Time to take back “Woke” (and “Freedom”)
Words are encoded symbols. To paraphrase an old saying, the meaning of a word is in the mind of the beholder. To me, a person using the word “woke” as a term of disparagement is in danger of identifying themself as willfully—and often angrily— ignorant of history, a person who is likely spoon-fed most of their news from Fox News, Newsmax, Tucker Carlson or worse. After all, the literal meaning of “woke” is “awakened”, i.e. not asleep. Who but a right wing Republican celebrates wearing blinders, being asleep, willfully ignorant, eyes firmly closed?
Of course, using “woke” as a term of disparagement may light up rather different images in the minds of those speaking and hearing it. That, of course, is a basic trouble with language—meanings morph and blur.
I was recently taken aback when newly elected Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels was quoted in the Spokesman invoking “wokeism” as he criticized Washington State Appeals Judge George Fearing’s opinion pointing out the institutional racism in the Spokane County Superior Court trial conviction of Darnai Vaile:
Nowels wrote that “the dissenting opinion [Fearing’s] appears to be based on wokeism, judicial activism, and the dissenter’s personal view run amuck and is not based on established law,” using the phrase “woke” that is often employed by conservative political thinkers to criticize what they see as overreactions to calls for greater social justice.
(I give some credit to Kip Hill for highlighting the meaning of the word “woke” in the Nowels quote.)
To me, anyone using “woke” as a disparaging buzzword had better explain exactly what they mean. To disparage being awake suggests the speaker lacks the maturity to learn and understand the consequences of our warty history of treatment of minorities, much less the maturity to consider modifying their speech and actions in light of that history. I might suspect such a speaker believes children should be taught only the myths—a mythic history that must deny or gloss over the stories of racial slavery, the 3/5ths clause, the manifest reason the Civil War was fought (hint: it wasn’t “state’s rights” or “the Lost Cause”), the political resolution of the Civil War, the Jim Crow era, lynchings, race-based voter suppression then and now, the treatment of and treaties made and broken with native Americans, redlining, restrictive covenants, and more.
I endeavor to be “woke” to the fullness of our history, warts and all, and I am suspicious of anyone who suggests that being “woke” is a bad thing. Awareness of our past offers a path toward making a better future for everyone. If you don’t know history you risk repeating it. I don’t want to go back there.
We need to take back “woke”—and explain to others what it means to us. When a Sheriff Nowels uses woke as a term of disparagement we ought to ask him exactly what the word lights up in his brain. Is he, too, so self-blinkered that he cannot acknowledge our history and lacks the introspection necessary to recognize how that history still affects us? If so, that is a worrisome viewpoint for a sheriff.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. The “judicial activism” of the Nowels quote rings in my ears from my youth as a slur popularized by the infamous John Birch Society. It was a slur leveled at the Supreme Court that at the time was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The “Warren Court” (remember “Impeach Earl Warren”?) read in our Constitution rights the reactionary John Birch Society didn’t like. Perhaps the first among the Warren Court’s decisions the JBS didn’t like was Brown v. Board of Education, the decision meant to end government sanctioned segregation in public schools. Today’s Republican Party follows closely on the JBS doctrine. Listen or read “How a Secretive, Extremist Group Radicalized The American Right”
P.P.S. There is a comprehensive discussion of the origins, popularization, and recent attempt to capture the term “woke” in Wikipedia. It is an interesting read.
P.P.P.S. “Freedom” is another word we need to take back. What a significant number of Republicans actually mean when they use the term is the “freedom” is amply illustrated by their legislative actions over the last year—and their definition is makes a mockery of the word. Jamelle Bouie’s brilliant essay in the New York Times, “The Four Freedoms, According to Republicans”, sums it up:
There are, I think, four freedoms we can glean from the Republican program.
There is the freedom to control — to restrict the bodily autonomy of women and repress the existence of anyone who does not conform to traditional gender roles.
There is the freedom to exploit — to allow the owners of business and capital to weaken labor and take advantage of workers as they see fit.
There is the freedom to censor — to suppress ideas that challenge and threaten the ideologies of the ruling class.
And there is the freedom to menace — to carry weapons wherever you please, to brandish them in public, to turn the right of self-defense into a right to threaten other people.
Roosevelt’s four freedoms were the building blocks of a humane society — a social democratic aspiration for egalitarians then and now. These Republican freedoms are also building blocks not of a humane society but of a rigid and hierarchical one, in which you can either dominate or be dominated.