What the woke revolution is — and isn't

The Great Awokening is gathering speed.

Hardly a week — and sometimes barely a day or an hour — goes by without a fresh incident of "cancel culture" or another "woke" scandal breaking in the news.

Whether you think the trend a good thing, a bad thing, or a trivial thing, you know exactly what I mean. To list just a few of the stories from recent weeks: Longtime New York Times reporter Donald McNeil was fired for quoting a racial slur in conversation with high school students on a trip sponsored by the newspaper; six Dr. Seuss books were discontinued by their publisher because an advisory committee flagged racist images within them; the incoming editor in chief of Teen Vogue has gotten into hot water for tweeting anti-Asian remarks 10 years ago, when she was a teenager; the host of the TV show The Bachelorette has been pushed out because he defended a current contestant who, according to CNN, "was reportedly photographed at an antebellum plantation-themed fraternity formal in 2018."