Radical and Back Again, Part II
One woman's journey from woke to awake
In Part Two of this three-part series (Part One here), Talia Bongolan-Schwartz describes what aspects of her psychology made her susceptible to wokeness, the psychology of the movement more generally and how her perspective finally shifted.
This is the inside story of how people go woke, a confession from the front lines by one of the movement’s very own. But it’s also a story of self-discovery and of one person’s intellectual odyssey through political seas in which we all now sail.
Thank you for these interviews - I can relate to the experiences that both of you share. There is something liberating about being called a racist. I do think she is right that both desire for goodness and fear of exclusion is driving so much of this ideology. Once the "worst" happens - being labeled a racist - fear becomes much less important, and there is more room for genuine open-mindedness. For myself, though, I worry that resentment can become just as distorting. I have come to hate the left for its hypocrisy, and it is hard not to let that anger become its own driver of cognitive bias.....