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Musa al-Gharbi on Elitism and Wokeness

October 29, 2024
Musa al-Gharbi
Musa al-Gharbi speaks with Northwestern undergraduates before the main event at the Segal Visitors Center.

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, the author of We Have Never Been Woke: The Contradictions of a New Elite, emphasized the importance of diverse perspectives and the challenges of ideological diversity in academia during the 2024 Ray and Nancy Loeschner Lecture Series on Leadership.

In a conversation with School of Education and Social Policy Dean Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, al-Gharbi argued that while blatant discrimination has become more unacceptable in the modern era, inequality has only risen. Al-Gharbi contends that these two trends are not independent but rather intertwined.

"Some of the questions in the book are existential to me," said al-Gharbi, assistant professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University in New York. "Questions about institutions and the role people like us play in perpetuating inequity."

Al-Gharbi, who met with Northwestern University undergraduates over dinner before the event and signed books afterward, isn’t afraid to challenge dominant narratives. In his provocative new book, he describes a new class of people committed to social justice.

The members of this new elite, which he calls "symbolic capitalists," are likely to identify as antiracists, feminists, environmentalists, and allies of LGBTQ people. They are middle to upper class and strongly associate themselves with social justice movements.

But in addition to supporting progressive ideas, "we're also often sincerely committed to being elites as well," said al-Gharbi, who includes himself in this group. "We think people should take our opinions more seriously than those of a construction worker or someone in the trades, for example. These drives are in fundamental tension, right? You can't be an egalitarian social climber."

This tension leads to performative activism from elites in "knowledge professions," which tend to be those in tech, finance, higher education, media and entertainment, journalism, and consulting, he said. He cited the Black Lives Matter protests on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where protesters crowded the streets but stepped over homeless people and blocked those trying to get to work.

"I don't understand how that would even conceivably save anyone's life or get anyone out of prison," he said. "There was no real correspondence between what demonstrators said they wanted to achieve and what they were actually doing in the name of that objective."

This disconnect allows those in the upper class to continue their commitment to "woke" values without using their resources to make change, which keeps them in their positions of power, he said.

Al-Gharbi argues that both the middle class and the top one percent have an obligation to follow through on their commitments to equality. He contends that the institutions that most uphold inequality are run by more than just the top one percent.

"Focusing [on just the top one percent] is too narrow," he said. "If you start asking, 'Well, who runs the PR firms through which the millionaires and billionaires launder [money]?' Well, that's us... Almost everything that we hate about millionaires and billionaires and multinational corporations and so on, it's us that makes that happen."

From Arizona to New York

Born and raised in a southern Arizona military town, al-Gharbi was interested in questions about theology, the nature of reality, and the meaning of life from an early age, and those questions continue to intrigue him.

After attending Cochise Community College in Sierra Vista, Arizona, al-Gharbi received a bachelor's degree in Near Eastern studies and a master's in philosophy at the University of Arizona. In 2023, he earned his doctorate in sociology at Columbia University.

The death of his twin brother, a soldier in the U.S. Army who was based in Afghanistan, was one event that profoundly altered his life and thinking. Another was getting "canceled" by Fox News.

His research explores how scholars and journalists think about and discuss race, inequality, social movements, extremism, policing, national security, foreign policy, and domestic U.S. political contests.

In We Have Never Been Woke, al-Gharbi doesn't provide a simple solution or a "how to fix it" chapter. Instead, he's hoping "to create a space for a conversation about what it would actually take [to make change]?'" he said.

He originally thought his book might have two segments: the first on the elites and how their attitudes are formed, and the second on "the others," those who are harmed by these attitudes. However, when he drafted his ideas, the manuscript was more than 200,000 words.

"For people who write books, that's wild," he said, laughing. "So, we split it down the middle. This first book focused on the symbolic capitalist. The second will be more focused on those who are not elites."

Al-Gharbi spends much of his time thinking about his role in the system's issues, something that the book forces its readers to do in the same way. Even Dean Brayboy found that reading it made him question his own role in the problem.

"As a reader, I found myself in my notes doing a whole bunch of whataboutism, and I really had to check myself in working through the book," Brayboy said.

In the end, al-Gharbi asks readers to view the problems through a hopeful lens and focus on finding solutions to the issues presented in the book. He argues that nothing positive comes from a defeated acknowledgment of the world's problems; instead, we need to have an open mind and create solutions.

Ray Loeschner with undergrads
Alumnus Ray Loeschner speaks with undergraduates before the event.

"These affirmative capacities are really important," he said. "As Nietzsche put it, 'I want to be a yeasayer.'"

About the Loeschner Lecture Series on Leadership

Established in 2013 by a gift from School of Education and Social Policy alumnus Ray Loeschner, the Nancy and Ray Loeschner Lecture Series on Leadership presents visionary leaders in education and other fields. Loeschner is the former president of Olivet University and a pioneer in higher education. In 2006, he received the Northwestern University Alumni Association Alumni Merit Award for the School of Education and Social Policy.