The word "woke" carries a heavy load of meaning.
The culture-war fight over wokeness--both its cultural meaning and the word itself--has obscured the word's roots...in music. Rick Millward is a singer, songwriter, and music producer living in Southern Oregon. He reminds us of the early history of the word.
The culture-war fight over wokeness--both its cultural meaning and the word itself--has obscured the word's roots...in music. Rick Millward is a singer, songwriter, and music producer living in Southern Oregon. He reminds us of the early history of the word.
Guest Post by Rick Millward
“...best stay woke, keep their eyes open"
The fact that Regressives are all in a tizzy over "woke," as are some otherwise Progressives as well, indicates that we have in this, a word, something that triggers a defensiveness far out of proportion to its meaning.So what is “woke"?
Let’s start with Webster:“woke : aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice.)”I was surprised to learn the term has been around for a while, notably back in the early days of the civil rights movement. From VOX:
". . . later, the phrase “stay woke” turned up as part of a spoken afterword in the 1938 song Scottsboro Boys, a protest song by Blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly. The song describes the 1931 saga of a group of nine Black teenagers in Scottsboro, Arkansas, who were accused of raping two White women. Lead Belly says at the end of an archival recording of the song that he’d met with the Scottsboro defendants’ lawyer who introduced him to the men themselves. “I made this little song about down there,” Lead Belly says. “So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open."Predictably, It was a musician who creatively brought the term into the vernacular and now the list of songs that include woke in their lyrics is long and growing. In that sense woke is in the same class as “hip” and “cool," words whose popular meaning transcends their dictionary entry. More recently the term #staywoke started appearing in social media as a catchall for being alert, or simply awake in a boring situation and then came into wider usage after the BLM protests as a rallying cry. The context shifted to one of social justice and specifically the policing of African Americans. This is about where Regressives started feeling uncomfortable with it.
Vox, October 2020 (Sidebar: If you’re wondering what is meant by Regressive in this context I’d suggest to ask Mr. Google, but here’s a quick definition: "One who is so conservative, they wish to move things backward in time instead of merely keeping things the same/progressing forward.” Examples abound, for instance book banning, though I should point out these efforts balk at actual book burning so I guess that’s progress in a way.)In the intervening time woke has morphed to include meaning a heightened awareness of the circumstances of other marginalized groups, one might say all marginalized groups. Progressives have been acutely aware of social justice inequities going back the early days of suffrage and the civil rights struggles that followed. Regressives now throw the term back with contempt, asserting that it unfairly targets them as being guilty of past racism and bigotry. It’s not that, it’s simply pointing out that many Americans are living in a dream, one that conveniently puts those unlike themselves, lacking their advantages, not the least of which is skin color, on the sidelines of society, and in fact, history. For example they chafe against, for them, new and confusing restrictions on speech and behaviors that imply insensitivity.The elevation of woke as a controversial term certainly illustrates the power of words to evoke emotion. It scares right wing types over the suggestion that the horrors of slavery, Jim Crow and the subsequent marginalization of African Americans have yet to be corrected, as are those against Native Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community. Woke suggests that the America they cherish as White, Christian and prosperous may not be quite the utopia of their dreams.
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Rick Millward was part of the Music City songwriter community, collaborating with other artists and producing over 30 projects including two EMMY nominated soundtracks. His new record “Loveland” is available on Spotify and other streaming platforms and his new album, “Astronomy”, will be released soon.
As Rick explains, the origins of “woke” are practical, as in being alert to danger, and it evolved over time into the Webster definition related to social justice. Those who regard social justice as a threat like to distort such terms and use them as insults when they’re trying to be snarky.
ReplyDeleteThis is nothing new. Reagan tried to do the same with “liberal,” but it remains a proud label. All our universities have liberal arts programs while there’s no such thing as conservative arts, and in spite of a conservative coup attempt, the U.S. remains a liberal democracy. I have no doubt the sneering of right-wing talking heads will have the same effect on "woke," and social justice will remain a goal that people of conscience proudly pursue.
Mr. Millward--
ReplyDeleteFrom the rather tendentious, epithet-filled language you employ throughout your piece here, one might contend that when it comes to the defensiveness, emotion, and expressions of contempt you purport to decry, we may have instead a case of "Physician, heal thyself".
