DeBoer: Of Course You Know What Woke Means

Excellent substack column by Freddie deBoer, and a great rebuke to those who tendentiously claim that "woke" is a racially tinged slur:

[I]t's absurd that so many people pretend not to know what woke means, and the problem could be easily solved if people who support woke politics would adopt a name for others to use. No to woke, no to identity politics, no to political correctness, fine: PICK SOMETHING…

Woke is defined by several consistent attributes. Woke is

1. 1. Academic - the terminology of woke politics is an academic terminology, which is unsurprising given its origins in humanities departments of elite universities. Central to woke discourse is the substitution of older and less complicated versions of socially liberal perspectives with more willfully complex academic versions. So civil rights are out, "anti-racism" is in….
   2. Immaterial - woke politics are overwhelmingly concerned with the linguistic, the symbolic, and the emotional to the detriment of the material, the economic, and the real. Woke politics are famously obsessive about language, developing literal language policies that are endlessly long and exacting….
   3. Structural in analysis, individual in action - the woke perspective is one that tends to see the world's problems as structural in nature rather than the product of individual actors or actions. Sometimes the problems are misdiagnosed or exaggerated, but the structural focus is beneficial….
   4. Emotionalist - "emotionalist" rather than emotional, meaning not necessarily inappropriately emotional but concerned fundamentally with emotions as the currency of politics. In woke circles, political problems are regularly diagnosed as a matter of the wrong emotions being inspired in someone….
   5. Fatalistic - woke politics tend towards extreme fatalism regarding solutions and the possibility of gradual positive political change. Institutions are all corrupt and bigoted, so institutions cannot prompt change. Most people are irredeemably racist, and so the masses cannot create a just society….
   6. Insistent that all political questions are easy - woke people speak and act as though there are no hard political questions and no such thing as a moral dilemma. Everything is obvious if you've only done the reading and done the work, which woke people assure you they did long ago….
   7. Possessed of belief in the superior virtue of the oppressed….

Comments

[Mr. Bumble]

The title of the linked Pick Something article says it all.
Don't expect an answer to be forthcoming.

[SimonP]

Well, this is amusing. A woke-ish explanation of wokeism. David posts: "Yes! This is why I hate wokeism!" What a whiff.

I'll believe that the right uses "woke" as something other than a racial epithet when they start using it like it's defined here. Meatball Ron certainly wasn't trying to explain Silicon Valley Bank's failure as due to their focus on the "symbolic" over the "real," etc.

[David Bernstein]

It's strange for you to put in quotation marks something that's not only not a quotation, but not even a paraphrase, but something you merely surmise.

[SimonP]

It's strange that your response amounts to a mere editorial nit-pick, rather than a denial that I'd accurately interpreted your meaning.

This isn't a law journal, David. It's the internet. FTFY is a widespread and long-accepted means of mocking someone else online.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Hilariously he’s used the excuse of “it’s just the internet” to defend himself for a poorly sourced post before.

[SimonP]

David has a talent for not picking the fights he knows he can't win.

[Bored Lawyer]

"a racial epithet "

You don't know what racial means, do you?

[SimonP]

No, obviously not, why don't you explain.

[David Nieporent]

No, obviously not, why don’t you explain.

It requires a reference to race. I know some people claim that the word "woke" originated in the black community, but even if that's true it has lost any such signifier long ago. The right uses it as an umbrella descriptor for any identity politics stuff — race, sexual orientation, "gender," religion, etc.

[Nige]

It can also be homophobic, transphobic and misogynyst, in fairness.

[Ridgeway]

And if you define those terms as encompassing anything that does not rigidly adhere to progressive dogma (as updated from day to day), I agree!

[Nige]

Yes, if you invent a ridiculous and inaccurate definition of things to obscure the reality you get, well, the current bullshit about ‘woke.’

[Martinned]

Woke is the right's "neoliberal". It's been ages since anyone has used this term to describe themselves. Instead, it's used by people who want to criticise something they're too lazy to define.

[MaddogEngineer]

It certainly looks like an attempt to define woke has been made in this post…so why do you accuse someone of being “too lazy” to define?

