"Woke" - what does it really mean?

[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.

 

Edited April 15 by Ran

[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.

 

[DMC]

5 minutes ago, Ran said:

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

Of course Gallup is worth citing.  My point is even the winner of the "most admired person" metric usually only gets around 20% tops.  It's important not to conflate that with widespread popularity, which (rather clearly) was my point.

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

yet who cares what the people who he opposed thought of him?

..Because it emphasizes that 2/5s of the country - and certainly 2/5s of white America - still hated this figure as the CRA/VRA were being passed.  Further, it shows that only 44% of the country had a FAVORABLE opinion of MLK during this time.  Both are important to keep in mind if we're gonna talk about the relative popularity of MLK.

10 minutes ago, Ran said:

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.

Right!  The "admired" metric doesn't necessarily give an accurate picture of how well liked/unliked a figure was.  That was my, and Enten's, point.

11 minutes ago, Ran said:

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.

There is!  But emphasizing MLK was on top of the list of Gallup's most admired in 1964 without context/explanation can grant readers a mistaken -- or un-nuanced -- perspective of his relative popularity over time.  Hence my response.

The fact is he was always a controversial figure during his lifetime, and while his popularity went down after the CRA/VRA passages, an alternative explanation for this is white America simply stopped caring about what he had to say and thought LBJ had done enough.

[DanteGabriel]

5 hours ago, sifth said:

In theory no, but if they take part in acts of violence I take issue.

Is violence ever acceptable? Maybe to defeat violent racists? There's been some variant of this discussion on this board many times. I remember the debate about whether or not it was okay that Richard Spencer got punched. Generally the people less likely to support punching Nazis in the face were people not on the Nazi target list.

 

5 hours ago, sifth said:

 I view all forms of protesting to be fine, so long as it remains peaceful and no one is harmed.

How about anti-abortion protesters standing outside of a Planned Parenthood clinic calling the women going in "sluts" and "whores" and jamming pictures of late term abortions in their faces?

 

4 hours 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. 

Is fascism a universal evil? Is Nazism a universal evil? So maybe antifa are not actually as bad as the people they're fighting?

[DanteGabriel]

4 hours ago, James Arryn said:

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.

 

Yes. Thank you. The flaw in the "give us a term to use" request is that it ignores this pattern. As others have observed, "liberal" and "socialism" and "political correctness" were also once fairly limited terms coined by people who believed in them, but then got saddled with all kinds of bullshit and fear-mongering by people opposed.

I said as much in a previous version of the "woke" thread -- it's a word that originated in black culture that got hijacked as a convenient bogeyman for illiberal forces.

Just about any word or concept can get turned into a term of contempt and derision if Tucker Carlson sneers it out enough times.

Of course this is all another iteration of the cancel culture threads, where a handful of incidents of intolerant, dogmatic leftists acting unreasonably (which I fully acknowledge happens, before the usual suspects try to pretend otherwise) gets spun into The Biggest Threat to America Today.

Why do the threads about wokeness and cancel culture always blow up in the day or two I don't check this board?

Edited April 15 by DanteGabriel

[A True Kaniggit]

“woke”

adjective

recognizing all human beings are human beings and should be treated as such.

 

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Of course this is all another iteration of the cancel culture threads, where a handful of incidents of intolerant, dogmatic leftists acting unreasonably (which I fully acknowledge happens, before the usual suspects try to pretend otherwise) gets spun into The Biggest Threat to America Today.

A lot of what's been said in the last 5 pages by a few people is more successfully getting at the same point I was trying to make about treating the assholes in the left as representative rather than individuals, but I want to add on top of this - when we're talking about people doing this online an awful lot of the people acting this way are also kids. That doesn't eliminate harm that they do, but it does mean they tend to have very little power beyond what social power they're granted within that space.

And personally I hear more complaining about those people than I hear those people themselves.

[Heartofice]

5 hours ago, karaddin said:

when we're talking about people doing this online an awful lot of the people acting this way are also kids. That doesn't eliminate harm that they do, but it does mean they tend to have very little power beyond what social power they're granted within that space.

Well, it’s just that kids tend to grow up and don’t always change their behaviour or attitudes, and they get jobs, often good jobs in big places.. mainly the HR department. I do think there is a level of filtering down of what woke kids were doing 5-10 years ago into mainstream as they get older.

Anyway, I thought this YouGov poll was interesting. 
 

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/09/26/most-britons-now-know-what-woke

When asked about whether they had heard the term Woke, most Brits said they had, although few ever used it to describe things.

However, when asked whether they used it in a positive or negative way a majority said they used it in the negative ( although there were mixed views as to whether wokeness was seen as good or bad)

However in terms of left and right talking past each other it’s interesting to see what Conservative or Labour voters think are ‘woke beliefs’ with conservatives thinking being woke is mainly concerned with stuff like pulling down statues,hating the British empire, political correctness and getting upset about something someone said and holding unpopular views 

Whereas Labour voters think it’s about issues of equality. Interestingly Tory voters don’t really see woke people being all that concerned about equality issues.

ETA- what I think is noteworthy is that there is separation between views on whether woke beliefs are about things like racial equality or  not. I suspect that conservative voters simply view wokeness as something different to social justice,  mostly are also for social justice ( maybe through other methods) but that wokeness isn’t really about progressiveness or making the world better. They are pointing a form of over reaction and dogmatism that they see. Labour voters don’t see it quite the same way.

