Maybe this helps? All usages of woke and wokeism below are pejorative, not to be confused with the original sense of the words.
People sell woke things because there’s a market for wokeism. Consumers of woke things aren’t necessarily woke themselves, they can also be misguided or duped.
~Max
Indeed, the blindside is precisely the case, remember, the important thing is to be aware of how the right wing media and politicians are using the term in bigoted ways that are not as clear to many conservative moderates out there.
Better to think that the meaning that was there until recently, the one about being misguided, remains the same.
…and in regard to sustainable, locally sourced food, they manage to get across the message that they also sell food at the restaurant as well.
In the example you cited: they simply lied.
You can’t disagree. Not here.
The restaurant owner was lying. As in false-advertising-should-be-sued level of lying.
This isn’t virtue signalling.
Its JUST LYING.
I said people that considered themselves woke.
The people using woke as a pejorative are calling everything woke. From vaccine mandates or climate change initiatives to friggen restaurant owners who lie about where they get their pigs.
We don’t need to take them seriously.
I’m not wrong.
The market for wokeism is affordable food, not sustainable food. That you don’t understand the differences really highlight how far away you are from understanding what it is we are talking about here.
And now you are entering the philosophical debate that framed the final seasons of NBC’s The Good Place. Which is all well and good, but have little to do with the topic at hand.
So this really was the best you can do.
Gotcha.
QFT
Many on the conservative or moderate side miss that this is what is going on with that word among many hard conservatives. That is what I mean when I say that many moderates are being blindsided.
Of course, I wish we could not take the extremists seriously, unfortunately a good number of the ones using the word in that expansive bigoted or anti-scientific way are in positions of power.
Feel free to disabuse me of the notion that people can virtue signal by lying about whether they care about a societal issue.
We disagree about that, too.
There’s no point in continuing this conversation if you deny outright that woke even has a pejorative meaning. Of course it has a pejorative meaning. The OP asks why being “woke” is a bad thing, because it is not disputable that a significant number of people use woke in a pejorative sense. It is not, in my opinion, disputable that this pejorative usage prompted the very debate you purport to participate in, and is worthy of consideration.
If you can’t accept these bases for discussion, we can’t have a discussion.
~Max
“One could say”? Maybe you could, but to most of us, that sort of definition stretches the meaning of “woke” so broadly that it can literally mean anything at all, and consequently means nothing. The claim of “locally sourced” food means that it’s locally sourced; nothing more and nothing less. Your cite says that such claims are often false. If so, that’s not “woke”; that’s what the law calls “false advertising”.
No, your both-sides-ism claim that “there are plenty of flimflam artists looking to personally profit from wokeism” remains unsubstantiated. Meanwhile we have examples like the Bethany Mandel book wherein she tries to make a fast buck by promoting the attention-grabbing claim that liberal “wokeness” is destroying our children, yet when put on the spot, can’t even define what she means by the word. A book, incidentally, published by a disreputable right-wing outlet that has other tomes along exactly the same lines, like how liberalism is destroying America, or how liberals have taken control of the language in order to manipulate our thoughts.
To support your claim you need to give us examples of where liberals similarly use wokeness to dishonestly promote garbage narratives solely in order to make a buck, and where they do so on the same scale as the right. So far you’ve failed to do so. Sure, no doubt somewhere some progressive extremist has done something similar, but on the right, this is an entire industry, comprised of entities like “alternative media”, right-wing specialty publishers, a very long list of deliberately provocative pundits like Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Dinesh D’Souza, and on and on, and the movement even has its own very major “news” network on cable entirely dedicated to promoting right-wing garbage narratives.
…you didn’t provide a citation to someone who was lying about whether they care about a societal issue.
You provided a cite to a guy who lied about where he bought his pork.
That isn’t virtue signalling.
That’s lying about where he bought his pork.
That isn’t virtue signalling. It isn’t woke. Its a lying liar lying about where he bought his pork. You couldn’t have found a worse example to post here in this thread.
And it appears to be your only example. You can’t do better than this.
I mean, why should we take you seriously here in this debate?
You are claiming that a guy lying about where he bought his pork from is virtue signalling, therefore that is woke, therefore that is wokeism, and its the only example of a “flimflam artists looking to personally profit from wokeism” that you can find, and you can’t actually define what a “flimflam artist” actually is and…
And why should we take any of this seriously?
What is there to debate?
We have no point of reference. We either accept your premise out of hand or we don’t. I don’t see why we should accept it. The example you cited does not show a “flimflam artists looking to personally profit from wokeism.” It shows a local business owner who lied about where he bought his pork.
I haven’t denied that.
Its just that the people who use it in the pejorative sense use it to describe pretty much anything they like. Which is exactly what you have done here.
So how exactly do you expect us to be able to have a discussion with you? The guy who lied about where he bought his pork will always be virtue signalling in your eyes, which means he will always be an example of wokeism, so what do you want us to do?
We will just file your arguments over there with all the other people that use woke as a pejorative and to mean whatever it is you want it to mean.
I mean: thats a YOU problem. Not a WE problem.
You’ve invented a new definition for woke, and you expect the rest of us to simply accept it for the purposes of this debate.
I accept that the word is used in two ways. Firstly the actual definition which had its origins in AAVE.
And the thousands of variations (one of which you are using here in this thread) used a pejorative that have no common definition, used to apply to anything that you want, mean anything that you want, that you can apply to any random thing thing that you like.
Seriously: you are arguing that a guy who lied about where he bought his pork is somehow wokeism, because virtue signalling, because “just believe me bro.” And that’s the only example you can provide.
And you somehow think that its our problem that a discussion here simply isn’t possible.
If you want to have a discussion here, perhaps start with finding a better example than the one about a man and his meat.