This is like the CRT 5 step progression:
1. That’s not actually CRT being advocated for (in the workplace, schools, etc)
2. CRT isn’t the negative it’s critics make it out to be, there’s nothing wrong with it being taught
3. CRT education should be mandated
4. It’s racist that CRT isn’t being be taught/pushed
5. CRT ends up being mandated

[SimonP]

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that DeBoer is purporting to define what conservatives mean by "woke." He is a fellow-traveler, defining "woke" from within the progressive left, critically but not antagonistically.

I know, that's hard to glean. I'm sure that David thinks that much of what's described here as "woke" condemns the movement, and expects readers like you to have that takeaway. He's also excised a lot of DeBoer's basic criticism of wokeism, which has less to do with its goals than its lack of efficacy. DeBoer's critique is, in my view, basically right, though he doesn't connect it with the fact that wokeism's elite, symbolic, individualistic focus is, in an ironic way, tied to the very white patriarchal supremacist capitalism that the "woke" purport to oppose.

But - setting that aside - none of what DeBoer describes as "woke" is the apparent reason that right-wing politicians oppose it. DeSantis is not talking about DEI initiatives at Silicon Valley Bank because he believes that DEI initiatives distract from the much harder work of structural economic reform, enabling SVB to overextend itself on a niche strategy that collapsed when interest rates were hiked (in order to trigger a surge in unemployment). No, he just means that SVB cared too much about Black people and promoted too many incompetent people, in service of "diversity," to run the bank.

[EscherEnigma]

"not antagonistically"?

So, you didn't read the linked article.

[SimonP]

I did read it. Here's how DeBoer closes it out:

I’d rather woke politics win than conservatism. But I’d rather have a friendly forgiving plainspoken big tent civil libertarian socialist mass movement, personally. Trouble is, there is only woke and anti-woke. There is no escape.

Like I said. Critical, but not antagonistic. He disagrees with wokeism, but he's on the same side with where they want to go.

[EscherEnigma]

So, you don't know what "antagonistically" means then.

[SimonP]

No, I'm confident that I know what the term means, and that my usage is appropriate for the sort of distinction I'm trying to draw.

If you think another word would work better - who cares?

Do you have anything to say?

[EscherEnigma]

If you don't care that you're using the wrong word, then I suppose no, I have nothing to say to you here.

[SimonP]

I didn't think so.

[Nige]

I dunno, his definitions are a mess and honestly kind of lazy, he only veers close once to what woke originally meant to the people who actually used it, and for ‘woke’ people themselves it’s still what it means, even if they don’t use it to describe themselves any more - and actually, 'woke' was a kind of wry slang accolade awarded to others, not something anyone used to self-describe.

[EscherEnigma]

So I’m guessing this is a response to that interview with Robby Soave and the one author where they kept saying “woke”, and when the interviewer asked them to define it they completely floundered?

If so, then this definition is irrelevant. This is an academic definition, and I’ll grant that within academia it might be accurate†. But when used outside of academia, it’s obviously not. And the way conservatives have been using it, it is definitely a slur, though this is literally the only place I’ve personally heard it called a “racial slur”.
________
†I have the most severe of doubts, but that's not important to my point so lets move on.

[LawTalkingGuy]

I think it’s Briahna Joy Gray‘a interview with bethany mandel

[Artifex]

Of course it will be ill defined. Its origin is a term young progressive activists used to describe themselves which was then grabbed by the NPR crowd. Such people are not known for their deep intellect and insightful commentary.

It became a joke and a slur simply because the folks that used it became jokes and points of derision. In modern conversation, if you assume it means "The hypocritical and ignorant lackwits who previously referred to themselves as woke", you won't go far from the truth.

[Nige]

No, it wasn't young progressive activists, it was a word black people used to describe others.

[CJColucci]

To be fair, you'd have to know actual black people to know that.

[Nige]

Not even personally, they write stuff and put it up where everyone can read it all the time.

[LawTalkingGuy]

How do you explain this tweet?

https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1624914215743148034?s=46&t=swfuX8A13L7H9PAYSakPtA

She singled out the white performer as non-Woke despite him being a BLM supporter in contrast to the other mostly black performers?

