By Trevin Wax, TGC. (Photo: Tingey Injury Law Firm/Unsplash)
Derrick Bell, a legal scholar in critical race theory, is known for the notion of “interest convergence”: the idea that real progress in race relations only occurs when it aligns with the interests of the white majority. While there’s a nugget of truth here—even the best movements for justice can be tainted by conscious or subconscious selfishness—the result is corrosively cynical, another application of the acid of critical theory that portrays even genuine racial progress as inescapably racist.
Musa al-Gharbi might nod to Bell’s insight, but he’d likely ask whether we’ve made much “progress” at all, especially in terms of wealth disparity. In his provocative new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, al-Gharbi makes use of the intellectual tool kit of Nietzschean power analysis and Foucauldian critique and flips the philosophical script of the “Great Awokening” of the 2010s back onto itself. The acid of critical theory splashes back onto its advocates, revealing the hollow performance beneath the veneer of justice.
Performative Justice and Elite Hypocrisy
Al-Gharbi argues there isn’t any “there” there beneath the surface of recent social justice movements. Although norms and conversations changed, the wealthy elites at the forefront—he calls them “symbolic capitalists”—often act in ways that exacerbate inequality, harming the very groups they claim to champion.
For example, Al-Gharbi describes witnessing Black Lives Matter demonstrators passionately protest injustice while literally stepping over or ignoring black people in genuine need around them. He excoriates progressives for loudly lamenting the effects of COVID-19 on minorities while relying on low-income, often immigrant workers to deliver their food and groceries. Again and again, he exposes the vast gap between progressive rhetoric and progressive behavior.