It’s time to take you to school, young lady. You people are truly amazing. It is clear that you know nothing about the history and origin of the word “woke”. It means to be aware....aware of social issues and injustice. A woke person is one who does not have blinders on or has their head up their ass. Yet you have managed to turn it into a dirty word. Something nefarious and subversive.
A woke person is not afraid of truth and knowledge or to confront uncomfortable realities of the past or present. Not surprising that conservatives hate and fear it so much. Conservatives' have consistently shown that they prefer ignorance to knowledge, lies and distortions to truth and honesty and denial of the reality of social injustice to an honest dialogue . Most egregiously, you accuse those who embrace woke of seeking to shame whites and divide the races, while denying the collective responsibility for the shameful history of this nation which is the very essence of divisiveness and a barrier to healing. Woke is progress. Anti woke is being stuck in a fictitious past largely constructed on a foundation of lies, denial and fantasy .
What is the history of the word ‘woke’ and its modern uses? | The Independent
The phrase originated from African American Vernacular English but has been gradually co-opted by right wing players to be used as an insult
The phrase “woke” and to “stay woke” is not new — it began appearing in the 1940s and was first used by African Americans to “literally mean becoming woken up or sensitized to issues of justice”, says linguist and lexicographer Tony Thorne.
In 1971, the phrase was used in a play by American playwright Barry Beckham titled Garvey Lives!, in which he wrote: “I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon’ stay woke. And I’m gon’ help him wake up other black folk.”
It also entered popular culture thanks to singer Erykah Badu, who used the phrase “I stay woke” in her 2008 song Master Teacher. David Stovall, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, told the New York Times that Ms. Badu’s use of the phrase meant “not being placated, not being anaesthetized”.
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So here we have the foundation of the term Woke as a jumping off point to try to understand it’s current usage and the partisan vitriol that it engenders
From the same link:
It started becoming a politicized word in 2014, after the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
“‘Woke’ was largely unknown in the UK until the BLM movement, but in the 2000s it was a popular word used by young people in America, especially in black communities,” said Mr Thorne.
It was only in 2017 that the word “woke” was added to the Oxford English Dictionary, and was defined as “being ‘aware’ or ‘well-informed’ in a political or cultural sense”.
It evolved into an all-encompassing term to describe leftist political ideology, used as a “shorthand for people on the left” to signal progressiveness, but weaponized by those on the right as a “sneering, jeering dismissive term” to denigrate those who did not agree with their beliefs, said Mr. Thorne.
So there you have it. But what is it exactly ? What is the operational definition and does it look like in terms of specific words, deeds, policies and even thoughts and why is it so controversial?
Lets look at what specific policy positions of Democrats, liberals and progressives-collectively referred to as “the left” while making little or no distinction between Communists, autocratic socialism and Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren.
The big hot button issue has become
Critical Race Theory. While CRT as a philosophy is not actually taught below the college level, it has become a catch all term to mean an honest and complete understanding of our racial history beginning with 1619, through the Civil War, reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement . It also includes the critical analysis of the lingering systemic and institutional racism that permeates society today.
It is not- as those on “the right” will have you believe- an educational approach that makes white kids feel guilty about being white and hate themselves, that tarnishes the history of the country and further divides the races. It has even been suggested that woke people have the temerity to believe that African Americans have the same intellectual potential as European Americans. Well, yes they do believe that and it's true. These Anti Woke people have the nerve to call the rest of us racists, while embracing scientific racism!
While Germany makes a point of honestly confronting their shameful history, there are those in this country who want to burry ours, In doing so, they are short changing our children, demeaning those who have suffered and stifling and chance of a true racial reckoning
It comes down to this:
The idea is that racism is not a matter of individual bigotry but is systemic in America. Recently critics have made
C.
R.
T. a catchall target for opposition to equity efforts, affirmative action and “
wokeness” in general.
But the opposition to Wokeness has gone beyond racial issues and now has seeped into matter of gender and sexuality as well. There is this from the Heritage Foundation which is basically a denial of the reality of gender dysphoria in an attempt to marginalize and trivialize the real pain that transgender people experience, especially in the absence of support and medical care and blaming “Woke Culture” for the emergence of the phenomena.
Woke Gender | The Heritage Foundation
And, the anti woke fervor has infected a myriad of other social and political issues such as climate change, economic inequality, criminal justice and just about every contentious issue that is on the table. And in each case, conservatives align with the “anti woke” hysteria. “Woke is evil” “Woke is un-American” “Woke is just stupid” Yes, I have heard all of that and more. But let me remind everyone of the original meaning of “woke” ….to be awake. To be aware. So really it fits.
By touting their anti wokeness', conservatives are acknowledging and celebrating their denial of social and economic inequality . They are embracing the denial of women’s reproductive rights and agency over their own bodies. They are promoting climate change denial and ignoring the scourge of gun violence. They are pretending that these pressing issues are just manufactured by “the left” to divide us.
Ron Desantis, the Führer of Florida is the personification all that is wrong with those who oppose wokeness. He is laser focused on punishing Disney Land over their opposition to his draconian policies towards LGBT people, suppressing voting rights attacking the teaching of black history, censoring reading materiel, even at the college level, and wiping out Covid mandates of all kinds, all in the name of wiping out wokeness. Meanwhile, Florida has one of the worst health care systems in the country in terms of the percentage of uninsured and the disparity by race- largely due to the governors refusal to expand Medicaid, a higher that average poverty rate of 13.1 % , a higher than average crime rate, and a byzantine and inhumane criminal justice system that incarcerates too many people for far too long and disproportionately incarcerates and disenfranchise people of color and those with fewer resources. Yet Desantis’ priority is his war on Mickey Mouse, Education, and drag queens. He wants Florida to be known as the place where woke goes to die. Thanks to him Floriday is where truth goes to die. It is where dignity goes to die. It is where hope goes to die It is where people go to die I’ll take woke. Woke you Ronnie
