Regarding Nesrine Malik’s article (Here is the news from the US: Woke 1.0 is over. But what did progressives do wrong?, 18 August), the mistake of Woke 1.0 was to believe that a self-evident truth was, well, a self-evident truth. I grew up in a divided society in which it was crystal clear, at least to my community, that we were second-class citizens. Nothing ever seemed to change and in the end we fought a war over it. Today attitudes are a lot different, but new truths are universally embedded.
What we learned was that the self-evident truth of “first-class” citizens was that their position was one established long ago by right and might. Against that sense of rightness, you cannot appeal to another truth that is diametrically opposed. I raised boys and girls in a progressive, liberal home. It was some surprise to me that my boys were not onboard with Woke 1.0. Their truth was Jordan Peterson’s “equality of access, not equality of outcome”, and a belief that their own privilege as middle-class, intelligent white males was good luck to be defended.
