In the USA, a new identity movement is emerging. Its mission: to fight against ethnic, sexual and gender discrimination and to impose new rules. Its name: “woke”.
To be woke is to be aware of the discrimination suffered by minorities and of white privilege. In Denver, Colorado, wealthy white Americans pay $500 to attend dinner parties where they are told they are unknowingly racist. At New York City Hall, a special commission tracks the “micro-aggressions” suffered by citizens from minorities. Holding the door for a woman, supposedly physically weaker than a man, can thus be considered a micro-aggression.
Those who oppose this ideology are considered racist and are “cancelled”, that is to say socially eliminated and shamed on social networks. When UCLA economics professor, Gordon Klein, refused to automatically raise the marks of his black students who were taking an exam after the death of George Floyd and who, as such, would have been traumatized, he received death threats. He now lives under FBI protection and has been suspended.
But some feel the woke revolution has gone too far. Even Terrence Floyd, George’s own brother murdered by the police, calls for a return to universalism and tolerance.
For the lucky few, rap has become a way of escaping the ghetto and becoming a star. But at the roots of this music is the misery of the ghettos, racism and police violence. How did this street music become mass culture? Has rap sold its soul as a marketing product?
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In an America in search of meaning, gurus, healers, shamans and other modern wizards have become the new providers of meaning. Festivals, retreats and detox courses promising spiritual wellness are multiplying.
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In the United States, inequalities between the white and black communities seems to be escalating. A worrying portrait of a country rife with racial tensions.
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