One day it will be possible to just say “I think the marginalized people in elite institutions that come up with this stuff do a bad job of representing the marginalized communities without access to elite spaces they come from.” https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1312350719232573440

But y’all don’t make that claim, bc you don’t know any working class minorities or working class queer ppl or working class ppl in general.

So we’re forced into this silly game of “wokese is for whites” and like no, wokese is for integrated minorities in elite spaces to have a common language with the white people they work with day in and day out that isn’t totally invalidating to their identities and experiences.

And HOPEFULLY they don’t do a shitty job of being inclusive to ppl who share their identity but not their education and/or class privilege. But *that’s* the real weak link here, not “wokese is for whites, the poors will never learn this oppressively difficult set of ten words.”

The poors who aren’t from atlanta learn ten new words from every thirty minutes of Atlanta rap they listen to, fuck outta here. It’s about are the words useful to the potential word-learner and very little else.

Also, white people in elite institutions, you should still learn the shit! Even if it is “only” to communicate with the brown people and queer people you claim to want to hire!! Again, it’s like twenty words tops. Getting through a Young Thug track would be harder for you.

Maybe we just need to put wokese on rap genius and then white ppl will stop complaining about it and pinning their complaints on “working class” normies.

Adding to this thread to say what the original article is complaining about is actually the wokificiation of elite discourse, and if they really cared about making elite spaces more accessible to regular people, they would have to deconstruct elite discourse *altogether*.

Like the fact that the language you have to speak to signal being The Right Kind Of Person to rich white people in media and entertainment is a little woker than in 2011 isn’t the barrier to entry for poor people. The barrier to entry is the existence of discourse-as-signal.

It’s “teach elites regular person-ese, INCLUDING Black and queer and female and non-Christian regular-person-ese,” not “if only you quoted Larry Summers to seem smart instead of Ibram Kendi THEN the halls of power would be filled with Real Normal Regular wait a minute...”

(Bc real normal regular is not about *economic* class, but about *social* class, which means in the US it’s about race. Duh.)