"Woke" - what does it really mean?

[sifth]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

It's really hard to argue from a societal/historic perspective that anti fascists are "just as bad" as actual fascists and white supremacists.  That's not to say, of course, that the law should not be applied equally to anyone committing/inciting political violence.

In theory no, but if they take part in acts of violence I take issue. I view all forms of protesting to be fine, so long as it remains peaceful and no one is harmed.

[TrackerNeil]

I think this topic has gone as far as it could ever have gone, so I'm going to tap out.

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

 

Sorry, clicked this by accident and can't delete it.

25 minutes ago, sifth said:

Yes, people like that are scum, some of the worst of the worst.

Woke also means anyone who ever ate the last slice of pizza or cancelled plans last minute.  It's people who don't return grocery carts, litter cigarette butts out car windows, and omit the oxford comma.  It's people who wear denim to the opera and flush public toilets with their feet.  People who recliner their seats on airplanes and tip less than 20%.

People who wait last minute to vaccinate their dogs, send greeting cards too late, and rsvp "maybe ".  They cruise in the passing lane and drink the blood of the unborn.  

I swear upon this android phone that the woke-mind virus is my eternal foe and includes anything I deem bad. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 minutes ago, sifth said:

I very much have stated that I support the left more than the right. I just don't demonize people who support the right. I view most of them more as people who've been conned if anything.

Yeah that wasn’t an attack just a note of your consistency for you use of the word work.

You’re use of it is an example for why if we’re going to use “woke” as more than an angry grunt specificity must be inquired because good faith actors like you clearly have a radically different than say the Qanoners of the world.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 minutes ago, sifth said:

In theory no, but if they take part in acts of violence I take issue. I view all forms of protesting to be fine, so long as it remains peaceful and no one is harmed.

How do you feel about John Brown and Nelson Mandela?

[sifth]

5 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

How do you feel about John Brown and Nelson Mandela?

Slavery is a universal evil. Americans were stupid to think it was anything less. All those who fight such a thing are good in my mindset. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 minute ago, sifth said:

Slavery is a universal evil. Americans were stupid to think it was anything less. All those who fight such a thing are good in my mindset. 

Well nearly everyone that it was something else at one point tbf.

John brown used extreme violence to combat it during a time where such actions was looked at as extreme.

[sifth]

1 minute ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Well nearly everyone that it was something else at one point tbf.

John brown used extreme violence to combat it during a time where such actions was looked at as extreme.

He was fighting a universal evil. If you look hard you can find an exception to nearly every rule. That’s how life works. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

20 minutes ago, sifth said:

Daryl Davis is one of my biggest role models in life and I try to live by his example.

I think his method successfully deradicalization a bit exaggerated.

Theres a difference leaving the kkk and no longer being a white nationalist—David Duke left the klan decades ago for instance.

Like we know some of the people he said weren’t radically bad anymore proceeded to continue to be far right idealogoues and do heinous shit because of their racism,

[Varysblackfyre321]

3 minutes ago, sifth said:

He was fighting a universal evil. If you look hard you can find an exception to nearly every rule. That’s how life works. 

So maybe we can be a bit precise in terms of what extremism we find intolerable?

Like we can agree extremism often times is bad. Not always,

[mormont]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Is this not just an example of tu quoque?

In some instances, I think that would be fair but in this case, I'd say not, because as others have pointed out, one aim of weaponising this term (as it always is: cf social justice, political correctness, etc.) is to distract from these things by creating a bogeyman. Make people think that this is a bigger problem.

This goes back to the quote I started with. The point there is not just that Humpty decides for himself what a word means: it's the last line. He scorns Alice's question about definition because the only thing that matters is whether he has the power to insist that his definition is correct. Whether it is correct doesn't matter. Alice is only a girl and has no power in Humpty's eyes, so her definition doesn't matter.

That's the play from the right here, as it always is. It isn't working, and those that insist the word only has a negative meaning are wrong:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/08/gop-war-woke-most-americans-see-term-positive-ipsos-poll/11417394002/

Quote

Fifty-six percent of those surveyed say the term means "to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices." That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats but also more than a third of Republicans.

Finally, while I agree that we are entitled to ask better of our own side, it's important not to let that become a distraction. There's a temptation to focus more on our own faults as demonstrating the purity of one's commitment to one's ideals in a higher way, perhaps, than criticising our opponents. But their faults are just as significant and it's important not to lose sight of that.

[James Arryn]

9 hours ago, Knight Of Winter said:

Although (disclaimer) I generally don't view wokeness favorably, I'll deliberately not going to tackle the essence of such discussion, debating its flaws and merits here. Instead I'll point to a wider meta-problem: that such discussions were proven time and time again to be fruitless, with both sides talking past each other with none being any wiser afterwards.