Or how do you explain this usage?

https://gizmodo.com/little-mermaid-halle-bailey-ariel-twitter-white-ban-1849535257

The “woke” actress was replaced with a white version by this user and it got thousands of likes. Has no clue about her personal beliefs but she’s “woke”

And I can’t find it but there was also a tweet that got lots of likes where a Star Wars series was “woke.” The only thing he knew about it was the promotional still that simply has a black woman on it. No idea about the character or plot or anything.

Plus PoC can recognize when white people are using code words for anti-blackness. They’ve been doing it since forever.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Another good example: people claiming that LOTR Rings of Power is now “woke” after seeing the trailer. Why is an adaptation of material from the Silmarillion and the Legendarium “woke” based only on trailers. The only thing different from the movies is…there were more PoC in the cast.

Here's a Washington Examiner columnist of all people figuring out this usage of "woke"

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/no-the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-isnt-woke

[Michael P]

How would you describe a television series that race-swaps characters in biologically implausible, racialism-driven, black-is-better-than-white, the-source-is-wrong ways? How many dwarves need melanin to protect their skin from sunburn, deep in the mines of Moria?

[Nige]

For fuck's sake, you think living near balrogs had no effect?

[LawTalkingGuy]

Biologically implausible? They're fucking elves and hobbits you absolute dipshit.

[EscherEnigma]

Let's see... In order: it's fantasy, assuming the premise, assuming the premise, re-imagining source material is the entire point of adaptations, and doesn't matter (it's fantasy).

[Magister]

Not relevant, but I thought the series was based only on the original LOTR trilogy (and its appendices), not the Silmarillion.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Right. Fair point. The downfall of Numenor is told in Akallabêth which is the fourth section of the Silmarillion, but I guess technically that stuff is in the LOTR Appendices and referenced in the main story. So I suppose it can only be based on that.

[Michael P]

Where did MTG define Stapleton as non-Woke?

How would you define a character that was race-swapped in a biologically implausible, racialism-driven, black-is-better-than-white way? (How many fish need melanin to protect their skin from sunburn, deep "Under The Sea"?)

[Nige]

Did you just use 'biologically implausible' in relation to a mermaid?

[LawTalkingGuy]

"Chris Stapleton just sang the most beautiful national anthem at the Super Bowl.

But we could have gone without the rest of the wokeness."

MTG. she is obviously contrasting Chris to "wokeness." I mean if he's not part of "the rest of the wokeness" then he is not "woke" in her definition.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Biologically implausible? It's a fucking mermaid you absolute dipshit.

[LawTalkingGuy]

Also if we're using sunburn logic: why are so many Vulcans white? Vulcan is a desert planet.

[BrianL.]

Tuvok was black. Does that mean Voyager is "woke"?

[EscherEnigma]

In order... It's fantasy, assuming the premise, assumign the premise, and it's fantasy.

[David Nieporent]

How do you explain this tweet?

https://twitter.com/mtgreenee/status/1624914215743148034?s=46&t=swfuX8A13L7H9PAYSakPtA

She singled out the white performer as non-Woke despite him being a BLM supporter in contrast to the other mostly black performers?

"How do you explain" anything by MTG? The answer is virtually always brain damage.

But that's a weird misinterpretation of her tweet on your part. She wasn't saying that the singer was non-woke or that the other singers were woke; she was saying that the song was non-woke and the other songs were woke.

The “woke” actress was replaced with a white version by this user and it got thousands of likes. Has no clue about her personal beliefs but she’s “woke”

Again, no. The argument on the right wasn't that the actress was woke. The argument was that the casting was woke. It was an incredibly stupid thing to care about, but at least get it right.

(Though of course it was in response to the nationwide "It's so amazing and wonderful that they cast a black Ariel" p.r. tour after she was chosen.)

[bevis the lumberjack]

deBoer is asking for adherents to the philosophy/moveto tell him the correct name for it, which all of you defending it steadfastly refuse to do.

“I won’t tell you what to call me. What a fool you are for not knowing what to call me”. Woke logic, such as it exists…..

[EscherEnigma]

Me not telling y'all what to call me has never stopped you from insulting me before, so I'm not sure why you pretend this is a problem now.

For that matter, y'all actively attack the idea of calling people by their preferred names/terms/etc. as an attack on your dignity, so this is really a weird claim.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Who is this y’all you speak of? I’m not a y’all. I’m a me, although to you I’d be a you. Singular, you know.