Missing a “don’t” here, I believe.
It’s fairly amazing how Max_S. refuses to see that most, if not literally all, of the complaining about “woke” from the right is simply a confused label they insist on slapping on all things liberal, progressive, or unaccepting of right-wing values. I find Red Sox fans more subtle than that in labeling every move by the Yankees “sucks.”
I come here, there’s about 30 posts in this thread, and all I get from it is that Max is confused about marketing versus lying versus wokeism.
I don’t really know what to add to this debate, but to lend my voice in support to those who say that the 3 terms actually have 3 separate meanings.
I took it to mean the ideological heirs to those who fought the National Guard in an effort to uphold segregation.
Those who were Carefully Taught.
From the link:
Well, as they say, history may not repeat, but it does rhyme.
For those who don’t know the song, take a moment and look at the lyrics or give it a listen:
It is curious this topic seems to be showing up so often here. Is it because people are honestly wanting to understand why “wokeness” is perceived negatively? Or is it because people want assurance that it’s just a figment of right-wing hysteria?
When I use woke pejoratively, it’s in reference to a slavish adherence to certain codes of conduct that purport to promote progressivism but in practice achieve illiberalism. This happens when going against these codes of conduct opens people up to disproportionate consequences, which creates a chilling effect that inhibits the very things progressives have historically celebrated. Like free speech, diversity of thought, a healthy distrust towards corporate machinery, intellectual curiosity, and irreverent humor.
In my view, “wokeness” has the tightest hold on people and groups that are extra sensitive to being seen as privileged and oppressive. Because they are extra motivated to “be on the right side of history”, they follow these regimented codes of conduct to keep them from being like the unenlightened bigots they want to distance themselves from. This is a well-meaning desire, but the emotion behind it increases their susceptibility to dogmatism and groupthink.
What is alleged to have happened to the woman in the story below is what comes to mind when I (and others like me) think of “wokeness”. Obviously I have no way of verifying what she is claiming is true, but nothing she alleges strikes me as fanciful. For instance, plenty of academics still insist on using Latinx even though polls show the Hispanic community is largely alienated by that term. This is a clear example of how a code of conduct meant to be progressively inclusive actually swings around to be the very opposite. This has a disparate impact on historically marginalized groups —which again goes against the aims of true progressivism.
LINK REMVOED as violated users topic ban!
Progressives are well within their rights to deny there is a problem with “wokeness”. But denials don’t really do anything to combat the perception that an extreme element has successfully hijacked leftist thought. You can’t combat what you pretend doesn’t exist. It would be better not to discuss this topic at all than to generate post after post railing about conservatives who talk about it.
That’s not really a reason at all, but go ahead…
Ah, well thank you for assuring us that it’s a just a figment of right-wing hysteria, anyway.
2 of the terms have their own meanings, but “woke”(when used by the right) means everything and therefore it means nothing.
ETA: Removed (by JT) because of mod note below.
Warning and suspension as your link violated your topic ban as it went in Pronoun issues pretty heavily.
Your future here is being discussed.
So it’s not exploiting the market of people who want to support local farmers, it’s just false advertising. By that logic the claim of “black-owned and operated” means it’s black owned and operated, nothing more and nothing less.
If it were to come out that a restaurant claimed to be black owned but was actually run by a white dude, by your logic that wouldn’t be a flimflam artist trying to make a fast buck by exploiting the market of people who go out of their way to support black-owned businesses, it would just be false advertising.
If it wasn’t clear, I take the position that “woke” can be used and is used as a pejorative without being so loosely defined as to encompass literally anything and be meaningless. My impression of Banquet_Bear’s position, and it seems yours too, is that you aren’t interested in any definitions of woke that can apply to something like how restaurants advertise the sourcing of their ingredients. Perhaps you, too, reject out of hand any definitions that apply to COVID-19 vaccines, or to policies designed to address climate change. If so we have nothing to discuss. All three have been described to me, in verbal conversation, as “woke”, and as a precondition to debate I would require any definition to encompass those subjects because that reflects the usage I experience.
Assuming there is still a debate to be had over the definition of ‘woke’, I think the best way to prove or disprove a definition is to see if it matches use cases.
This was my definition:
My personal experience is that most of the time, when someone uses woke as a pejorative, they mean behavior which, whether misguided or with deceptive intent, appears to be progressive but doesn’t actually accomplish good.
I should note that when I wrote “progressive” there, I literally meant something that improves society, without the ironic connotations sometimes attached to “progressivism” in America.
Here are a couple nonexhaustive lists. Imagine you are a stereotypical American conservative. Take your working definition of ‘woke’ and see how it fares:
Health/COVID-19
Environmental/Climate Change
Children/School
Organization/Workplace
Displays/Social Justice
Business/Consumer Behavior
* The affected group wouldn’t be called ‘woke’ for supporting their own causes or issues. See negative use cases, below.
Health/COVID-19
Environmental/Climate Change
Children/School
Organization/Workplace
Displays/Social Justice
Business/Consumer Behavior
~Max
It is false advertising. It is fraud. It is a lot of things. It is not “woke.” Woke people are honest.
Yes. Are you saying it means more or less than that? Like what?
It would be a lot of things. It wouldn’t be “woke.” Woke, that that context would be the desire to support minority owned businesses. (of course, that’s probably a good way to be woke. I’m sure someone has an objection to it though). Maybe it’s fraud targeting at the woke people. But the fraud isn’t woke, it’s just fraud.
If a restaurant buys locally, you can call that restaurant woke I suppose. If they’re lying about it, that’s the opposite of woke.
Thank you for taking the time to type up this list; it’s very helpful.
What about NASCAR banning confederate flags? That’s been routinely described as “woke.” Is that a misguided attempt to be progressive but fails to accomplish anything good?