Part of it surely comes from semantic confusion, as I'm convinced that different people have totally different concepts in mind with regards to same word. While for me it means something like "dogmatic, authoritarian and deeply tribal ideology which is ineffective in achieving its (noble and admirable) goals", for many of you that same word means "fight against systemic prejudice and helping disadvantaged groups". I'm not saying either mine or the other definition is the correct one - but I am saying  that we're having completely different things in mind while discussing ostensibly the same concept. Such discussion will be very difficult from the start.

Can’t address the entire post here, but I think what you are overlooking is that this is not a normal evolution of a word’s usage, it was a deliberate hi-jacking of a word which was so important to some progressives that, as you note, it was more or less synonymous with same.

And then conservatives got ahold of it and intentionally started using it insultingly and sarcastically along the lines of your definition. This was not an accidental or coincidental divergence of interpretation, it was an aggressive and insulting campaign to mock progressive values by using the term to mean something new and demeaning towards those values.

Thought experiment: back when ‘family values’ ‘Christian values’ were actually things deeply important to conservatives, imagine if a collective of snide progressives starting to use the terms to mean bigoted, self-righteous, hypocritical, undereducated and often violent fanatics. And suppose that caught on amidst leftists…in a concerted and deliberate attempt to insult conservatives further by using their words for their values to mean the demeaning and marginalizing progressive take on conservative values.

Now imagine after a year or two of this shit you find yourself in conversation with progressive after progressive that not only uses the insulting terms left and right, but now says that because they campaigned to demean your term so much that now you share ownership of the terms ‘family values and Christian values’ and it’s really just a matter of perspective which meaning is the true one, the one conservatives mean or the one that means bigoted, self-righteous, hypocritical undereducated and often violent fanatics. 

Can you see how that would feel many, many miles away from a good faith argument?

 

[sifth]

32 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

So maybe we can be a bit precise in terms of what extremism we find intolerable?

Like we can agree extremism often times is bad. Not always,

That’s a fair compromise. 

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, TrackerNeil said:

I think this topic has gone as far as it could ever have gone, so I'm going to tap out.

To be fair, you did choose violence. 

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, mormont said:

This goes back to the quote I started with. The point there is not just that Humpty decides for himself what a word means: it's the last line. He scorns Alice's question about definition because the only thing that matters is whether he has the power to insist that his definition is correct. Whether it is correct doesn't matter. Alice is only a girl and has no power in Humpty's eyes, so her definition doesn't matter.

Sometimes I think Alice in Wonderland is some type of time-traveling allegory for the GOP over the past 30 years.  I remember my first year of college my (obviously now ex) girlfriend's roommate painted this really cool mural with all of our group of friends as characters in the story.  I don't remember everything about it, but I remember she painted me as the Caterpillar.  Thought that generally fit.

21 minutes ago, mormont said:

That's the play from the right here, as it always is. It isn't working, and those that insist the word only has a negative meaning are wrong:

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/08/gop-war-woke-most-americans-see-term-positive-ipsos-poll/11417394002/

To provide further support for this finding, there's this poll from a couple weeks ago.  Now, full disclosure, GSG is nominally a "Democratic firm."  But it's also an undeniably credible one and their Democratic-lean arguably aids them in actually constructing insightful items..in other words asking interesting questions.  In that way, it gives us some very relevant crosstabs...

To start, they find a plurality - 46% - have heard "not much" or "nothing at all" about "wokeness."  Meaning nearly half the country couldn't give two shits about this debate one way or another.  Further, it is only "Very Conservative" Republicans that have markedly negative views of "wokeness."  All other groups show a majority that either has a positive or "not sure" view on "wokeness."

Perhaps most importantly, a plurality - 40% - say elected officials talk "way too much" about wokeness rather than focusing on issues they care about.  I think this is the key takeaway.  Are there people on the left that go too far?  Again, sure.  But the key is to ignore them and allow the right to continue their whining -- not join in with the right's attacks, granting them legitimacy with a huge swath of voters.

Finally, 55% of all respondents say Republicans should talk less about "wokeness" while 68% of all respondents think politicians that call themselves "anti-woke" are focused on the wrong thing, 64% think they are extreme, and 62% think "anti-woke" politicians are "censoring freedom of speech and diversity of thought."

Plainly - at least when it comes to the US public - the notion that "wokeness" is severely unpopular is empirically wrong.  Rather, it's those that incessantly whine about "wokeness" that are decidedly unpopular.

[Varysblackfyre321]

Okay just looked it up Hersey after it went “woke” closed at a 52 week high.

Go woke, go broke is a lie that for the sake of democracy some people should probably keep believing.

