Critics Respond to We Have Never Been Woke

So far, the response to We Have Never Been Woke has been almost unanimously positive – to a degree that’s almost overwhelming. The book has blurbs from scholars whose work has been hugely influential, such as Richard Florida, Thomas Frank, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, Tyler Cowen and Tyler Austin Harper.

Advance praise in the New York Times said that the book heralds my arrival as a “rising intellectual star.”  The Washington Post review said the book establishes me as “one of the most insightful and provocative sociologists” of my generation. Mother Jones listed We Have Never Been Woke as one of the best nonfiction works of 2024, describing it as an “eye-opening book” that was “prophetically published less than a month before Trump’s second victory.”

One of my absolute favorite book reviewers of other people’s books described We Have Never Been Woke “probably the most incisive and interesting” book that has been written on wokeness. Another characterized the text as an “exhilarating, challenging, and reflective read that truly is one of a kind. There’s really no other book on ‘wokeness’ quite like it.”

Truly, wild stuff.

Even more heartening than the positive reception in the mainstream circuit has been the way the book has defied easy categorization across ideological and political lines.

The Reception Across Political and Ideological Lines

There’s often a path dependency to how a work is received. In a polarized context, if a book gets eagerly embraced early on by one moral or political faction, it will often be largely neglected by their opponents. If one group finds a text useful, to the extent their rivals pick up the title at all, they’ll typically read it in a shallow and adversarial way, with the goal of finding a way to debunk or dismiss it (exhibiting little interest in learning or charitable engagement).

This risk was front-of-mind for my publisher, and they weren’t alone. Headed into the book launch, interlocutors on podcasts, talks and private conversations consistently expressed worry that the book might be hated or neglected by its target audience — the people who need to hear the message — while being embraced by antiwoke and conservative folks who seek to leverage the text as in the culture wars in a manner that was out of step with the intent of the project.

My approach going in was to not worry about this overmuch. As I detail in the