Quit Litigating the "Definition of Woke"

We All Know the Context it's Being Used. There are Better Arguments to Make

Wake up all. Grab some coffee, sit up and listen up every newscaster, pundit, social commentator, far left protester, #MAGA nitwit, and self absorbed college students who claim to know everything.

We all know what the word “woke” means.

It’s a very basic verb. It’s one you teach kids before kindergarten even, a 4 year old knows the definition. In it’s most basic simplistic meaning, it’s “to arise from sleep, become alert and regain consciousness.” As in, “Johnny woke to the sound of birds outside,” or “I hadn’t woke yet until I had some coffee.” That’s it. Like I said, simple.

It’s also commonly used as a metaphor, to imply being made aware of something that before you didn’t know about. So for instance, in “The Shawhank Redemption” when the Warden rips off the poster of Raquel Welch from the wall, he awoke to the realization Andy Dufresne was smarter than he was and had been busy with his spare time in his cell.¹ The use of “woke” in this sense has been around for centuries.

The last five years the public have been barraged by competing versions of this word, not for what the word actually means but as an adjective tied to the metaphor. It’s enough to make Noah Webster “awaken,” crawl out of his grave, bang his head on his dictionary a thousand times, then crawl back into his grave and just go right back to an eternal slumber. It really is non-sensical the lengths to which both political extremes go to redefine what was already a pretty simple word. But that’s where we are.

Waking Up to How This Communication Kerfuffle Started

And where does this current verbal dumpster fire begin? As with all things, it began with good intentions. It started primarily with the George Floyd death and secondarily the #MeToo movement.² These two events erupted largely one on top of the other, and sparked a strong social justice movement. In the immediate aftermath to the Floyd killing, “woke” was used to describe the growing awareness of social injustices, primarily associated with race, and the need to correct them. The revelations of what occured with Harvey Weinstein and by other famous men by the #MeToo movement compounded it not just as a racial component, but as a sexual one as well. “Woke” in this sense was clearly a metaphor meant to describe America “waking up” to some of its past wrongs and oversights, and working to correct them. As a result, “woke” becomes a reductive shorthand to group all growing awareness of the need for social justice reform. So far, so good.

Inherent in that view is a sense of narcissism and condescension, as if “woke” were a synonym for “enlightened” and “intelligent” and to disgree with the extent, degree or manner in which this was advocated was logically “ignorant,” “unintelligent” and “stupid.” As social justice advocates become more aggressive and obstinant in their actions, politically steamrolling opposition (it becomes either a “You are with us or against us” kind of thing, and some positions brought some pause to non-advocates, such as initial efforts to Defund the Police), and as some positions become absurd, such as the removal of Abraham Lincoln statues and the removal of George Washington’s name from an Elementary school, some corners of the electorate got resentful. This is how the backlash begins and how it becomes so pervasive.

“Woke” then becomes used in an ironic way; as an adjective for the smarmy, condescending, arrogant, social engineering left and used to smear the right’s political opposition. This is when the most hard left aspects of social justice advocacy (Critical Race Theory, reparations, transgenderism, etc.) get held up as the NORM for what the now “woke left” demands. Every cultural issue the right disagrees with gets bundled into an “anti-woke” message. The backlash grows in size and the word “woke” becomes a perjorative with which to tar the entire left.

…And Where the Political Marketing Gurus Go Wrong.

To me, up until this point, everything makes sense. I get it. Agree or disagree with either side, I get why “woke” was adopted to describe the growing awareness (it was an apt metaphor) and I get why “woke” fueled a backlash and the reasons why the very particular groups fueled it. But as with all great marketing that gets faddish and then runs the cycle to the point it gets passe, the original advocates just choose to redefine it AGAIN as if the problem were just branding. And this is where it all goes askew.

They’re answer to the backlash; just say “That’s not what ‘woke’ means.”

As if they own what “woke” means.³ Ugh.

First off, in this entire context, both sides used it as a metaphor and eventually as an adjective; to argue that’s not what it means is just being intentionally obtuse as if we’re all idiots. It’s like telling your mother she’s “a fine wine,” having her initially think it means “growing better with age,” finding out you mean “bitter and turning to vinegar” and then when getting caught you reply “That’s not what ‘wine’ means.” It’s stupid on a whole another level.

But what really irritated me is that in no less than one hour watching morning news and scrolling around online this week, I saw four different individuals all use this to dismiss Republican mentions of “wokeness.” It was as if they all got the DNC memo that this was an effective strategy to deflect. News flash: It’s not. People know what it means and how its been used. It comes across as arrogant and condescending to then tell them they are wrong, the same affect that initiated the backlash to begin with.

What was worse is that each of the four then followed the statement up with a completely different and inconstent definition of what was being referenced when someone said “woke.” And of course, the examples they gave didn’t have to do with the actual definition, they were just using “woke” in different examples of the same metaphor that’ve been used forever.

But here’s the thing. WE ALL KNOW WHAT WOKE MEANS. Trying to redefine it won’t work now that it has baggage associated with it. I get why they would want to try and give it a more positive spin, but in truth, every cynical attempt in this regard just feeds into the perception framed by the backlash. I mean, you’d think when “Defund the Police” backfired spectacularly, and the left adjusted to a more pro-police stance that they would’ve gotten the hint that they had taken this a little too far. It may be time to abandon the verbal linguistics and just focus on, you know, policy.

And quit using the word “Woke.”