Otherwise they may be more privy to push the state to crack down on perceived degencracy.

[Ser Reptitious]

1 hour ago, sifth said:

Yes, people like that are scum, some of the worst of the worst.

Perfect example of how the term has lost all meaning at this point if that is your definition of 'woke'.

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

In their perspective and taking “woke” to mean “awaked to reality” I’d be surprised if they don’t think they are “woke”.  In that sense I’m confident the “QNuts” see themselves as “woke”.

You should try to run that by them, just to see their heads explode! 

On a serious note, that's why people who see themselves as part of the original definition (mentioned in this thread a few times) of 'recognizing systemic injustices and wanting to do something about it' are best served by not getting bogged down with labels, but instead to challenge opponents on each individual issue on the merits.

@TrackerNeil, you'll inevitably run into insufferable assholes (sometimes with a certain amount of power) that are too absolutist for your tastes. Any movement will always have its extremists. Unless it can be empirically shown that they constitute a critical percentage of the overall movement, that should not be enough in itself to discredit the movement altogether in the eyes of someone who shares the same goals. 

And opponents of the movement will always hold up the movement and its leaders as extreme. That's the best way to try to discredit them to the average person. It is extremely (heh!) ironic how Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela are nowadays held up as paragons of moderation and of "how things should be done", compared to how they were portrayed in the middle of their struggles!

[Ran]

9 hours ago, Ser Reptitious said:

It is extremely (heh!) ironic how Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela are nowadays held up as paragons of moderation and of "how things should be done", compared to how they were portrayed in the middle of their struggles!

I know less of Mandela, but I will say that the narrative about MLK is rather confused. In fact, between 1963 and 1967 he twice appeared in Gallup's annual poll of the ten most admired men in America, ahead of the likes of Billy Graham, Robert Kennedy, and the Pope, and polling of him through the 60s was generally more favorable than negative. 

However, things turned negative around 1966 and 1967, after the success of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, because of I guess three things: 1) He turned his attention from segregation in the south to racial inequality in northern cities, 2) he began to preach more about economic justice in a way that was seen as flirting with communism; his talk of a revolutionary change redistributing power and wealth did not help, although that was mostly rhetorical and I think the record shows he was not so much in favor of communism as democratic socialism, 3) he started to speak out very strongly against the Vietnam War.

A lot of people aren't really taught about what he was doing in his last years, how it was perceived as a shift away from what had brought him into prominence and which had made him admired to a new area where people felt more conflicted. 

This is not to say that many people didn't dislike him. But at the height of his popularity, he was among the most admired people in America. Picking polls from 1966 and after focus on a different era of his activism, which was received differently.

 

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Ran said:

However, things turned negative around 1966 and 1967, after the success of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, because of I guess three things

Well, as you mentioned, we shouldn't confuse things.  While it's true King's popularity took a dip post CRA/VRA - and for the reasons you mentioned - feel like it should be noted that this "most admired" thing - which is really just based on Gallup - at the time includes a lot of qualifiers.  And most importantly, does not denote widespread popularity/approval.  Better way to clarify it is here:

Quote

But even before then, King was far from a universally liked person. In the middle of 1964, when Congress was in the midst of passing many landmark civil rights laws, King’s favorable rating was just 44%. His unfavorable rating was basically equal at 38%.

When Americans were asked which three Americans they had the least respect for in a 1964 Gallup poll, King came in second at 42%. This was barely less than the 47% registered by George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama. Only 17% mentioned King’s name, when asked which three Americans they had the most respect for.

 

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

which is really just based on Gallup

 

All the poll figures you quote are from Gallup too, though. Either Gallup is worth citing or it isn't...

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

But even before then, King was far from a universally liked person.

This "universally liked" thing I've never understood,  and is creating a strange bar. How can anyone imagine he was universally liked? He just worked to break up segregation  and other civil rights violations long held in the South, so he was going to be hated there, yet who cares what the people who he opposed thought of him?

6 minutes ago, DMC said:

In the middle of 1964, when Congress was in the midst of passing many landmark civil rights laws, King’s favorable rating was just 44%. His unfavorable rating was basically equal at 38%.

CNN writer trying to massage numbers to fit a pre-conceived narrative. That's +6 favorable for a person involved in a highly polarized area of American life, which seems pretty good.

Same thing with his not being listed in the top 3 most respected people. Even failing to show up in the top 10 list doesn't mean he was disliked in the years he didn't, it just means other people were more admired. But his actually showing up, and twice, suggests that he was in fact at times regarded well by at least a  plurality of Americans.

In any case, my main point is that the MLK popularity story is quite complicated, but it certainly doesn't lend itself to a simple, "But really most Americans actually hated him during the civil rights movement." There's  nuance.