Election results aren’t a referendum on ‘woke culture’

An election worker hands out "I Voted" stickers at the Main Library in Salt Lake City on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

The 2024 election is in the books, and we will collectively spend years dissecting, analyzing, interpreting (and misinterpreting) the results.

One take that's already gaining steam is as predictable as it is inaccurate: the increased support of Donald Trump is a repudiation of "woke culture."

From Democratic pundits like James Carville placing the blame of his party's loss on "wokeism," to West Virginia Governor-elect Patrick Morrisey announcing that "DEI" and "woke" are not West Virginia values, it's clear there are no party lines when it comes to bad takes on human rights.

And let's be clear because that's exactly what "woke" actually is. The next time you see someone decrying "woke" simply replace the word with "human rights" and you'll see exactly what they're really saying.

Whether it's Sen. Joe McCarthy's red-baiting rants on "anti-American activities," Alice Moore's book-banning crusade against "human secularism," or George Bush Sr. railing against "political correctness," mislabeling human rights as something bad or scary is nothing new. We've been here before and I fear we will be here again.

All across the country, voters turned out in droves to support ballot measures deemed "woke" by those who oppose human rights. This happened in ruby-red states as well as sapphire-blue states.

Ten states asked voters whether they wanted to enshrine abortion protections, and a majority of voters in eight of them said yes. (Only seven passed because Florida's 57 percent "yes" vote fell short of an antidemocratic rule requiring 60-percent).

In Kentucky, voters rejected a school voucher initiative, which proponents argued would allow parents to remove kids from "woke schools."

Even here in West Virginia, where an amendment enshrining a prohibition on death with dignity passed, it did so by less than one percent and with many voters saying the wording was so confusing that they ended up casting their vote incorrectly.

Polling also confirms that "wokeness" remains popular among Americans. Mass deportations of undocumented immigrants are by 73 percent of voters. Support for abortion access is at an all-time high in this country with 63 percent of Americans legalizing the practice in all or most cases. A majority also of trans and nonbinary people living their lives as they wish.

Even DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives — a major dog whistle of the 2024 election — see broad among Americans with 61 percent calling them good corporate policies.

Yes, voters chose Donald Trump. And yes, Donald Trump is the single biggest threat to civil liberties in America today. Correlation, however, does not imply causation. Elections are influenced by myriad issues. But the polling results continue to speak for themselves.

For the elected officials and political actors who simply supported Making America Gross Again for social and political expediency, your Faustian bargain obliges you to be the front line in protecting human rights.

Checks and balances require leaders, not demagogues and sycophants. If you propped up and supported this administration, if you gained from this election, and you stand idly by as hard-won freedoms are ripped away, history will remember where you stood.

As for the ACLU of West Virginia, we're ready for the fights ahead and we remain committed as ever to fight government overreach, shine a light on violations of civil liberties, and drag the government to court when it disregards human rights.

The ACLU sued the Trump administration more than 400 times during his last presidency. And if he wants to come after immigrants, ramp up policing of Black communities, or legislate away trans people's very existence, he's going to have to get past us.

We expect we'll be seeing him in court.