I’m Woke. At least I think I am. If it means being aware of the world around me and not being afraid to learn the world around me is something other than what I have thought it to be, I’m Woke.
Woke is a carelessly-used pejorative that has been used to blindly attack progressive views of almost any level. Not just progressive views, either. It’s been thrown around in public and private arguments about what we should know about our history and what history our children should be taught.
It is a one-word example of today’s bumper sticker politics in which it is easier to call someone a name or disparage their ideas rather than have the courtesy or curiosity to discuss differences. It is perceived as coming from someone with a “my way or the highway” attitude that replaces thoughtful dialogue with a one-word dismissal.
It’s childish. Name-calling is a refuge of fools with nothing substantial to say.
A challenge to those who label others as Woke has come from a report by the United Kingdom version of the Huffington Post (HuffpostUK).
Rakie Ayola is an award-winning Welsh actress and producer born of a mother from Sierra Leone and a father from Nigeria. She is now starring in a six-part BBC series called The Pact about some friends who are tied together by a secret. On the BBC Breakfast show the other day, one of the co-hosts suggested some viewers would consider the program “a ‘woke’ version of the Welsh family.”
“If anybody wants to say that to me,” Ayola said, “what I would say first is, ‘explain what you mean by woke – and then we can have the conversation.’”
“If you can’t explain it, don’t hand me that word.
“Don’t use a word you cannot describe.
“Or maybe you know exactly what you mean, and you’re afraid to say what you mean, then let’s have that conversation.
“Not even afraid – you daren’t. Do you know what I mean.
″Sit there and tell me what you mean by ‘woke,’ and then we can talk about whether this show is woke or not.
“Then I can introduce you to a family just like this one – so are you saying they don’t exist, when they clearly do? Are you saying that they’re not allowed to exist? What do you mean by that?
“Let’s have a proper conversation. Don’t throw words around willy-nilly when you don’t know what they mean.
“If you don’t know, then please be quiet because you are incredibly boring.”
Seems to be pretty good advice.
You can watch that part of her interview at:
Rakie Ayola Has The Perfect Response To Anyone Who Uses The Word ‘Woke’ (msn.com)
She makes a good point. Those who throw the word around should be able to define it. And there is some doubt that most can.
Part of the problem with Woke is that most of us are not aware of the word’s history and the reasons for it. So let’s discuss that a little bit.
A significant part of the history of Woke is related to the Ferguson killing of Michael Brown in 2014, in fact.
New York magazine published an excellent article about the history of Woke two years ago. For most of its history, it has been a word of caution within the Black community, not a weapon of division of society in general.
https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy
White folks understanding of the history of Woke is part of the understanding of Black culture and, perhaps, in understanding it, respecting it.
Seeing other cultures and understanding how they see the dominant white cultural history of our country is a matter of respect. Unfortunately some in our political world find it more profitable to denigrate those efforts. History will prove their short term infliction of politically-advantageous pain will have been an unsuccessful bump in the road for the people our grandchildren’s grandchildren will be.
Facing our history, celebrating the noble parts and acknowledging and correcting the bad parts, can be difficult. But we need not be afraid to do both.
A few days ago I picked up a copy of a 2015 National Book Award-winner, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, whose mother—born in Joplin—probably was part Cherokee. Early in her book, she talks of an exercise she has given her students in Native American Studies at California State University-Hayward. She asked students to draw a rough outline of the United States when it gained independence from Britain. “Invariably most draw the approximate present shape of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific,’ she writes. When she reminded students the only things that became independent in 1783 were the thirteen colonies, the students often were embarrassed. “This test reflects the seeming inevitability of US extent and power, its destiny, with an implication that the continent had previously been seen as terra nullius, a land without people…The extension of the United States from sea to shining sea was the intention and design of the country’s founders. ‘Free’ land was the magnet that attracted European settlers.”
“…In the United States, the founding and development of the Anglo-American settler-state involves a narrative about Puritan settlers who had a covenant with God to take the land.”
“Indigenous peoples were…credited with corn, beans, buckskin, log cabins, parkas, maple syrup, canoes, hundreds of place names, Thanksgiving, and even the concepts of democracy and federalism. But this idea of the gift-giving Indian helping to establish and enrich the development of the United States is an insidious smoke screen meant to obscure the facts that the very existence of the country is a result of the looting of an entire continent and its resources.”
—And the destruction of dozens of Indian nations, a truth that’s hard to accept in a country in which the cowboys always defeat the savages and the cavalry always arrives to drive them away.
The fact is that this was not “a land without people” at all. They just weren’t the right kind of people. (Go back to our July 25th comments if you would like more background.)
The insistence by some that we are better if we see our history through the eyes of those who were enslaved or driven from their lands is too often dismissed as “Woke.”
If we are afraid to see ourselves as we really are, and as we really have been, we short-change our opportunities for what we can be.