[EscherEnigma]

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you had basic reading comprehension. See, from context you can conclude that I am lumping you specifically in with conservatives in general to point out that your demand is intellectually inconsistent with your past behavior regarding people telling you what they prefer to be called.

Which is to say, you are very much part of a y'all.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Y’all is an idiot if you think I’m a hard core conservative. And not paying attention.

But you’re one of those guys who thinks you’re smarter than everyone else, so whatever you think has to be absolutely right. We out here can’t see how you’d think that, but somehow you do.

But please, show where I’ve ever objected to calling someone by their preferred names/terms. I’ll wait. But you made the claim so be fucking sure to back it up. Prove it or admit you’re full of shit.

[EscherEnigma]

Y’all is an idiot if you think I’m a hard core conservative.

Once I finish a response to you, I stop thinking about you entirely. So no, I don't think you're a "hard core conservative": I don't think of you at all. Which is to say you are quite correct, I'm "not paying attention [to you]".

But you’re one of those guys who thinks you’re smarter than everyone else [...]

I really don't, and if you think I do... well then, I'm not the only one not paying attention.

But please, show where I’ve ever objected to calling someone by their preferred names/terms.

No.

First off, that's a ridiculous request. We all know that this comment section is a steaming pile of shit and is actively hostile to being used. Tracking a conversation for more then a day is difficult enough, trying to go back through a person's comments to figure out what they said that made you think they held a position? Damn-near impossible if you have anything else to do with your day, like watching paint dry. So I do apologize, but this is an absurd request.

Second off, I full accept that I may be "full of shit" and judged you wrongly. My only defense is that I judged you by the company you chose to keep.

[bevis the lumberjack]

It’s a ridiculous request because you can’t because it doesn’t exist.

You said it. Every post I’ve made is still around. Back it up or admit you’re just spreading your usual bulls hit.

Put up or shut the fuck up. Show us that you’re not completely fucking worthless.

And I don’t keep any company on here. Are you talking about the racist right wing guys. That’s company I keep….on mute.

[Leo Marvin]

I’ve tried and failed to find my own past comments, comments I know I left and the temporal vicinity in which I left them. I sympathize with the assertion that while proving someone’s position with their past comments is possible if you get lucky, as often as not it’s effectively impossible.

[Michael P]

Are you southern and/or Black? Or are you just intent on proving de Boer's final point?

[Aubrey LaVentana]

"y’all actively attack the idea of calling people by their preferred names/terms/etc. as an attack on your dignity"

No, someone's insistence that I address them in a way contrary to my upbringing and the surrounding society's arbitrary but harmless norms, in a way that implies my endorsement of abandoning those norms, is an attack on my speech.

Or did you miss deBoer's point: "overwhelmingly concerned with the linguistic, the symbolic, and the emotional to the detriment of the material, the economic, and the real. Woke politics are famously obsessive about language"?

[Super Scary]

"No, someone’s insistence that I address them in a way contrary to my upbringing and the surrounding society’s arbitrary but harmless norms, in a way that implies my endorsement of abandoning those norms, is an attack on my speech."

It certainly doesn't help that a common response to not addressing them properly is "YOU'RE KILLING US!"

[Nige]

‘which all of you defending it steadfastly refuse to do.’

Nobody is ‘woke’ any more, Bevis. The only ‘woke’ things and people are the ones labeled so by the right. Everyone who originally used ‘woke’ wouldn’t deploy it again except as extreme sarcasm.

[Super Scary]

Sort of like "Social Justice Warriors." That term fell right off as soon as it was regularly mocked by others.

[Nige]

It was always a term of mockery, it just became cringe when the right found out about it.

[Ben_]

"...the problem could be easily solved if people who support woke politics would adopt a name for others to use"

They'll never do that. They are far too reliant on subterfuge.

Antifa, for example, wears full face masks and they physically attack people who video them. And we all remember Democrat attacks against reporters in The Twitter Files hearings a couple weeks ago. They never want you to know what they're actually about.

[Rossami]

Those whining about how the label "woke" is being "misrepresented" and given negative connotations can just cry me a river. Those same folks had no compunctions about the negative connotations that were unjustly piled onto the TEA Party movement. (That movement was completely and entirely encapsulated in the name - Taxed Enough Already. It was an anti-tax movement, nothing less and nothing more.) Activists on both sides jumped on the bandwagon and turned it into a partisan fight about things that had nothing to do with taxes, along the way losing and eventually discrediting the original anti-tax purpose. Now the same thing is happening to "woke", "social justice", "CRT", etc. Boo hoo. You didn't speak up when the TEA Party movement was hijacked - now you've got no allies when your own favorite ox is being gored.

[EscherEnigma]

So, did you forget, or just never learn, that the TEA Party "movement" was a conservative astro-turf effort from the beginning?

[bevis the lumberjack]

Way to make his point.

[EscherEnigma]

So that's "never learn" for you then.

Here's the quick scoop: the TEA party was never "an anti-tax movement, nothing less and nothing more." It's first appearance was organized and promoted by GOP operatives, it was regularly propped up by GOP operatives, and so-on. That it was a conservative political movement aligned with the GOP was baked in from the start, with the GOP connections being deliberately obfuscated and hidden.

There is literally no point in the history of the TEA Party where it was "an anti-tax movement, nothing less and nothing more". If you believe that it was, then you are ignorant of it's history.

[Rossami]

Wow, for someone accusing others of being "ignorant of history", you are displaying an astonishing degree of ignorance yourself. You are flat out wrong. The original TEA Party movement was a backlash movement against mainstream conservatives who either tolerated or actively participated in expensive, expansive programs.

But here you are proving my point by trying to rewrite history with all your negative hijacking while simultaneously complaining when your political opponents are doing the same thing to your favored social policies.

[Nige]

'against mainstream conservatives who either tolerated or actively participated in expensive, expansive programs.'

Conveniently took off under Obama, though. Also, it was funded and supported by the GOP and right-wing donors.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

"was funded and supported by the GOP and right-wing donors."

and abandoned to wither, just as conveniently, when the movement made clear it would not serve them.

[Nige]

When Trump won.

[Aubrey LaVentana]

He won despite the organized GOP and right wing donors.

Was your point that Trump was instrumental in shutting TEA partiers down?

When TEA partiers found they had no traction with the old-guard formal party, their energy found another outlet.

[Nige]

They were always going to fade away under the next Republican president.

[Ed Grinberg]

Conveniently took off under Obama

Hmm, might the Obama administration have done something to set them off? Or did they just "hate the first black president!!!"?
from Wikipedia:
On February 18, 2009, the one-month old Obama administration announced the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, an economic recovery plan to help home owners avoid foreclosure by refinancing mortgages in the wake of the Great Recession. The next day, CNBC business news editor Rick Santelli criticized the Plan in a live broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. He said that those plans were "promoting bad behavior" by "subsidizing losers' mortgages". He suggested holding a tea party for traders to gather and dump the derivatives in the Chicago River on July 1. "President Obama, are you listening?" he asked. A number of the floor traders around him cheered on his proposal, to the amusement of the hosts in the studio. Santelli's "rant" became a viral video...

[Nige]

Yes, it was an entirely right wing polticial movement to oppose Obama's efforts to deal with the economic crash left on his plate by Republicans, not the thing Rossami said. Also, they hated Obama because he was black.

[EscherEnigma]

The first protest of the group that would become the Tea Party was a week earlier then that.

[Super Scary]

Good luck ever convincing a lefty that criticism for Obama is ever born out of something other than racism.

[EscherEnigma]

I mean, I know I was way too-plugged in in 2009/2010, but I thought that Freedomwork's involvement from the get-go was well-known.

Ah well. Look it up if you want to check your bias. Or keep ranting.

[Nige]

You might have a point if people were still calling right-wingers teabaggers and monstering them as a threat to all that’s good and holy and passing anti-teabagger laws. The Tea Party was an actual thing with mebers and parades and uniforms and widespread mainstream right wing political support and backing. 'Woke' was just a slang term black people used about white people they regarded as enlightened about race. CRT is just an elective course taught in some law schools. The way the right jumped on those terms and turned them into raving satanic monsters is kinda racist, to be honest.

