Can someone define woke for me?

Stay Woke

 

Woke: anything conservatives don’t like. Here is a non-exhaustive list:

• Environmentalism
• Healthcare
• Science
• Math
• Education
• Social safety net
• Broccoli

 

The actual meaning of the word in the political sense is about being awakened to all the injustice in the world.

The right wing definition is just "bad and liberal." An example in this context would include being opposed to the DeSantis type idea that gay people should all be locked back in the closet so that bigots like him won't get the icks from their existence.

 

Apparently having a diverse cast of people playing fictional elves and dwarves is “woke”. Something I learned from the Amazon lord of the rings show getting review bombed by racist trolls. All elves and dwarves must be white. It’s science!

 

I'm reading this at 7:27am..
I still ain't woke yet.

Like that?

 

Wait til the live action little mermaid comes out. Ariel is a black girl. Internet is on fire because… well… that’s apparently woke.

 

I've known what woke was for the past 20-25 years, as a black man. Was not a word that came up often, but it was always used the context of being aware of what the powers at be were overtly and secretly doing to black people, and you could also say general injustice. Being woke has validity, but also includes a certain amount of paranoia and cynicism. The crazy thing to me is how misused the word is. I've had people on here hit me with bacon when I tell them they are using the word incorrectly. They would rather believe the Fox News definition they learned 6 months ago than a person who has used the term for half of their life in the proper context.

Being woke could lead to real conclusions about police brutality against blacks, but it could also lead towards conspiracies about the white man purposely doing things that one would reasonably conclude are not true.

 

We must go back to the unwoke times when men dressed up like women to play the women parts in plays

 

Its a catch-all term now for reactionaries and philistines who basically hate everything

 

Dahleen Glanton: What we’re getting wrong about Juneteenth

I think those who use "woke" in a disparaging sense, may be trying to latch onto the idea that it may not be the best historically accurate date for a national emancipation celebration. Others may be using it to suggest that it is a shallow effort on the part of politicians and a mechanism that functions as taking the easy way out:

The Real Story of the Politics of Juneteenth

Either way, some people are over-the-top with their criticism of it, and others are over-the-top with their hollow promotion of it. Sometimes it seems like a political frisbee that gets tossed around in lieu of digging deeper into the matter.

@G8tas can you provide additional context for the specific reference to a politician using this expression? It might help with better understanding the issue. None of what I'm writing here is an attempt to justify using the term "woke" in a serious capacity as a derogatory term, but I think it may reveal a source of what could potentially be mocked/attacked/criticized about how people present Juneteenth (for better or for worse). In my view, the specific date isn't something to criticize too much; when do Christians celebrate the birth of Christ?

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

You are 100% overthinking this, they say it because its a new "black" holiday, they have given it no more thought than that

 

Certainly not brocolli.

 

Interesting discussion. I’ve always thought of woke - due to my daughters’ influence - as being aware and respectful of diversity. That may be a tad simplistic.

 

If you really want to argue technicalities like this, slavery did not end in 1865. It continued after that and still exists in America today.

 

There's a great challenge in defining something like "woke". Not only has the term's meaning changed (see @murphree_hall's post), but it is extremely broad. Its definition and interpretation also changes based on the parties in the conversation. So good luck nailing it down.

To me, in the absence of a prescriptive definition, it is used as a slur for progressives much like "libs". I rarely see it used online by non-conservatives. In that context, I think it's used to soothe the cognitive dissonance that the world is not a simple place and people you don't understand are suffering in ways that are not important to you. A nice combination of guilt, ignorance and denial.

 

Yeah, basically no one uses it unironically or non-pejoratively anymore

 

No, the definition has not changed. The definition is the same, but people have appropriated it and are misusing it. There is no absence of a definition. So... black people have been using the term forever and because other races recently found out about the word a year ago and misuse it, all of a sudden our original definition is called into doubt? Now the meaning has changed? Changed to who?

 

Ok, perhaps wgb was right. ^ This doesn't even make any sense to me.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS