#woke – A little history lesson!
I read some well-meaning but ignorant and rather wrong comment on what ‘woke’ meant (all about being caring, apparently! 🙄)
I did a quick search to find the latest meanings tagged to it. The word ‘interpretted’ comes to mind (in negative sense)
(It encompasses)
Enlightened: a deeper understanding and acceptance of diverse perspectives.
Politically correctness: Being careful to avoid language or actions that could be seen as offensive or discriminatory, but it can also be used pejoratively.
Socially conscious: emphasising the importance of understanding and addressing social issues.
Mindful of social justice: having a concern for fairness and equality. 
That may might be what it means – now – but is nothing like what it originated as! Nope. That is not what it originally meant at all! From my past research, it was more like this:
‘Stay woke’ originated in or around the 1930’s in Black American communties and meant: “stay awake, stay wary, stay cautious, stay vigilant. Be safe out there!”
(Wikipedia offers other, additional variations, but mine was a deep dive into academic papers, so it’s solid, I believe. Other sources vary wildly!)
OYE! That’s our word!
I lost the link to the tweet, but I recall how angry one (black) guy was that folk had stolen their word.
Sixty years earlier, another black writer was commenting about the same issue:
Harlem-based writer William Melvin Kelley, who was highlighting the phenomenon of Black American slang being appropriated by white people who often missed or altogether distorted the words’ original meanings, until the idioms were taken over, inevitably transformed, and ultimately abandoned by their original Black creators.
Legal Defense Fund: How Woke Went From “Black” to “Bad”
So, like other Black American specific terms, ‘woke’ was hijacked and twisted out of shape some years back and, if I recall, ambushed Western cultures in its new form around 2014.
It’s been a shit show ever since!
According to Merriam Webster:
it originated in African American (correct)
and gained more widespread use (misunderstood)
beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement (which was a scam anyway)
According to ABC news though, the definition of “woke” changes depending on who you ask.
My recollection is hazy now, but past research firmly pointed to late 1920s, early 1930’s, spreading from Georgia (1927?) and had more to do with avoiding the KKK and other homocidal racists than more modern political interpretations of oppression.
Given such a far more threatening origin, you can understand how some people might be offended that it was taken by white folk (and BLM grifters) a century later and twisted into cancel culture for the easily offended.
RAGE! 😠 ‘You got my pronoun wrong! I’m so offended! You need to be woke!’ 😠
In contrast, I don’t need to paint you a picture of the grim reality of an area like the deep South at the turn of the last century…
There’s an interesting and quite famous book called ‘Black like me‘. The author (John Howard Griffin) wanted a deeper insight into racism and, in 1959, when all in. Dyed himself black, possibly with henna (not something you could just wash off) and – regretted it! That’s not entirely correct, as it was an intellectual exercise and he got a classic, widely respected book out of it, but… it wasn’t as much fun as he thought it would be. (‘Black like me’ on Amazon)
ANYWAY
The touchy-feely, self-congratulating definition the person was referring to is intersectionality, (which was actually originally a mathematical term). But actually not even that, because, it was violated by the left!
Intersectionality in sociology terms was first used by Crenshaw in 1989.
In a paper on Black women’s oppression in America via the legal system, she describes it as ‘multi-burden’.
It refers to endemic and institutional legal, political and social discrimination of minority groups by those in a position of power and privilege.
Specifically women, and more specifically black women.
And it particularly noted pay differences as a measure of worth.
To Crenshaw’s dismay (reported in 2017) it was hijacked and repackaged as #woke, its meaning extended to included class, race, age, gender. It now includes other targets of oppression, differentiation and othering, such as abilities and disabilities, citizenship, religion and other targetable forms of identity.
And since the lockdown it has been amped up on steroids.
The virtue-signalling DEI proud left, patting themselves on the back for being “woke”, were drip fed a lie and are too dumb to see it!
It is particularly ironic that it was twisted to such as extent that ‘white privilege’ become a slur, othering of white working class allowable as fair, deserving targets of virtue-signallers ire, and it automatically slapped “the far-right” to anyone left of Stalin and Marx. All because ‘global majority’.
It’s coming to something when even the likes of the Guardian, elements of the BBC, George Galloway, and Jeremy Corbyn are now starting to look in horror at the Labour party!
If you are white you automatic have ‘white privilege’ because you are the majority, you bigot.
But if you are not white and are from the ‘global majority’, then you are the underdog and should be given every DEI opportunity.
– That hardly seems fair, does it.
It’s particularly noteworthy that the very worst offenders of this white, working class hating culture are white, well-to-do middle and upper middles classes on the left.
In the paper I wrote, I finished off this, below. You might want to pay particular note to the second quote, by Hall:
“A dichotomous system of mass control pursed by those who may be considered the ‘ruling elite’, by rich and powerful individuals and corporations that control and own the media, lobby government, driving a wedge between themselves and the greater populace” (Holman).
Those in power attach a “criminal label to the activities of groups which the authorities deem it necessary to control”. (Hall et al., (1978)
Links of interest
You might also like:
If you head over to Facebook, this video nails it: this pretty much explains today’s world. Also on youtube etc. Enjoy 😀
Cherry, K., Verywell Mind (2020), What is Othering?. How Othering Contributes to Discrimination and Prejudice.
The psychology behind us vs. them,
Coaston, J., (2019), Vox, The intersectionality wars
Crenshaw, Kimberle (1989), Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics, University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989, Article 8.
Crenshaw, K., (et al.), (2017), Columbia Law School, Kimberlé Crenshaw on Intersectionality, More than Two Decades Later
Crosley-Corcoran, G., (n.d.), EXPLAINING WHITE PRIVILEGE TO A BROKE WHITE PERSON…
Duff, S., (2020), British Psychological Society, Experiences of otherness
Hall, Stuart et al (1979), Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (original as pdf) (35th ed 2013, Amazon)
Jones, S., (and agency), Guardian (2013), Great British Class Survey finds seven social classes in UK
Miller, M., (2018), Washington Examiner, Intersectionality for Dummies
Vossler, A. et al (Jun 2017) (ed), (Amazon): Mad or Bad? A Critical Approach to Counselling and Forensic Psychology
Wikipedia: Woke
Zevallos, Z., (2011), What is Otherness?
Feature image picture from Pixabay, by Sou Andre Santana
