Just a few years ago, wearing a sombrero on Halloween could get you banished from polite society for the social crime of “cultural appropriation.” Nutrition experts argued that preventing obesity was a form of racialized “fatphobia,” even as scientific names of songbirds were purged in a moral campaign presumably aimed at white supremacy. Meanwhile, a slew of studies and papers and articles argued that punctuality, excellence, and other forms of professionalism are “the systemic, institutionalized centering of whiteness.” Today, as universities are dismantling their DEI bureaucracies, corporations are scaling back antiracism training, and academic trigger warnings and diversity pledges have become punch lines rather than cudgels, it is tempting to believe that the excesses of the woke movement have not just peaked but are a thing of the past, a passing fever dream of a peculiar era.