I agree, as I said, criticism of any specific policy associated with the concept of “wokeness” is not necessarily evidence of bigotry, racism, sexism etc. but…
Good luck with keeping the definitional purity of that term and avoiding the scope-creep that naturally comes from both sides when it suits their purpose.
…but it isn’t “scope creep.” Just like Critical Race Theory, the shift in definitions is entirely intentional and has been engineered as part of a greater “culture war.” And they’ve defined it in a way that (as can be demonstrated in this very thread) that it can mean anything that they like. As in “I know it when I see it.”
You are free to accept a nonsensical definition if you like. That doesn’t make the definition any less nonsensical.
Oh I think it is selective scope creep clearly from both sides. It is a malleable term that can be expanded at will as the agenda suits.
I think your original definition of “woke” was fine, where it focused on awareness of inequalities. However I think the time has long since passed where that definition is the one and only one in use by all sides.
“Both sides do it.”
People on all sides certainly expand and extrapolate from the core definition of woke which Banquet Bear stated above…
I wouldn’t have thought that observation was particularly controversial.
How has the left changed the definition of “woke” to suit a political purpose?
I didn’t say “changed” I talked about expansion.
There’s a whole section on “Broadening Usage” within the Wiki link already provided that speaks to this.
Again, I find it strange that this would be a controversial observation.
Do you think the “left” (whoever they are) stick strictly to the very specific definition of
and do not expand beyond that?
Hardly anyone on the left even uses the word any more.
Can there be a more egregious example of “bothsideism” when only one side is using the term?
Just as with CRT, it’s just a persistent poisoned well now, where the right can just file anything under “woke” and that’s enough reason to shut it down. And even supposed free speech advocates will cheer and whoop.
…you don’t even know who “both sides” are in this discussion.
When exactly did Black people expand the use of the term to suit their agenda?
It hasn’t been a “long time.” The word and phrase had its origins in the 1930’s. It wasn’t until 2020, when it was co-opted to use as an insult, then in the last year when it was co-opted to mean “anything progressive”.
It’s not “left vs right.”
It’s “black vs white.”
It wasn’t a “leftist” word. It was derived from AAVE. And it was used by Black people the very same way since the 30’s. It is still being used by Black people the very same way now. Any expansion on the use of the word didn’t come from the people who had almost exclusively used that word prior to 2014.
It should be more correctly “all sides” rather than “both sides” (which indeed I corrected in the second quote of mine you used), there are far more than two points of view on the concept of “woke”
I absolutely agree, I know many left-leaning people here in the UK who are no fans of the term or the expanded definition thereof. Feel free to correct Czarcasm and Mijin, They seem keen to raise it as a specific political left v right issue.
I suggest you read your own wiki cite, particularly the bit that refers to the hisory of the “Broadening Usage”. If you are suggesting it had some definitional purity up until 2020, in line with your own preferred definition, I think you are mistaken.
But words don’t have intrinsic and unchanging definitions, they have usages.
If you want to suggest that it should retain the orginal definition and it still only means what the original black coinage intended, then good luck to you. That ship has sailed. Complain to those that initially co-opted the word and expanded its remit.
Your comment above pretty much concedes that an expansion of some kind has happened, as does the wiki article you cited.
There is a difference between natural expansion/clarification of a word, and deliberate corruption of a word.
…nah, there aren’t really more than two points of view here. You’ve got the original usage. And then you’ve got it being used as a pejorative: a catch-all for everything progressive.
Really?
How much was the term even used in the UK prior to 2021? The term had it’s origins in the Black American community and it was almost exclusively used in the Black American community until the rise of Black Lives Matters. I’m struggling to find any use of the word in the UK prior to 2020 outside of the fact it was added to the dictionary in 2017.
The broadened usage has been to use it as an insult and to use it as a catch-all for anything progressive. It surged in popularity in the 2010’s, but it wasn’t until 2019/2020 that the term started to be widely used ironically, and only in the last year when people started to use it to describe everything progressive.
I’m not mistaken. Its all right there in the wiki cite. It hasn’t been “a long time.”
And the word is being used by racists, misogynists, white supremacists, as a pejorative in the frontline of their culture war.
I’m suggesting that we recognize exactly what the racists, misogynists, white supremacists are doing, that we call it out loudly and clearly, and that we do everything we can to stop them co-opting the word “woke” the very same way they co-opted the words “critical race theory” which they are using to ban books, to remove Black history from the curriculum, to sanitize the racist history of the founding of America.
What is it exactly do you think we are doing here?
I’ve never disputed that the the racists, misogynists, white supremacists have taken the word and deliberately used it incorrectly for the purposes of furthering their agenda. I just don’t think we need to buy into that agenda.
Pakman just posted a good summary of the state of play of “woke”. It’s just a term like “socialism” where the people who are most against it really have no idea what it actually means.
Right, now it’s only used by one side. Because the other side constantly lies about it.
I’m British as well, and this is perhaps why I see it as even more of a political issue than some other people here.
Because, in British English, it seems to have been adopted as the new “political correctness gone mad”. Those same fuckdumb articles in the Telegraph or Mail now prefer to attach the word “woke”. I think they are delighted to have a quick and easy word to tag this kind of manufactured outrage.
Now you supposedly can’t say Christmas any more because woke.
Yeah, 99% of the time I see someone complaining about “wokeism,” they’re an idiot.
I think for me, there seems to be a certain preachiness or sanctimoniousness to people who self-identify as “woke”, and that turns me right off.
I mean, I’m not hostile at all to any of what they’re saying, but I sure resent the fuck out of someone up on their high horse telling me what I should and shouldn’t think, and that if I don’t think the same exact way they do, then I’m wrong and need to be re-educated.
That, I think is what rubs people the wrong way, and what President Obama was warning against in his challenges of “woke” culture. It’s just like preachy obnoxious vegans; their points aren’t necessarily bad, but a lot of them are insufferable as fuck when they start making them.
TL;DR, it’s not what they’re saying that people object to, it’s how they go about saying it that pisses people off.
…can you give us any examples?
See, here’s the thing: I am not aware of anyone who self-identifies as “woke.” The only time I see “woke” come up is when bigots (usually racist, homophobic, transphobic) use it to conjure up some boogeyman, as “woke” itself has become.
Note that one cannot declare about oneself that one is “woke”, or not an asshole, or whatever. That is for others to judge…