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Late last year, the Chicago Teachers Union tweeted that the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny. While the union later deleted the head-turning tweet, that same month little-noticed data released by the Illinois State Board of Education showed just how much pandemic-induced school closures were harming childrens learning. Among high school juniors, SAT scores in math and reading had plummeted across the state, with low-income and minority students seeing the steepest learning losses. Chicagos third-graders saw their reading and math scores plunge. A vice president of the citys teacher union dismissed these dismal numbers as the result of a racist standardized test while praising students who took up jobs instead.

Theres a term for this in the corporate world: woke-washing. This is when a company tries to launder its reputation in the waters of a trendy cause or woke language, such as when REI, the outdoor outfitter, began a recent podcast opposing an employee union drive with the hosts preferred pronouns and acknowledgement that the podcast was originating from the traditional lands of the Coast Salish peoples.

The risk with woke-washing is not only that it exposes tensions in an institutions expressed beliefs but that it brushes past substantive debates over governance and policy decisions. Its a practice thats hardly confined to the corporate world; it's undermining good governance across the public sector, and nowhere more than in local government.

Local activists are hardly helping the matter. Critics of new housing in Minneapolis are demanding racial and social equity analyses in order to slow development or stop it altogether. Nationwide, social justice advocates and their allies in office are now loudly skeptical of greening cities with new parks and greenspace in case adding amenities and improving services might gentrify poor neighborhoods. With such an argument, why even bother paving streets if doing so risks raising property values?

One reason why woke-washed incompetence persists is that local elected officials are too responsive to the results of low-turnout, off-cycle elections overstuffed with activists and public union members, whose interests may deviate from that of the median urban voter (and sometimes even from the groups they purport to represent). The nationalization of politics also means that local candidates can run and win on national culture-war issues they have little control over while having to promise even less in the way of actual local outcomes. And since Democrats are really the only game in town when it comes to most local politics, they havent had much competition from the right, which means any meaningful fights over school boards and more are essentially intra-left battles.

San Franciscos ultra-woke school board was not progressive, noted speaker after speaker at a victory party of mostly Asian American activists in the school board recall, and they have a point. Early-20th-century-style Progressives, with a capital P, campaigned against corrupt machines on a platform of good governance and scientific management. Its this same appeal to competent, outcome-based politics and horror at the results of woke-washed incompetence that is driving some longtime leftists to push back and even run for office themselves. Lets not forget that some of the most successful hard-left progressives in American history were Milwaukees Sewer Socialists, who between 1910 and 1960 more or less dominated local politics by delivering good government and better services, not to mention building treatment plants for the citys sewage.

Residents are getting fed up, particularly when the gap between high-minded words and poor results becomes too stark to ignore. Last year, Austins Proposition B banning homeless encampments passed over the opposition of city officials by a 15-point margin, winning support in every neighborhood as well as from a sizable chunk of Democrats. In San Francisco, a new poll on the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin finds an incredible 68 percent of voters favoring ejecting the citys progressive D.A. And the three-decade advantage in polls of Democrats over Republicans on who Americans trust to invest in public education and schools has now been wiped out.

Its time to put an end to woke-washing poor governance. Lets push for better governance and a more active electorate through voting reforms, such as on-cycle local elections, to enhance representation and accountability. More importantly, lets have a debate about the actual policies were meant to debate: Rather than, say, rejecting speed cameras until we address the root causes of speeding, why dont we just debate the effectiveness of speed cameras? Competence is the key, and we should be willing to hold leaders in city hall to account.

As New Yorks legendary mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, supposedly put it, theres no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage. Cities must be safer, cleaner and offer a better future to the next generation. Do the basics, in other words, because woke-washing isnt going to produce those outcomes.

Original post:
The Incompetence of Woke-Washed Governance - Governing