Tom Sheridan shares some insights into the new world of woke.

Reengineering life at work

I was recently asked about my experience of “woke” in the workplace, specifically for any “reflections you might have on the way in which cultural Marxism and psychological manipulation has been increasingly used as a tool for profound social engineering with anti-Christian bias”.

This question is insightful and vitally important, addressing both the powerful way in which overtly political messages are being used to reengineer life at work, and the increasing pressure to conform to this agenda.  Indeed, the two are inextricably linked – compliance is essential to success.  The overtly stated goals of this ideology at my particular company (and I suspect many others) include radically changing the demographic make-up of the employee population and its distribution at management level. In effect the organisation is aggressively pursuing “positive discrimination” in recruitment and promotion, despite its own internal statements to the contrary and acknowledgement that to do so would be illegal!

I was personally confronted with this ethical dilemma when involved in recruitment, having recently heard several messages from management that we should hire more women. I asked the relevant HR person how much bias we are supposed to show towards female candidates in the interviewing process, adding that I believed hiring decisions should be made solely on merit.  She replied that I was entirely correct, but if two candidates were otherwise equally qualified, we should hire the woman.  As George Orwell wrote in Animal Farm, in his bitingly satirical critique of Marxism, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”!  In his novel, this was one of Animal Farm’s seven commandments to bring about their utopia.  Marxism and its potentially more lethal new variant – Cultural Marxism – are essentially false “gospels” in which sin is equated with identity, hence the obsession with “white male privilege”.

Culture wars ….

To discern what’s going on, understanding this point is vital, I believe, for Christians caught up in these culture wars.  In many ways Christians are likely to be among those who most strongly identify with the “positive” aspects of these messages.  It goes without saying that we oppose workplace bullying, discrimination in terms of pay and promotion against women, ethnic minorities and the marginalised in our communities.  The Bible explicitly states that God does not show favouritism and that all believers are equal in their standing before Christ, whilst the New Testament records the efforts made in the early church to ensure fair treatment for all.

That said, in the world, our role as believers is to be ambassadors for our crucified Messiah who died to save us from sin, not to strive for an unachievable socialist utopia.  Jesus’ disciples were faithful in serving the Lord’s commands by giving to the poor, but the Lord Himself cautioned that the problem of poverty in this current age would never be resolved.  As we see in the story of the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet with perfume, personal devotion to Him counts above all else, and receiving His forgiveness sets us free to genuinely love (Luke 7:36-50).

The “love” commanded by Cultural Marxism is tainted by human sin. Compassion for women and ethnic minorities, for example, becomes an attack on white men.  The assumption is that to be born white is to be guilty of “original sin”, as is being born male.  However, reading between the lines, it seems that redemption is possible.  Being a woman may absolve one of the guilt of being white, as perhaps does being a gay man or a male who undergoes transgender surgery?

This has already been quite a long pre-amble to answering the specifics of my friend’s question, but I need to make a few further points by way of introduction.  First, the company I work for is exceptionally caring of its employees and there is much to commend in its various initiatives with regard to fairness.  I am confident that the senior managers involved are motived by good intentions, although they evidently fail to see the inherent contradictions in the messages they proclaim.

Second, in my experience, line managers (thankfully!) tend to focus on the day-to-day job, so that employees are shielded to some extent from the impacts of “woke” culture.  Nevertheless, there are real, observable impacts on recruitment and promotion.  Third and finally, because “diversity” and “woke” frequently and ironically often lead to the intolerance of “cancel culture”, I deem it wise to retain anonymity in this article in order to avoid putting my job at risk.  For this reason too, I have presented some facts in more general terms.

Progressive

With minor edits and omissions, this my response to my friend’s question:

  • The company is always at the forefront of jumping on every “progressive” bandwagon, from women’s equality (specifically targeting 50% female employment and 50% female total salary, regardless of whether some women might prefer to take time off work to raise children), LGBTQ+++ / Pride / Transgender, and more recently BAME issues.  Most regular, scheduled communication (e.g., apart from announcements such as return to work from Covid) – departmental and company meetings, newsletters, company magazine, updates on the company mobile app – have a large percentage of content devoted to one or more of the above.  Employees are encouraged to take part in Pride marches.

Comment: This reminds me of something which has been said about Covid by a number of commentators – there is only one narrative.   The sheer volume and relentlessness of these messages, which completely align with “woke” culture amounts to significant pressure, I believe.