[ReaderY]

Each side seems to be caricaturing its opposition by taking the most extreme example as representative. The extreme cases really exist, and every now and then they make news. But one of the difficulties is this like of argument is also one of the difficulties with news. Sensationalism, focusing on what shocks, entertains rather than informs. It riles people’s emotions and induces people to fight an enemy It tends to encourage people to see an enemy in every neighbor different from themselves.

It doesn’t help people make good decisions about living their lives, improve their society, or get along with their neighbors. All that requires a more measures approach that tries to understand what ones neighbor is saying, not an approach whose purpose is to increase ones power and influence outsiders are evil.

That is the way tyrants and demagogues build support within their own camp to crush, destroy, seize power, and impose rule. It is not the way a free, democratic society remains democratic and free.

[EscherEnigma]

Ron DeSantis is a caricature?

[Aubrey LaVentana]

Despite the foregoing, "I’d rather woke politics win than conservatism."

Will have to chew on that for some time.

[Mr. Hook]

The term has been so emptied of its original intent in its common usage by the right that I've started to embrace their perspective. As with the right, woke now means anything I don't like. Evangelical bigots? Can't stand that woke crowd. Anti-vaxers? Fucking woke idiots. Believers that the 2020 election was stolen? Bunch of woke loons. Russian dupes? More like Russian wokists! Reality tv shows? Turn off that woke crap.

[Nige]

‘which is unsurprising given its origins in humanities departments of elite universities.’

Not its origin. Not at all. Not remotely. This guy is shite.

‘Woke politics are famously obsessive about language’

No, people have been pointing out problems with language since the 1980s. That’s not what woke is.

‘the woke perspective is one that tends to see the world’s problems as structural in nature rather than the product of individual actors or actions’

Closer, but actually one does not preclude the other. It’s not either/or.

‘but concerned fundamentally with emotions as the currency of politics.’

Uh, no. You’ve wrapped a big blanket around a lot of things and many of them are still wrong. The people you refer to as ‘woke’ want structural changes and institutional reforms and, y’know, action on climate change. That they acknowledge that bad stuff takes an emotional toll is aslo true.

‘Institutions are all corrupt and bigoted, so institutions cannot prompt change. Most people are irredeemably racist, and so the masses cannot create a just society….’

Absolute steaming bullshit, this guy has either never talked to anyone from the subset of people he calls ‘woke’ or only to a very narrow sub-subset.

‘Insistent that all political questions are easy’

Jesus Christ, they’re just no more enamoured of political leaders making compromises or only going half measures than literally everybody else with a political agenda or ideology.

‘Possessed of belief in the superior virtue of the oppressed…’

See, this is the giveaway. Thinking supporting oppressed people and highlighting their problems and looking for solutions makes the oppressed ‘special,’ which apparently triggers the most churlish jealousy and resentment. They’re not. They’re just oppressed.

None of that is what woke means. None of it. All of them are merely examples of what the right-wing shibboleth they have constructed out of woke means to them. As the truism goes this says more about you than it does about ‘the woke.’

[Bubba Jones]

Was it your intent to illustrate his point?

[Nige]

Then he's a dim bulb indeed.

[Absaroka]

"All of them are merely examples of what the right-wing shibboleth they have constructed out of woke means to them."

FWIW, deBoer describes himself as "a Marxist of an old-school variety". Maybe that's considered right wing these days.

(I've read his stuff for a while; he frequently has interesting points even when I disagree with him. My memory was the word he used was 'communist', which not a lot of people do these days, but either my memory of google-fu is weak)

[Nige]

It's still the right-wing shibboleth he's talking about, not what 'woke' actually was when it was an actual thing. It's one thing for the right to knit these things out of bile, spite and lies, it's a whole other thing for everybody to demand people put the damn thing on.

[Bubba Jones]

WOKE HAS NEVER BEEN TRIED

PUBLIC ROADS ARE WOKE

[Bubba Jones]

Structural in analysis, individual in action—the woke perspective is one that tends to see the world’s problems as structural in nature rather than the product of individual actors or actions. Sometimes the problems are misdiagnosed or exaggerated, but the structural focus is beneficial….

I think this is the key observation, and the central contribution of “woke”.

Everything other complaint is just the typical “college know-it-all hippie.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3xz2ulWjxE

[Ed Grinberg]

I’d rather woke politics win than conservatism. But I’d rather have a friendly forgiving plainspoken big tent civil libertarian socialist mass movement, personally. Trouble is, there is only woke and anti-woke. There is no escape.