PurpleAmerica’s Recommended Stories

I appreciate John McWhorter a lot. His background is in linguistics and how people use words. He has been an opponent of how many of the social justice aspects of the left have taken on a dogma that is almost religious in nature. Indeed, talking with liberal friends, I am almost flabbergasted at how there is usually this typical statement and the reply by other liberals feels like the kyrie and call at a church ceremony, as if there is a programmed response. His most recent book was “Woke Racism.” To be honest, he made a lot of really great points in it but he may have went a little overboard with the comparison. Nonetheless, it’s worth your perusal.

https://www.amazon.com/Woke-Racism-Religion-Betrayed-America/dp/0593423062

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner, Part I

One of my favorite movies is Reservoir Dogs. Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece is minimal, violent, contains some super sharp dialogue and all the acting is top notch.

You may be wondering why I am bringing this up on this post. Well, I’ve been thinking about how up in arms the anti-woke mob for no good reason all got about Disney casting a black Ariel for The Little Mermaid.⁴ What is really odd is how they said none of this would have come about had there not been “Wokism,” to which I wholeheartedly disagree. Diversity, particularly in presentation is a good thing. You see, they need to become aware of some of the other instances where changing gender or race has a profound positive impact well before “woke” became a phenomenon.

• In “The Shawshank Redemption,” Morgan Freeman’s character “Red” was written by Stephen King to be Irish. In the movie, when Tim Robbins asks why do people call him Red, he responds “Maybe its because I’m Irish,” which is both a nod to the way it was written in the book and a great laugh out loud line by Freeman.

• Of course, there’s Hamilton which made its debut in 2015, long before Floyd and MeToo and “wokism” became a thing. Switching racial parts to POC actors playing our founding fathers put them in a modern context and went with the modern music that made up the musical.⁵ How the actors sing and personify their characters totally embody the character of our founders, and demonstrate how different they were from one another. It was a work of genius and has done more to spark interest in America’s founding fathers and the American Revolution in memory.

But for my money, the best I’ve seen in different contexts was a change to Reservoir Dogs. You see the actors are all white men in the film, which allows people at table reads and small productions to play with minor changes that demonstrate profound results. For instance, I once saw a version of this as a play at the Jungle Theater in Minneapolis in the early 2000s where all the parts were played by women. It made that Madonna speech at the beginning kind of accentuated (and humorous in a different way), and the characters seemed more sharply drawn, with their differences played up more. All in all it was very well done. Pink complaining about waitresses having to live off tips too shows a certain indignation; kind of a lack of kinship with her fellow women who just don’t hustle for a better living. Here is another version with the same concept by a small Australian production company called “Reservoir Cats.” You can see the similarities and where it seems different.⁶

I once saw a table read of Reservoir Dogs with actors who were black and/or muslim. They were encouraged to improvise small sets of dialogue as well; getting back to the Madonna monologue, the reactions of the more macho men contrast strongly with the muslims who view it as offensive and one starts praying/singing with his fingers in his ears. The result was that it seemed more confrontational (a lot more posturing and inflection with voices; what can I say, there’s not much you can do with a table read) and animated, and different, not what you typically see at a table read.

The point is, yeah, representation matters and you’ll see different things with different actors and different styles. It’s a positive thing. And unavoidable.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner, Part II

Let’s talk about really “being woke.” And by that, I mean the 1990 film “Awakenings” starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro, based on the book chronicling the experiences of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

In this sense, the awakening is both literal and figurative. Dr. Sacks worked at a psychiatric facility where many of the patients were comatose or completely non-responsive. He tried a relatively high dosage of a strong narcotic to surprising results. The patients came out from their slumbers and began realizing the world around them. Dr. Sacks was played by Robin Williams.

Unfortunately, there were side effects to the drug. Patients developed a resistance requiring them to up the dosage further. The patients then became irritable and angry and confrontational.

It’s a great movie that demonstrates sometimes the best of intentions can go sideways.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

Like what you are seeing here at PurpleAmerica? Share and Comment. Let your friends and family know! Forward us topics you’d like us to discuss! It’s am open community here.

Footnotes

1. The classic “a-ha” film moment is synonymous with awakening. It’s Chazz Palmentieri realizing who Keyser Soze is. It’s Neo taking the pill and wakening in a hellish landscape where people are used for energy. It’s seeing Norman Bates in a dress and wig and realizing there is no “mother” (or more to the point, she’s dead and stuffed down in the basement). The realization where before there was nothing there that was unknown and you were unaware of, and now there is acute knowledge, that’s the essence of awakening.

2. Before I go further I have to state, yes, I am aware the word was used in metaphorical contexts as an adjective before the protests erupted. What I am saying is that the spike in usage of the word, the amplification of that meaning, along with the backlash started around that point in time.

3. I really object to the notion that people can take ownership of words, especially after they use them that way. It’s an issue I talk about here.

The four were Bakari Sellers, W. Kamau Bell, Elie Mystal and Hakeem Jeffries.

4. Hailee Bailey, the young actress is the best thing about it. She’s charming, beautiful, fun and a delight. The rest of the film though, meh. The Little Mermaid itself as a story has always been kind of blah for various reasons.

5. Notice the difference when one of the few white actors sings as the King of England, when he sings he’s doing it to a 1960’s kind of love ballad, dated and corny.

6. I read on the IMDB page that instead of cutting off the ear of the cop, the actress cuts off the piece of the cop’s breast.