The Definition of Woke

[Landslide Lyndon]

Not so easy it seems.

https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1635991176367988737

[longtimelurker]

Not so easy it seems.

https://twitter.com/notcapnamerica/status/1635991176367988737

It took me five seconds to do a search and find out that the concept was originated by Marcus Garvey in 1923.  In 1938 Leadbelly used the word "woke" in a song about the Scottsboro boys.  It means "aware."  Duh.

It is not difficult to define woke.  It's that racists are profoundly stupid.  Period.  Full stop.

[Trump Is A Maoist]

My (hot?) take on this:

"Woke", in the last decade(ish), has changed meaning. For most people who aren't hardcore social justice warriors, "woke" used to be a good thing in the early days of Obama, and meant you had a better than average understanding of the injustices in our society and their causes. Now, "woke" is usually used in a negative way, and seems to be a short-form way of saying "TOO woke". You're TOO aware and focused on the injustices and their causes, to the point where you end up off the rails and disconnected from "the good fight".

So there's the normal-woke people (progressives on social issues who we no longer call "woke") and the too-woke people (who we now call "woke"), and both of them are too woke for right wingers, because both of those groups are fighting for progress, and right wingers are fighting against progress. It makes sense to me that some right wingers would view mild stuff like teaching kids about slavery and Jim Crow in school as "(too) woke (for our liking)".

Then you take that, and add in the right wing media and pundits trying to weaponize the word politically, and you get our current situation.

[Joe Kakistocracy]

Conservatives just replaced their usage of "politically correct" with "woke".  Their definitions are functionally the same.

Plus, conveniently for them, the new term has only one syllable, making it much easier for them to successfully say without messing up.

[Mercenary]

Extreme social liberal that confuses acceptance of things they want to accept with "open minded" oven though acceptance or rejection of an idea in of itself has nothing to do with being open minded. You can be liberal, moderate or conservative amd be open or close minded. It is just the current way to say "sjw" which just means extremely "liberal" on social issue. Of course then we have to define "liberal". But its kind of dumb because, like sjw" its a term that extreme liberals originally called themselves that if you think about it actually sounds like a good thing, really just called them extremists instead. But its not about identification of or degree of an ideology, its a poor attenpt and a perjorative.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Extreme social liberal that confuses acceptance of things they want to accept with "open minded" oven though acceptance or rejection of an idea in of itself has nothing to do with being open minded. You can be liberal, moderate or conservative amd be open or close minded. It is just the current way to say "sjw" which just means extremely "liberal" on social issue. Of course then we have to define "liberal". But its kind of dumb because, like sjw" its a term that extreme liberals originally called themselves that if you think about it actually sounds like a good thing, really just called them extremists instead. But its not about identification of or degree of an ideology, its a poor attenpt and a perjorative.

Yeah I always preferred the term SJW, which fit better.

[BlueSwan]

"Woke", in the last decade(ish), has changed meaning. For most people who aren't hardcore social justice warriors, "woke" used to be a good thing in the early days of Obama, and meant you had a better than average understanding of the injustices in our society and their causes. Now, "woke" is usually used in a negative way, and seems to be a short-form way of saying "TOO woke". You're TOO aware and focused on the injustices and their causes, to the point where you end up off the rails and disconnected from "the good fight".

Absolutely.

I used to consider myself "woke" back then, because I absolutely believe that structural discrimination exists and I absolutely believe that we should strive towards inclusion and equality. But today I can no longer call myself "woke" because it is closely associated with some bonkers borderline authoritarian beliefs.

[afleitch]

"Woke", in the last decade(ish), has changed meaning. For most people who aren't hardcore social justice warriors, "woke" used to be a good thing in the early days of Obama, and meant you had a better than average understanding of the injustices in our society and their causes. Now, "woke" is usually used in a negative way, and seems to be a short-form way of saying "TOO woke". You're TOO aware and focused on the injustices and their causes, to the point where you end up off the rails and disconnected from "the good fight".

Absolutely.

I used to consider myself "woke" back then, because I absolutely believe that structural discrimination exists and I absolutely believe that we should strive towards inclusion and equality. But today I can no longer call myself "woke" because it is closely associated with some bonkers borderline authoritarian beliefs.

Every ideology has a 'bonkers' wing. Christians still call themselves Christians even if the worst people in the world use the term. Socialists, conservatives etc do so too

You probably don't use it because you've given in to others defining it as a negative term.

[หมูเด้ง]

To me “woke” simply means that you are cognizant of the actual state of society and reject
believing some folklorized version of it where it’s very existence is it’s own justification. I think it’s a good thing as I subscribe to Thurmond Arnold’s analysis of society and “legal realism”.

People to the left of me believe “woke” means that there is a universal need for a normative analysis about how society operates, even if society would lose its ability to function as a result. At least this is how the people to the right of me describe that is the way people to the left of think about “woke”.


People to the right of me think that “woke” just means any new or relatively modern demand upon them from society that they believe is inconvenient to them.

