Why I Don’t Say “Woke”
At least not without quotation marks
For some years now, the word “woke” has been a go-to adjective to describe intolerant, destructive activism aimed at helping certain groups who have been marginalized and oppressed. I’ve written a good deal here on Medium about my opposition to this sort of activism. In doing so, I myself have used “woke” in that sense although usually not without putting quotation marks around it. Even then, I’m hesitant nowadays to say it.
Why? Because I believe that that kind of “wokeness” does not, in fact, signify being awake, and that being woke ought to be reserved to its original meaning.
Today’s social justice activism has indeed given people plenty of reasons to be alienated by it. The events at Oberlin College involving the nearby Gibson’s Bakery are one example of that. A more recent one is the race- and gender-based discrimination by Novant Health against an employee with the purpose of increasing diversity in said categories.
The word “woke” first became tied to social awareness in the mid-20th century when segregation was still law. It was used among African Americans to refer to being conscious of injustice and striving for improvement, and has seen a resurgence among the public in the past decade in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Within that span it has also become a pejorative on the political right referring to extreme, destructive activism from the left.
I find that understandable but also unfortunate. It resembles a similar co-opting of words that’s been applied to racism. According to many “anti-racist” activists, instead of being something that all people are capable of, racism can only be perpetrated by white people, at least in white-dominant societies. There have been many well-reasoned rebuttals to this idea and our country continues to define racism in the traditional, “non-woke” manner.
Being woke should be a good thing. It should mean that you are awake to social injustice of any type, including that which is caused by wrongful attempts to correct an injustice.
There are many of us who know about the effects of racism and other social ills but disagree with the detrimental approach of today’s social justice activism to those ills. It is this deeper understanding that truly displays being woke.