As I said the other day, you can call yourself “liberal” (or “libertarian”!) until you’re blue in the face, but if you tacitly (or explicitly!) support / encourage fascists, well … I’d say you’re a fascist.

[Nige]

[JasonT20]

The governor’s general counsel, Ryan Newman, said, in general, it means “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” He added that DeSantis doesn’t believe there are systemic injustices in the country…

This was under questioning in the case of Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, who was suspended by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

When in a forum where a vague non-answer wouldn’t be accepted, nor would an answer just meant to speak to a partisan audience, the governor’s counsel gave a fairly straight-forward and honest response to what “woke” means to him and his boss. It is also a definition that I think the people that conservatives deride as being “woke” would actually accept, as well. If that is the definition of woke, then I would say that I am woke. And I would like people that are anti-woke to explain why they think that there are no systemic injustices in American society that need to be addressed.

[David Bernstein]

PS: Just because “everyone knows” what woke means doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who use it to mean “stuff I don’t like.” The same phenomenon occurred back in the day with “political correctness.” But in both cases the talking-head left denied that they even understood what the grievances about political correctness and wokeism were. In the former case, they lied and claimed that the left had never used the term political correctness, that conservatives just made it up. With wokeness, the claim seems to be that since it initially arose in African American circles, any use of it is racist, as if the word was frozen in, say, 2005.

[Nige]

'denied that they even understood what the grievances about political correctness and wokeism were.'

Good example. PC pretty much stopped the use of the n-word and various other sexist, racist, homophobic terms and behaviours in casual conversation and interactions, no amount of monstering by the right ever managed to really turn back the clock on that. If 'wokism' is as succesful in making people aware of institutional injustice, no amount of screaming and hyperbole from the right will change that, either.

[David Bernstein]

"PC pretty much stopped the use of the n-word and various other sexist, racist, homophobic terms and behaviours in casual conversation and interactions..."
That's not what PC was. That's what the creative reinterpretation of the history was once PC was discredited. It was a means of dictating ideological Orthodoxy. I first heard the term in college from a socialist friend who worked for the leftist journal, "The Watch." He told me he was admonished for bringing to the collective some coffee, b/c the coffee was from El Salvador. Not "PC," he was told, it should be from Nicaragua. What's "PC," I asked. Political correctness, he responded. And just so you don't think I'm making it up, the friend's name was Avner Shapiro. https://www.linkedin.com/in/avner-shapiro-52632b9/
Again, PC was about enforcing leftist political orthodoxy/dogma, not stopping people from using epithets.

[JasonT20]

I wouldn't think you'd make something like that up, but I don't put much stock into your recollection of a single conversation from, what, 35 years ago or so? It's also a single reference to a single instance of the term "political correctness" being used in a casual conversation that you heard about second-hand. That is a really, really thin basis to use to declare that "PC was about enforcing leftist political orthodoxy/dogma" for most people that used the term.

We are close to the same age. I was in college just a few years behind you, I would think. My recollections of the use of "political correctness" was mostly from the critics on the right using it to describe what they saw as liberals going too far to protect people that had historically been discriminated against or worse from harsh language. Basically, very similar to the criticism of "wokeness" today.

[David Bernstein]

No, it was about the far left enforcing political orthodoxy, the term came from authoritarian Communist circles. Then conservatives criticized it, must famously in Dinesh D’Souza’s book Illiberal education, after which it became a national issue. Eventually, some conservatives started using it to mean any liberal idea they didn’t like, and liberal talking heads invented exactly the phony take you regurgitate here, which then became accepted but false dogma on the left.

The left also claimed, as thevWikipedia entry does, “Early usage of the term politically correct by leftists in the 1970s and 1980s was as self-critical satire.” This is false. People like my friends cohort, we’re entirely serious. Looking at Wikipedia and even Oxford shows that the gaslighting version of the history had become entrenched, so I can’t blame you for believing it.

[JasonT20]

Then conservatives criticized it, must famously in Dinesh D’Souza’s book Illiberal education, after which it became a national issue.