[For Trump, everything. For immigrants, the law]

"Thing I don't like, but I'm also grateful for its existence since I can use it constantly to score political points and show how much smarter I am than my opponents."

[Del Tachi]

Conservatives just replaced their usage of "politically correct" with "woke".  Their definitions are functionally the same.

The terms obviously mean different things.  Liberals never positively referred to themselves as "PC", for starters.

Being politically correct was a late-20th century language game premised (mostly) around removing overly gendered or racialized language (i.e., "firemen" became "firefighters.")  It mainly was a top-down effort by corporate HR departments to make language more inclusive.  Nobody really thought it was sincere, which is why everyone from Seinfeld to Shania Twain was able to poke fun at it.    

"Woke" describes active subscription to an ideology of systemic racial injustice, which is something political correctness never required.  PC is about how you talk/behave, while woke is what you believe.      

[Torie]

Why bother with Rorschach  ink blots when you can just use a four letter word to see what's under the hood projecting out?

[You are responsible]

[Vosem]

Wokism -- here defined as "authoritarian post-Civil Rights Era politics motivated by the belief that differences between outcomes for median individuals of different races/genders/ethnic groups/very occasionally classes are caused primarily by hostile individuals or practices in the government or the public" -- has essentially always conceived of itself as the ideology of a majority of society, of most civil servants, and of essentially all decent people.

I could probably make this definition punchier and it's vague in the sense that conservative/liberal/socialist/fascist can all mean sort of different things to different people, but I think there is a perfectly clear-cut definition, and this is what people mean when they say 'woke'.

[Ferguson97]

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni**er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni**er, ni**er.”

When conservatives start using terms like "woke" pejoratively or "groomer" to describe someone who is accepting of trans kids, for a lot of them, that's their way of saying words like the n-word, f*g, etc. without actually saying those words. Others are just using it as a substitute for "politically correct".

Coming out with a concrete definition of "woke" is against their interests. Keeping it vaguely-defined allows the listener to define it as they desire. This way it can cover anything and everything in-between "I oppose affirmative action" and "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

[Vosem]

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er.” By 1968 you can’t say “ni**er”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ni**er, ni**er.”

When conservatives start using terms like "woke" pejoratively or "groomer" to describe someone who is accepting of trans kids, for a lot of them, that's their way of saying words like the n-word, f*g, etc. without actually saying those words. Others are just using it as a substitute for "politically correct".

Coming out with a concrete definition of "woke" is against their interests. Keeping it vaguely-defined allows the listener to define it as they desire. This way it can cover anything and everything in-between "I oppose affirmative action" and "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

Thank you for posting the quote at the top, because an easier way to put it than my quote from a year ago is that 'woke' is accepting your quote as true, and anti-woke is thinking that it's false (or even nonsensical, something which starts from premises so flawed that it's 'not even wrong'). I posted in 2022 that people who think this way are generally convinced that they form a majority of society, but that events in the COVID era had made this belief untenable; I think you probably still feel that way, though.

[Frodo]

'Wokeism' is like porn, it seems -you know it when you see it.  

Just like the 'Critical Race Theory'. 

[Blue3]

The DeSantis definition was funny:

Asked what “woke” means more generally, [Desantis’ General Counsel Ryan] Newman said “it would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

[You are responsible]

The DeSantis definition was funny:

Asked what “woke” means more generally, [Desantis’ General Counsel Ryan] Newman said “it would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

So, by definition DeSantis either believes that there are no systemic injustices or that there is no need to address them.

[Wrong about 2024 Ghost]

https://wandering.shop/@rodhilton@mastodon.social/110034311000192930

They can define it. They choose not to because that allows it to be a substitute word for whatever bigotry the listener harbors.

To a racist, "woke" means black. For a homophobe, "woke" means gay. Transphobes see "woke" as anything pro-trans. Sexists and incels hear women. It's the perfect catch-all fill-in-the-blank for the right.

[Orwell]

https://wandering.shop/@rodhilton@mastodon.social/110034311000192930

They can define it. They choose not to because that allows it to be a substitute word for whatever bigotry the listener harbors.

To a racist, "woke" means black. For a homophobe, "woke" means gay. Transphobes see "woke" as anything pro-trans. Sexists and incels hear women. It's the perfect catch-all fill-in-the-blank for the right.

Couldn’t sexists see it as men or women? Sexism isn’t just something for men. Misandry exists.

[Vosem]

The DeSantis definition was funny:

Asked what “woke” means more generally, [Desantis’ General Counsel Ryan] Newman said “it would be the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

So, by definition DeSantis either believes that there are no systemic injustices or that there is no need to address them.

It is a pretty standard Republican Party position that there are not systemic injustices; I don't think Newman is really breaking new ground here.

https://twitter.com/ZachG932/status/1636235375277404162

[DrScholl]

It's an evolution of every term used to disparage anyone who is against antiquated thinking and bigotry. Martin Luther King Jr. was labeled a communist for merely fighting for civil rights. Go all the way back to 1865 and Abraham Lincoln was considered radical by many for being against slavery (and it's not like he was even pro-Black).