  • These messages are reinforced by being visibly presented in all public spaces – corridors, rest and eating areas.  For example, LGBT and Pride literature is regularly on display, disabled toilets now also display “gender neutral” signs, and there is a wall plaque dedicated to a famous gay man with no connection to the company.  There is also a “multi-faith” prayer room with provision of ritual washing facilities.

Comment:  This reminds me of posters in Communist states, conveying the sense that “big brother is watching you”.  Why is it necessary to invade what is essentially personal space, for example,whereemployeestake their unpaid lunch breaks?

  • Overt statements regarding monitoring of words and behaviour:
  • Sessions on “micro-aggressions”, encouraging staff to challenge these individually, collectively or report them to HR.
  • An official statement in a company meeting that management promotions are dependent on people observably demonstrating commitment to the company’s diversity goals.
  • An email stating that every regular meeting between an employee and their manager, including skills development programmes and appraisals, must include a diversity element.

Comment:  Pressure to conform and enforce group think – strong totalitarian overtones

  • Over time, ramping up overtly “cultural Marxist” messages through various discussion groups, company meetings, and emails including links to YouTube clips which employees are recommended to view.  Specifically promoting:
  • Critical race theory, intersectionality and “equity”.
  • Teaching on “white privilege” and oppression, using intersectionality matrix (white, middle-class, able-bodied etc)

Comment:  This is a one-way street, and getting ever more extreme.  You can feel the walls closing in.

  • Pressure on staff to enforce “progressive” policies, e.g.
  • Bias towards women in recruitment, career development and promotion, as mentioned previously.
  • White managers and white employees encouraged to seek out BAME people to listen to their stories of being discriminated against by white people.
  • White managers encouraged to specifically focus on developing the careers of BAME employees.

Comment:  This goes beyond pressure to conform to group think – actions are required!  The company’s “positive discrimination” sends a strong message that non-“victim” groups are less valued, and is therefore potentially both divisive and a source of resentment (except perhaps for followers of Jesus, for whom such a reaction would be inappropriate).

Other observations

A few additional observations are worth making, in no particular order:

Employees were recently invited to participate in an anonymous questionnaire (essentially about white privilege). I felt that so many personal questions were asked that giving honest feedback could be tracked back to an individual.   Rightly or wrongly, I therefore declined to comment.

The company decides which organisations to use in its supply chain according to whether or not they conform to its own diversity policies.  Restrictive practices from the public sector are therefore now being enforced through commercial bullying in the private sector as well.

The company financially supports both questionable militant organisations, such as Stonewall, and more commendable community initiatives such as food banks.

My contract of employment never committed me to supporting “woke” or identity politics, or made this a condition of my career progression. Can it be legally or morally justified to change an employee’s working conditions in this way without their agreement?

Regarding the original question of anti-Christian bias, I described earlier the difference between God’s inclusive love, and Cultural Marxism’s divisive hostility to certain groups of people.  Concerning specific messages, the Biblical position on the uniqueness of male and female (yet both equal in the sight of God) and its teachings on marriage and sexual conduct are obviously targets of the “woke” agenda.  The practical questions are whether identifying as Christian will increasingly become a barrier to recruitment or promotion due to discrimination by employers. Conversely, true believers may decide against putting themselves forward for management positions, knowing that they may have to compromise their faith in so doing.  (In theory these considerations might also apply to Muslim employees, but in practice it seems that Cultural Marxism is more accommodating to Islam.)

From oppressed to oppressor?

My employer sets measurable targets for socially re-engineering the composition of its work force.   One wonders, therefore, what might constitute the achievement of utopia – perhaps the elimination of all “white male privilege”?  In some teams, white men are already a small minority or even entirely absent, despite the local population being majority white.  (Nevertheless, one senior manager did courageously mention that in the UK white boys are the group which most under-performs educationally.)  One wonders how specifically labelling white men in a derogatory way is not actually both racist and sexist?  Such labels are, of course, entirely spurious.  The Bible alone correctly identifies our problem as the universal one of human sin.  George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Communists to overthrow the evils of Nazism, but later in life experienced first-hand the horrors of Marxists in power.  Power had corrupted them, and absolute power had corrupted them absolutely.  The “oppressed” had become the “oppressors”:

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” (George Orwell, Animal Farm)

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Tom Sheridan is a pseudonym.