Saagar Enjeti: evaluation

Transcript context

…At this point, do you think this election is the kind of statement that woke-ism as a movement is dead? I don’t know. It’s very difficult to say because woke-ism itself is not a movement with a party leader, it’s a amorphous belief that has worked its way through institutions now for almost 40 or 50 years. It’s effectively a religion. And part of the reason why it’s difficult to define is it means different things to different people. So for example, there are varying degrees of how we would define, quote-unquote, “woke.” Do I think that the Democrats will be speaking in so-called academic language? Yes, I do think they will. I think that the next Democratic nominee will not do that. However, Kamala Harris actually did move as much as she could away from, quote-unquote, “woke,” but she basically was punished for a lot of the sins of both herself from 2019, but a general cultural feeling that her and the people around her do not understand me and not only do not understand me, but have racial preferences or a regime or an understanding that would lead to a, quote-unquote, “equity mindset,” equal outcomes for everybody as opposed to equality of opportunity, which is more of a colorblind philosophy. So I can’t say, I think it’s way too early. And again, you can not use the word Latinx, but do you still believe in an effective affirmative action regime in terms of how you would run your Department of Justice, in terms of how you view the world, in terms of what you think the real dividing lines in America are? Because I would say that’s still actually kind of a woke mindset, and that’s part of the reason why the term itself doesn’t really mean a whole lot. And we have to get, actually, really specific about what it looks like in operations. In operation, it means affirmative action, it means the NASDAQ passing some law that if you want to go public or something, that you have to have a woman and a person of color on your board. This is a blatant and extraordinary, look, racialism that they’ve enshrined in their bylaws. So you can get rid of ESG, that’s great, you can get rid of DEI, I think that’s great, but it’s really about a mindset and a view of the world, and I don’t think that’s going anywhere. And you think the reason it doesn’t work well in practice is because there’s a big degree to which it’s anti-meritocracy.…

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