I don't know how famous that book was, given that I had never heard about it or Dinesh D'Souza at the time. The first I heard of him enough to remember was around the time of his movie, "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party." (2016) I never bothered to watch "2000 Mules", but my mother made me see Hillary's America with her that year, and he is clearly at least as much of a propagandist as anyone on the left with any notoriety in America.

You say that the statements in the Wikipedia articles about self-satire and such were gaslighting, but you aren't providing any documented and objective version of history to counter that, especially if Dinesh D'Souza is the best you've got. Thus, you aren't giving me any reason to change my belief. To do that, you need to provide me with something documented and verifiable from prior to many on the right using "PC" "to mean any liberal idea they didn’t like" that leftists used it the way you say that they did.

Regardless, and more on topic, what did you think of Ryan Newman's definition of "woke" that I quoted right above this comment thread you started? I find that to be a useful definition, and if Ron DeSantis's general counsel used it in court, it might be accepted by both sides, as I said above.

[Nige]

'It was a means of dictating ideological Orthodoxy.'

Yeah, the orthodoxy was that racist, homophobic, misgogynistic ephitets were unaaceptable. It applied to other stuff as well, primarily ethical.

[Hawk]

I don’t agree with your definition of Woke, but that is immaterial. It isn’t the way the Right, Conservatives or MAGAs are using it. They are just labeling any policy they don’t agree with as Woke. Most can’t even explain what Woke is.

[bevis the lumberjack]

Almost like labeling everyone who disagrees with you as fascist or racist, ain’t it?

[Nige]

That's one of the things the people labeling anything they don't like as 'woke' claim 'woke' is, anyway.

[sparkstable]

Woke: to be knowledgeable of your critical consciousness. The idea that you live in a structured world were those who had power in the past created systems that self-perpetuate themsleves so as to render those in power yesterday still in power tomorrow. Those in power do this either knowingly or unknowingly but are guilty regardless. To correct for this there needs to be a critical mass of oppressed (those not in power along any variety or combinations of spectrums but only in accordance to historical oppression because positive change can not come within the self-sustaining system) who "awaken" to their oppression and their place at the margins of the system. They then seek to disrupt and dismantle the system so as to push history forward via revolution. Once the old system is destroyed (it can not be changed) then a newer system can arise that is more equitable.

If we go a bit deeper via Paulo Frieri though...

As soon as the new system is erected then those who created it constitute the new conservatives and must be targeted for revolution. The only way for someone to remain on the side of justice is to promote eternal revolution and to never allow establishments to take hold.

Marcusian thought would indicate that these newly formed systems will produce gradually "better" people. And the cycle of establishment>revolution>establishment>revolution will eventually burn away man's oppressive nature yielding a completely unrestricted man. A man who can and will live literally however he imagines with no structural or social impositions on him. This means no expectations of production before consumption which means a totally Marxist/Communist utopia both in terms of economics (classic Marx) or social prejudices (or even just preferences by others... this would be the more Neo-Marxist utopia).

That is how I understand it based on readings of Marcuse, Frieri, and some others.

[JasonT20]

Okay...

If your goal is utopia, then such a cycle of establishment oppression and revolution may seem both inevitable and desirable, but I would submit that rational people don't seek utopia. Instead, a rational person would seek an equilibrium where the haves and have-nots are not separated by a such a wide gap as to consist of an oppressive system. That seems to be the goal of social democracy, for instance.

[sparkstable]

Per Frieri... you can not announce your goal. To do so would be to exclude any other possible experience or existence and thus is oppressive.

As man is perfected via the cycles of history, repeatedly shedding his oppressive nature and adopting a new sensibility, then only ever smaller gaps between oppressor and oppressed remain. But they remain and justice demands revolution to rid them from our society.

That Joe Blow doesn't think that deep doesn't keep him from moving the ball towards that goal. He may just want to go five yards. But someone else will be radicalized even farther in this next stage of history and demand revolution to go five yards more. Joe quickly finds himself as the oppressor as soon as he is content with the system as-is. He is an enabler. He perpetuates the system that is inherently oppressive to *someone* *somehwere* and as such he is now rendered conservative and, in Frieri's own words... death loving.

[smart@ss]

A well-defined concept will identify an essential characteristic that applies to all instances. A laundry list of characteristics that may or may not apply does not make a definition.