Month: February 2024

 

What does ‘woke’ even mean. Forbes talks about it

Our newest four-letter swear word has obtained fame by frequency of its usage; the reasons why the biggest offenders toss it around like ketchup and mustard at a barbecue, or worse, like a filthy word never to be spoken in a Church.

I remember when I was around seven years old and part of a group of kindergarten tough guys who started swearing in the playground out behind the school.

Sure enough the goody-two shoes (mostly girls) tattled on us. There was a special kind of hell to pay. Mrs. Smith met us in the principal’s office. The principal was somewhere else and she sat at his desk. One thing on the desk dominated everything else – bars of soap.

After letting us know that we had been tattled on by said two-shoes, all the while blathering about how she didn’t want to do this but said washing our mouths out was what we had coming.

What happened next was right out of the movie Christmas Story where Ralphie’s mother took it to him for saying the F word. I remember trying not to move that damn soap bar nor touch it with my tongue – all to no avail. Soon we were all lathered up and slobbering in tears.

Back to the newest four-letter word.

Woke: aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)

As Forbes staff writer Conor Murray puts it:

“Woke” is now best known as a negative political buzzword used to describe anything deemed too liberal or progressive—like brands that support Pride Month, The Little Mermaid live-action film and teaching about race in schools—but the word has a long history, originally meaning to be aware of racially motivated threats.

And this from John McWhorter:

It used to be that the way that you profaned was to be blasphemous. It was about God, and therefore you have damn and hell. Then it becomes about the body, and it becomes the things that we today most readily consider to be profanity, such as the things that I can’t say. And now we’ve moved to a new phase where what the anthropologists would recognize as our profanity is what we think of as slurs against groups. -John McWhorter, Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever

As frequently as the word is used, the attitude and intention of those who use it pejoratively come across mostly like seven-year olds working their newest favorite curse word overtime.

Murray continues:

Conservatives, including media pundits and Republican presidential candidates, have blasted a continually growing list of companies as “woke” in recent weeks, mostly for their outreach to the LGBTQ community.

Conservative definitions for “woke” range from “a form of cultural Marxism,” according to Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, to “a virus more dangerous than any pandemic,” according to former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.).

Before the word was co-opted by the right wing, “woke” was a word used within Black communities and social justice campaigns to refer to an awareness of inequality, with some urging others to “stay woke”—and picked up mainstream popularity as the Black Lives Matter movement grew in the early 2010s, particularly after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Black activists and academics have also criticized white liberals for co-opting “woke” and using it in a performative way to appear progressive, as well as using it to refer to any left-leaning position, diluting its original meaning.

The use of “woke” as a pejorative has extended beyond just the United States: Politicians in countries including Hungary, Switzerland and New Zealand have slammed “woke ideology” in recent months.

The conservative redefinition of “woke” has made the term more popular than ever: Google searches for “woke” hit an all-time high as of March 2023, according to Google Trends.

Vote fer me! I’m tuff on stuff. I can use the work “woke” without stumbling over my bar stool

Who said this?

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Got a campaign coming up. Doesn’t it seem like a circus of performing inferiors. Well, at this point based on who is saying woke, who is abusing the word “woke” and who is pointing at woke … they all act as if inferiors in their own heads have overruled the wisdom of their hearts.

“I would govern you!!” they shout, and then behave as if meditated and well-considered thoughts are exactly what should be avoided. No … it’s better to blurt out stuff and cry WOKE!!!

… cause there’s a lot of talkers in the audience who are well-trained blurtees. They buy into the shallowest of notions and think some idolized doofus is wise because he can wrinkle his brow and tell you what’s wrong with everyone else.

But ya know, it ain’t so much the outrageous stuff that comes from the minds of the candidates who want to get our attention.

It’s our own – yours and mine – shallow and gullible minds that consider angry and inflamed self-righteous talk from candidates as saying legitimate crap. The kind of crap many gullibles consider serious and believable fare.

Ask any bartender.

The best way to shut down the loudmouth in the tavern that always says the dumbest stuff is best quieted when the rest of them either ignore him or toss him out the door in exasperation at their time being wasted.

Such are the preachers against the “sin” of WOKE.