I think if you want to have genuine discussions, you will probably have to get used to writing whole essays. Being accurate, critical, and fair in communication is hard work, and I’m not sure there’s actually a short cut. That’s why most discussions aren’t valuable – people don’t want to put the hard work into making them good.
And use a term that has a clear meaning. I mean let’s face it, the whole point of using “woke” as a snarl word is that it’s vague enough it can be applied to anything and mean anything. If somebody falsely calls something “communist” you can point out the ways it isn’t true, but how can you demonstrate that something isn’t “woke”? You might as well try defending against an accusation of having cooties.
Very useful when either the target has nothing actually objectionable about it, or when someone actually clearly stating the position they hold would get them in trouble.
This is why I kept asking DemonTree for a definition. Some words have clear, bright line definitions. Many have grey areas. “Woke” is almost entirely grey area. If we want to discuss whether ‘we should tone down the wokeness’, we need to agree what the term means first.
At the risk of being flagged as a threadshitter: this has become tiresome.
It seems very obvious that ‘woke’ means very different things to different people.
Which is why I think it’s not a very useful word.
Why don’t DocCathode and DemonTree take it to a private discussion?
One of the earliest uses of the phrase ‘stay woke’ was by Lead Belly in 1938 here.
This was in reference to the Scottsboro Boys. I guess the meaning of woke for the next almost 9 decades, before social media randos and then angry right-wingers got to it, was something like ‘be alert and understand you have a target on your back.’ It was used (almost exclusively, I assume) within the American Black community.
The first time I was exposed to it, and I imagine this to be true for a lot of other folks, was during the Women’s March in Jan 21, 2017 (as seen here – there’s a photo of a kid holding a sign saying “I [heart] naps but I stay woke.” ) I remember its usage spreading from 2017-2021 or so before it got appropriated as a snarl word.
I don’t know whether anyone actually cares about this, but I think it’s useful context.
ETA: I found an article that goes into more detail on how the term gained wider usage over time. Apparently, it got a big boost from Black Lives Matter after Ferguson in 2014, which makes sense.
Interesting… I always thought LeadBelly mostly played a 12-string guitar, but this sounds like a regular 6-string?
Off topic, but music is a much happier thing to talk about! Sorry for hijack, peace to all.
Because the word is used as a very vague, very public, very nasty and very public swear word by too many right-wingers, and this conversation should not be hidden away where it can be dismissed and/or denied.
I think they are talking past each other with no useful conclusion. I’m done with this thread.
Though I did participate a bit in the thread that gave rise to this one … I’d add one thing here.
On the Interwebs, writ large, you’ll find no end of social conservatives who – exposed to the word ‘homophobia --’ insist at the top of their lungs that they are “not afraid of gay people.”
To which my canned response was:
While I think some of you armchair etymologists are amazingly impressive, it’s easier, better, and more accurate just to grab a dictionary and look up the word “homophobia.”
I’d like to offer a couple of dictionary definitions, because – IMHO – they represent generally accepted usage within quite a few standard deviations of the mean:
A couple of these sources highlight how it has been co-opted by social conservatives as a textbook snarl word, as Fox News effectively admits here:
But just as Louisville isn’t the capital of Kentucky, no matter how many times Uncle Fred insists that it is, woke still means what it means.
It’s also similar to how one party began slurring the other by calling them the Democrat Party:
Language changes. That’s axiomatic. It shouldn’t change in an effort to create and weaponize snarl words, however.
So, if one Doper chooses to use “woke” by a definition wholly inconsistent with those provided above, that doesn’t obligate anybody else to accept that definition.
From ‘West Wing:’
Nobody need accept the enshittification of another perfectly reasonable word with its own admirable pedigree.
Whether or not this thread is useful, it is a microcosm of the “Democrats are too woke!” argument.
“Democrats lost because they were too woke!”
“Could you give me some specific examples from Democratic politicians?”
“Come on, man, you know what I mean.”
This. Learning American history through an anti-racist lens isn’t a totally painless experience if you are white (and probably if you are not, but for different reasons), but it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. I know because I’ve gone through it. Mr. Rogers once said “look for the helpers,” and it turns out you can do that when you study history, too. There have always been people in this nation who rejected hate and bigotry, and plenty of them were white. If you want to learn about some of them, this is a good resource:
That doesn’t even include one of my favorite spiritual ancestors, John Gregg Fee, who was a neighbor to some of my actual ancestors, but made better moral choices than they did.
It’s hard not to agree with somebody who quotes Mr Rogers.
So, this was interesting. If that’s really what you believe “woke” means, i understand why you oppose it. But… you are grossly misinterpreting, simplifying, and misunderstanding the positions you are trying to describe. Did someone say
Yeah.
To start…
That has always been the definition of privilege
Err, no one thinks that’s the only reason for those differences.
Hmm. That’s… an opinion. Surely you can see that these things work both ways?
Umm, again, a weird simplification viewed through a negative tint.
This is just a weird take. It feels like you slept through a DEI presentation and vaguely remember a few words here and there
Anyway, the rest gets even worse, but i doubt it’s worth waking through it bit by bit.
I tried using ‘progressive’ instead and had a bunch of people tell me that that isn’t what ‘progressive’ means, and I agree that it’s really a broader term. I’m literally asking you all here in this thread for a word you find acceptable to describe ideas like white privilege, intersectionality, and systemic racism, and not one person has given me one.
I don’t want to use ‘snarl words’ or offend anyone unnecessarily, but you have to actually tell me what you want this set of related ideas to be called!
Lol, appropriate typo for this thread. I meant “walking”, of course.
Intersectionality is understanding that people face challenges along different axes. So, a white person may have an advantage in a society like the US, but a blind white person or trans white person is probably worse off than a straight rich Black person, even if that rich Black person is still going to be hassled more by the cops. It has nothing at all to do with white privilege or systemic racism. I guess bigotry could be used as an umbrella term for those two? Why not just use those terms?
Systemic racism exists. White privilege exists. The positive definition of woke is being aware of those things and trying to do better, I guess.
It also is meant to remind people that someone who has challenges along multiple axes might have issues that they wouldn’t have with any one of those challenges. For instance, a gay Mormon faces challenges that a straight Mormon doesn’t have, and that a gay person from a secular background doesn’t have.
Also, i think it’s unproductive to rank challenges, eg:
Being blind, being trans, and being Black all present different challenges, that will manifest in different situations.
Agreed an all points! My main point is that it has nothing to do with the other terms that the OP is trying to group together for some reason.
“Ideas.”
Or, if you you’re okay with more than one word, “white privilege, intersectionality, and systemic racism.”
Because it is completely untrue that intersectionality has nothing to do with white privilege or systemic racism. They are all ideas that have come to prominence in the last 20 years, are espoused by the same people, and share the feature of viewing people through the lens of the various identity groups they are part of. They are part of a common step away from seeing colourblindness as an ideal to strive for (though never as an achieved reality) on the part of progressives.
Additionally, if I try to use one of these ideas as shorthand for the collective, it is guaranteed that someone will step it to say ‘that’s not that it means’.
So what is the best term to use instead of ‘woke’?