That the electorate has rejected wokeness should be obvious by now. Donald Trump’s most effective campaign ad featured the tagline, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Even liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote after the election that “woke is broke.”
But celebrating the end of peak woke and burying it completely are two different things. What will it take to kill wokeness once and for all?
We first have to define it. Woke means believing America is riddled with inequities, where not only its people but the system itself is racist and in need of systemic overhaul; where society is divided between the “oppressors” and the “oppressed”; where history must be expunged and rewritten. This is a world of make-believe. But for the woke elite, it colors everything from climate policy to the Israel-Hamas war.
This elite has spent years infusing every institution with policies, procedures and mandates aimed at transforming society. Diversity, equity and inclusion measures, particularly in government and academia, have created an identity-based system in which people’s immutable characteristics, not their choices, determine whether they are worthy of awards or punishment.
To put a spike through the heart of woke, Mr. Trump and the new Congress must reverse these policies. Some of the following proposals will be easy to implement, others harder. But all will help restore sanity.
• Rescind and reverse all of Mr. Biden’s executive orders implementing DEI and gender theory, including Executive Order 13985, which advanced a “whole-of-government equity agenda.”
Mr. Biden also signed executive orders supporting “gender-affirming” medical interventions on minors, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries. These too must go.
Mr. Trump should then sign two executive orders. The first should reinstitute his 2020 ban on DEI training for federal workers and contractors. The second should define “male” and “female” in precise biological terms, which would clarify what the Biden Title IX rule has destructively muddled, and preserve the intent of Title IX.
Congress should then pass and Mr. Trump sign the Dismantle DEI Act, currently working its way through the House, which would eliminate DEI practices throughout the federal bureaucracy.
• End woke university practices. Mr. Trump’s plan, which he announced last summer, would change the accreditation system, protect free speech, eliminate wasteful administrative positions, and use the Justice Department to file lawsuits against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination.
• Retake control of museums, starting with the Smithsonian Institution. Smithsonian museums have forsaken their mission of spreading knowledge and instead are trying to “decolonize” society. The National Museum of African American History and Culture, for instance, has an entire web page deriding “white fragility” and a “white dominant culture.”
Mr. Trump should ask Congress to restore ideological balance by appointing real conservatives willing to stand up to progressive views to the Board of Regents, which governs the Smithsonian. This board is responsible for appointing the Smithsonian’s secretary, or chief executive officer. The current secretary, Lonnie Bunch, says DEI “is integral to excellence in museum practice.”
• Eliminate the Census’s racial and ethnic categories. These categories form the lifeblood of identity politics and are often synthetic—some were added to the Census only recently. The ethnoracial pentagon—American Indians or Alaska natives, Asian or Pacific Islanders, blacks, Hispanics and whites—emerged in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget’s Statistical Policy Directive No. 15 in 1977 and was first used in the decennial Census in 1980.
Activists were banking on what sociologist Cristina Mora called “collective amnesia,” expecting Americans to believe these identity groups had been defined forever. The idea was to balkanize the nation, foster resentment among groups and allow the left to gain power. But many members of these groups have voted for Mr. Trump in large numbers, particularly this year. They’re assimilated. It’s time to stop dividing Americans into ethnic and racial groups.
Mr. Trump should issue an executive order directing OMB to rescind the 1977 directive (and subsequent revisions) and ordering the Census Bureau to abandon these faux categories. If the government is truly interested in disparities, it should ask questions that have real bearing on people’s backgrounds and perspectives, such as, “Is there a father in the house?”
• Dissolve the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB, which funds public media organizations that are responsible for spreading the woke mind virus. Mr. Trump can’t control private companies, but NPR, PBS and other public broadcasters collectively receive millions in taxpayer dollars. The CPB distributes more than 70% of its annual $500 million congressional appropriation to public media. This must stop. Broadcasters will do fine relying on paying members.
Congress must then pass legislation undoing the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which established the CPB. It’s time to shut it down.
This isn’t an exhaustive list—much else could be on it—but everything here is vital to pull America out of the swamp of wokeness.
Mr. Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of “NextGen Marxism.” Mr. Tooloee is chief of staff to conservative activist and author Christopher Rufo.
