Wokesterism is all over, yet as corporation after corporation has learned the hard way, stoking racial or other grievance-group resentment doesn't actually add value, and in fact is a very good way to go broke.
Therefore, money is drying up for corporations that embrace it, and the cash they dole out to downstream institutions, such as universities, think tanks, activist groups, and big white-shoe foundations. The Bud Light fiasco pretty well shows what happens to those who dive in to embrace woke.
It's not just scandal-plagued groups like Black Lives Matter, which has done little but riot in cities (hitting black-owned businesses hard) and feather its leaderships' nests, that has suddenly seen both a drop in public support and incoming funds.
Now it's the fancy stuff, the university think tanks, such as Boston University's Center for Antiracist Research, led by Ibram X. Kendi, which is seeing big layoffs.
According to the Washington Free Beacon:
The Boston University Center for Antiracist Research is firing between 15 and 20 employees, Semafor reported Thursday. Kendi launched the center in June 2020 at the height of the movement to defund police in the wake of the death of George Floyd. It employed 45 people as of August, according to a since-deleted page on the center’s website reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
Kendi has built a lucrative career teaching people about "antiracism," defined as "the practice of actively identifying and opposing racism." He received a $625,000 MacArthur "Genius" grant in 2021 and charges $20,000 for speaking engagements. His books Antiracist Baby and How to Be Antiracist have landed on the New York Times best-seller list. Kendi has argued the United States is an inherently racist country, asserted that police "inherently are harmful," and called for a constitutional amendment to ban "racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public officials.
Kendi is a big one, the granddaddy of all things woke, the intellectual locus of wokery. He's perfected the art of wokecraft, having written a series of bestsellers mau-mauing whitey liberals with titles such as "Antiracist Baby" and "How to be an Antiracist," sold at places like Target, doing the act Shelby Steele once described as offering "absolution" to guilt-beaten whites for their immutable, inborn, incurable, racism, and making bank while he's at it. America is a flawed, racist country from its very start, and for which there is no cure.
The Beacon said it was unable to find the exact reason for the layoffs, but did note that public polls were showing a dropoff in public support for woke organizations, which has cut into donations for wokester groups and reduced corporate giving to foundations and academic institutions.
Woke organizations of all sorts are now being affected -- Black Lives Matters is losing donations. Bigfoot foundations such as those run by the Soros family and Mark Zuckerberg are laying off staff. Corporations themselves have been getting rid of DEI departments, too. Obviously, that may be at least one reason why even woke Boston University is reducing the ever-expanding grievance group industry within its think tanks.
As for why the public is not responding to grievance clarion calls, well, perhaps it's because thus far these woke groups who offer themselves as the solution to all things racist, haven't fixed anything by stoking rage and grievance politics. All they have proven adept at is raking in political spoils for themselves and mau-mauing their donors, making all sides angrier. People get tired of that. If they can't fix a problem they claim to see all over, and can only make it bigger, then it's time to go. That's the American way and try as they might, they aren't going to stop that.
