profiles, and the more money they make. They may accumulate a growing list of haters, particularly among those aligned with the Right, but they become largely untouchable nonetheless—at least, so long as they keep telling elites what they want to hear.

But this support for intellectuals of minority background is dependent of whether or not those intellectuals are speaking in support of the preferred narrative. But not every intellectual with the proper totemic attributes actually toes this line:

Should consecrated minority voices produce content that is genuinely challenging or threatening for mainstream symbolic capitalists—something that is actually unpleasant for them to engage with, something that powerfully calls into question rather than affirming their preferred values and narratives, something that threatens their interests—the offending intellectuals and creatives will often find themselves suddenly facing harsh criticism from the people who used to praise them and, sooner rather than later, widespread neglect from mainstream symbolic capitalists. Frustrated elites generally respond to unacceptable deviance not by rethinking their own positions but by consecrating and subsequently deferring to someone else instead – someone perceived to be more congenial to producing the kind of narratives they want to hear. And there is always some ambitious “diverse” person waiting in the wings to do just that.

One such example al-Gharbi describes is the sociologist William Julius Wilson, who pointed out that while the policy measures supported by the woke such as “civil rights laws and affirmative action” had managed to “significantly improve the prospects of upper-middle-class and wealthy Black people, there seemed to be little to no measurable socioeconomic benefit to working-class and poor Blacks.” This finding was not in support of the narrative preferred by the elites, and rather than rethink their position they shunned Wilson in favor of other writers who affirmed their preexisting beliefs.

Thus, woke support for the voices of minority intellectuals depends critically on if those intellectuals flatter the political views of the woke:

Those who defy symbolic capitalists’ preferences and priorities are deemed unworthy of being taken seriously. Opponents of “Latinx”—including (perhaps especially) if they are Hispanic or Latino—are cast as homophobic, misogynistic, and transphobic and therefore worthy of being “dismissed.” Increasingly, racial and ethnic minorities who reject symbolic capitalists’ preferred narratives on race, or who vote for the “wrong” political candidate, are branded as “multiracially white” or “politically white”—that is, they cease to be minorities at all. As then–Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden memorably put it, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re voting for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

When surveys revealed the vast majority of people of Hispanic or Latino background had never even heard of the term “Latinx,” and of those who had, the overwhelming majority hated it, this did not cause woke intellectuals to reevaluate their own use of the term. Instead, a properly concentrated member of the elite arose to reinforce what the woke wanted to hear:

In an interview with the New Yorker, one Latinx-identifying symbolic capitalist described detractors of the term as the “weakest link toward true progress, reciprocity and inclusivity.” “For that,” he continued, “you are dismissed. Vamoose. Begone. Get to steppin’. Corran camino. And take your ****** misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic family members with you.”

Another case would be when Out magazine, a long-running gay publication, released an article arguing that while Peter Thiel might sleep with men, he can’t be considered truly gay because he didn’t properly support left wing politics. According to this mindset, being gay wasn’t simply a matter of a person’s private sexual orientation or preferences – it was a full-fledged political project to bring about leftist goals, and anyone who wasn’t on board with this political project therefore failed to be truly gay.

However, al-Gharbi also points out that this doesn’t mean such consecrated elites don’t actually believe what they say. He points to the case of Ta-Nehisi Coates, someone whose writings are held in very high regard by woke elites. Still, Coates himself struggled to accept the reception to his work – finding himself bewildered over the fact that the audience most receptive to and in support of his ideas was…rich white people – the very people Coates thought his work would undermine. Unable to make sense of why the message he considered to be subversive was also exactly what wealthy white establishment elites wanted to hear, this “ultimately led Coates to resign from his post at The Atlantic in favor of a faculty position at flagship HBCU Howard University.”

Overall, al-Gharbi sums up the dynamics of totemic capital in this way:

However, orthogonal to any aspiration to uplift hitherto underappreciated voices and perspectives, sincere though it might have been, these moves were also clearly a gambit by aspiring elites to delegitimize establishment rivals and enhance their own image—efforts sustained through the constant appropriation and policing of others’ “authenticity.” The explicit politics of deference often serve to mask the actual power dynamics at play. Consecrated intellectuals and creatives are not the ones steering the ship—their affluent, highly educated, white, liberal audiences are. And they have never been woke. And neither have we.

But this leads us to the big question connecting al-Gharbi’s work together – why is it that the ostensibly woke have never truly been woke, in the sense of attempting to bring about a fairer and more just world? That will be reviewed in the next post.