A Conversation with We Have Never Been Woke Author Musa al-Gharbi (Part 1 of 2)

The sociologist talks to Michael E. Hartmann about symbolic capitalists in general and in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector in particular, how they exacerbate a lot of problems, and why the growth in their numbers has been making things even worse.

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In Musa al-Gharbi‘s well-received new book We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, he develops the ideas of Pierre Bourdieu about and critiques the work of “symbolic capitalists”—elites who work with words, ideas, images, and data, most of whom are very likely to identify as allies of antiracist, feminist, LGBTQ, and other progressive causes.

“The problem, in short, is not that symbolic capitalists are too woke, but that we’ve never been woke,” according to al-Gharbi, a sociologist and assistant professor in Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism.

The problem is not that causes like feminism, antiracism, or LGBTQ rights are “bad.” The problem is that, in the name of these very causes, symbolic capitalists regularly engage in behaviors that exploit, perpetuate, exacerbate, reinforce, and mystify inequalities—often to the detriment of the very people we purport to champion. And our commitment to social justice lends an unearned and unfortunate sense of morality to these endeavors.

It sure seems to us as if al-Gharbi is basically describing Big Philanthropy and the well-credentialed elites working in and being supported by it, along with those furthering its interests and protecting its privileged prerogatives. And some specific grantmakers and nonprofit grant recipients are, in fact, covered in the book—written before, and released just weeks prior to, last November’s election.

In the wake of the election, We Have Never Been Woke is being cited often in the discourse about what happened and why. Al-Gharbi was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation last month to talk about that and how symbolic capitalists, including those in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, should react moving forward.

The just less than 15-and-a-half-minute video below is the first part of our discussion; the second is here. During the first part, we talk about symbolic capitalists, how they exacerbate a lot of problems, and why the growth in their numbers has been making things even worse.

Symbolic Capitalists in Philanthropy, Where There’s No Real Capitalist Consequences

“A lot of the people who administer nonprofit organizations are themselves symbolic capitalists,” al-Gharbi tells me.

When you look at the space more broadly, it’s actually a distressingly small share of total philanthropic donations that go to tangibly improving the lives and livelihoods of people who are poor or marginalized or disadvantaged in society. A lot of nonprofit work is actually oriented towards things like changing how people think and talk about issues or other, more symbolically oriented things like that.

Perhaps especially in philanthropy and nonprofitdom, symbolic capitalists actually aggravate a lot of problems, according to al-Gharbi. “One of the problems that a lot of us in the symbolic professions face is that we’re really disconnected from the people that were trying to help and we don’t have necessarily a lot of skin in the game,” he says. “If we’re wrong about issues and we persist in being wrong, we’re able to persist in being wrong because being wrong doesn’t necessarily translate into us, say, losing our funding ….

“[I]f you’re a capitalist institution in the market and you have a bad product,” al-Gharbi continues, “over time, you’re probably going to go out of business or be out-competed by other people. In the symbolic professions,” however, “that’s not necessarily true, in part because a lot of us are undergirded by these philanthropic dollars that can allow us to be persistently wrong or to be doing things that are harmful, but without really facing meaningful consequences for it.”

He notes another, related issue. “Often, the views and funding priorities of people who administer philanthropic organizations actually pull people even further into extreme spaces, into taking more-extreme positions than they otherwise might.”

Growth, in Funding and Size

Historically, We Have Never Been Woke “highlights how the creation of a lot of these professions corresponded with two big changes in the American economic system,” according to al-Gharbi. “First, there was the passage of the income tax.” Second, “there was a creation of big philanthropy as we understand it today, the creation of charitable foundations as we understand it today. … From the beginning of big philanthropy, as like philanthropy in its modern institutional form, the idea was that basically, technocrats and wealthy donors” who were seeking tax-avoidance could work together and “far more effectively address a lot of social problems than say, the government or elected officials, or a lot of other kind of rival things.

“From the beginning of these professions, technocrats and often the donors, as well, have been kind of out of step with the mainstream American public,” he continues. “That distance has grown bigger, and part of the reason this distance has grown bigger is that symbolic capitalists are themselves a larger and larger share of the population, so they’re less beholden to everyone else.”

In the 1920s, al-Gharbi says, only three percent of workers were symbolic capitalists. At that level, “You can’t dominate an entire political party and bend communities to your will and willfully disparage and demean and ignore huge swaths of the population. You won’t be able to keep the lights on.

“In the contemporary context,” however, “symbolic capitalists are a third of all workers,” he says—“still not a majority, but a very large minority. We have some of the best-paying jobs, we’re concentrated in a small number of” urban areas and are “part of these interconnected systems … that insulate us in a way. … We actually can keep the lights on and actually be successful.

Relatively well-paid, high-status symbolic capitalists can now

have continued income flows and all of this while ignoring and disparaging and demeaning and alienating huge other swaths of society. That’s a thing that we can do now that we couldn’t do before because of these shifts and because of the growing size of the symbolic profession and the increasingly interconnected nature of these institutions and their increasing consolidation in a small number of cities.

In the conversation’s second part, al-Gharbi discusses what happened in previous Great Awokenings, the choice before symbolic capitalists in the face of growing populist reaction against them, the similarity of symbolic capitalists in conservative philanthropy and the rest of philanthropy, and recommendations for how they should all defend themselves and their position during the coming years.

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This article first appeared in the Giving Review on January 13, 2025.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/a-conversation-with-we-have-never-been-woke-author-musa-al-gharbi-part-1-of-2/