Just as judgement can become judgemental, or democracy mobocracy, so too can a heightened sensitivity to marginalized groups devolve into either maudlin, makeweight preoccupation with marginalization, or a patronizing, even pharisaical deference thereto.
Political labels lose--or change--their meanings, as facts and public sentiment dictate. Look at "liberal", or "patriot". Perhaps "woke" IS being done a disservice. More than "I'm a good leftist, not a bad conservative" is required as evidence in support, however.
Progressives are indeed "acutely aware of social justice inequities", especially since Marxism declared that inequities among individual and groups establish "oppression" ipso facto. That's as simplistic as the smug, old-school conservative Gospel of Wealth.
As ever, truth and justice lie somewhere between the poles. Merely citing the poles, and longtime labels and slogans, is question-begging. It's polemics. Nor are the claims of self-appointed spokespersons for "oppressed" or "oppressor" dispositive in the 21st century.
Rick wonders why "woke" has gotten a bad name. He inadvertently provides evidence in his own writing by his use of the word "regressive." There is a certain segment of the left who don't just disagree with with those of us who are more conservative; they dislike, scorn, and even hate us.
ReplyDeleteThese feelings among "progressives" manifest themselves most obviously in areas that they control: higher education, for instance. I have taught at a community college for 20 years, and I have seen the steady advance of this woke ideology, which includes a determination to squelch the free speech of anyone who disagrees with it.
Some examples:
Laura Kipnis was persecuted for years under Title IX for questioning the extreme new interpretation of that law pushed by the Obama administration, an interpretation which effectively denied due process to students accused of sexual misconduct.
Professor Greg Patton at the University of Southern California (USC) was persecuted for telling the students about the Chinese equivalent of "um... um..." (what you say when you're trying to think of the next thing) because it sounded too much like a racial epithet.
Princeton University’s Board of Trustees to fired humanities professor Joshua Katz, revoking his tenure, for speaking out extreme "antiracist" initiatives.
There are many more examples of this egregious imposition of a far left ideology.
It has become almost universal in higher education to demand a "diversity statement" of anyone applying for a faculty job, regardless of the subject area. These are basically McCarthyist loyalty oaths to the woke ideology, and you can't get hired unless you sufficiently bend the knee. ("Are you now, or have you ever been, a conservative?")
And it isn't just higher education. A Mexican-American utility worker in San Diego was fired for hanging his hand out the driver side window of his truck, because some random person thought they saw him making a "white power" sign with his hand.
The National Museum of African American History & Culture published a poster claiming that individualism, hard work, objectivity, the nuclear family, progress, respect for authority, and delayed gratification were attributes of "whiteness," and presumably that promoting those values was racist. In response to the storm of criticism one might expect from the publication of such racist nonsense, the museum removed this ridiculous poster from their website. But the fact that they initially published it reveals a lot about their mindset.
It's no wonder that when normal Americans hear about the beliefs and demands of this extreme and destructive woke ideology, a backlash ensues.
There are well-documented disparities between Whites and Blacks in such areas as education, health care, wealth and incarceration rates. Those interested in addressing these inequities are sometimes referred to as “woke” or “social justice warriors,” the terms often used disparagingly by those who like the status quo.
ReplyDeleteFreedom of expression in academia and other workplace fairness issues are certainly interesting but not related. They make a good case for why we need unions.
Under this new woke ideology, we in higher education hear a lot about “disparities,“ and about how it is our responsibility to eliminate them. Colleges now track grade distribution per class per term, broken down by racial category. If your numbers don’t come out “right,“ you will attract attention from management.
ReplyDeleteThe implicit ideological message is that we instructors have it within our power to eliminate disparities, and if a student does not do well in our class, it is somehow our fault; we haven’t provided whatever that particular student needed.
But what if a student needs:
* a non-chaotic home life
* an early childhood where they were read to every night so that their nervous system would develop well
* an early childhood with a high level of sophisticated verbal interaction so that their nervous system would develop well
* 30 extra IQ points
I can’t provide any of that. I just know how to teach people to write code if they arrive in my classroom with the necessary set of mental tools.
All of this creates a strong pressure to lower standards. I am fortunate that in my department and division, the managers have explicitly told us that we should not lower standards. But the pressure comes down on them too from higher up in the college, and from the woke component of society in general.
It’s one thing to talk about wokeness in general as an abstract concept. It’s quite another thing when you experience its explicit demands, and how they are completely at odds with teaching an objective skill like writing code.