Having been in the UK politics thread for quite some time l know where people stand on most issues. I know that 90% of posters support pulling down statues, are pretty down on the British empire, could be considered quite politically correct and generally get quite upset about outdated views or people saying the wrong thing.

So from a conservative perspective most people in that thread would be seen as Woke. I certainly think they are. But clearly they wouldn’t agree. 
 

When people say wokeness is only a tiny number of people I’d disagree, I don’t think this forum is any sort of outlier, but is pretty illustrative of a certain type.

Edited April 15 by Heartofice

[Varysblackfyre321]

5 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Yes. Thank you. The flaw in the "give us a term to use" request is that it ignores this pattern

They can just say liberal or leftist, or progressive or merely address the particular group or individual by their stated political identity when discussing if they’d genuinely just go along with whatever they’re given.

But they can’t—because that’d cause more discord.
Some liberals and leftists can get roped into complaining about “the woke” thinking what is being referenced is something distinctive from people like themselves and have a different definition of it than a right wing reactionary who’d rage that a trans woman was did a beer commercial because they are evil.

 

 

[Rippounet]

8 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Is fascism a universal evil? Is Nazism a universal evil? So maybe antifa are not actually as bad as the people they're fighting?

Of course they aren't. One may disagree with their methods, but antifa are still good guys in our story.

BTW, since I'm popping in here, I personally have a rather "academic" definition of "woke" that's linked to history and colonial studies. There's a theory according to which the European industrial revolutions and economic development were made possible thanks to the raw materials obtained through the plundering of colonized peoples. References would be Kenneth Pomeranz and Joseph Inikori (have to confess I haven't read them yet). In other words, slavery was only the most saliant aspect of the predatory nature of Western civilization, and being "woke" is being aware of the collective guilt of Western societies, and the debt we have toward the peoples that were savagely exploited under European colonial rule.

Of course, that's even before you start factoring in the environmental crisis...

[Larry of the Lawn]

9 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

 

Yes. Thank you. The flaw in the "give us a term to use" request is that it ignores this pattern. As others have observed, "liberal" and "socialism" and "political correctness" were also once fairly limited terms coined by people who believed in them, but then got saddled with all kinds of bullshit and fear-mongering by people opposed.

I said as much in a previous version of the "woke" thread -- it's a word that originated in black culture that got hijacked as a convenient bogeyman for illiberal forces.

Just about any word or concept can get turned into a term of contempt and derision if Tucker Carlson sneers it out enough times.

Of course this is all another iteration of the cancel culture threads, where a handful of incidents of intolerant, dogmatic leftists acting unreasonably (which I fully acknowledge happens, before the usual suspects try to pretend otherwise) gets spun into The Biggest Threat to America Today.

Why do the threads about wokeness and cancel culture always blow up in the day or two I don't check this board?

Yeah, awfully curious how no one in these threads who finds "woke" to be a useful term has had anything to say about how they feel about its history and provenance.  

[Ran]

Woke did originate in black culture, but was then co-opted not by the right but rather  by white leftist millenial allies and then businesses who also started using it with increasing broadness, and only then does it begin to be picked on by the right. MTV News was telling white kids in 2016 that they should know the term (and using a decidedly non-racialized sense of 'woke' in its example), while it's in late 2018 and definitely by 2019 that ironic or pejorative senses started to appear. Wikipedia has an extensively cited article about the history of the word, including noting the prescience of Sam Sanders, formerly of NPR, writing in 2018

Quote

“to put woke to sleep”. He argued that any authenticity it once had was being lost due to overuse by white liberals, leading to its co-option by businesses keen to burnish their progressive credentials – so-called “wokewashing” – and ultimately to a backlash. (Via Wikipedia)

Pretty spot on.

 

Edited April 15 by Ran

[A wilding]

However, from a UK perspective the history of the term is different. To the very best of my knowledge, it was introduced in the UK by right wingers criticising generally left leaning ideas. Though subsequently there have been half hearted attempts by left wingers to embrace the term (I think mistakenly as it just plays the Right's game). I would be interested to know if anyone can come up with any counter examples.

It is another example of the UK following the US, right wingers over here seem often to pick up labels already used by US right wingers, and for much the same reasons.

[DMC]

48 minutes ago, Ran said:

Woke did originate in black culture, but was then co-opted not by the right but rather  by white leftist millenial allies and then businesses who also started using it with increasing broadness, and only then does it begin to be picked on by the right. MTV News was telling white kids in 2016 that they should know the term (and using a decidedly non-racialized sense of 'woke' in its example), while it's in late 2018 and definitely by 2019 that ironic or pejorative senses started to appear. Wikipedia has an extensively cited article about the history of the word, including noting the prescience of Sam Sanders, formerly of NPR, writing in 2018

Pretty spot on.

 

Sure.  And?  Of course "woke" was popularized before the right weaponized and bastardized it.  That's the case for pretty much every term that's been mentioned on this thread - liberal, socialism, PC.  It was actually popularized more due to social media, but yes, those dastardly millennial white liberals also played a role.  Definitely recall its marked increase in usage in academia at the time. ...But, they still accurately used the term.  When I asked people what it meant, they generally were correct and it made sense.  Indeed, according to the wiki page, this is when "woke" was added to the dictionary.

I mean, when something is corporatized it always loses its "authenticity" - which is what that Sanders op-ed is talking about - so there's that, sure.  But, really, so what?  Don't really get the point of your post other than casting aspersions on white liberals and/or corporations for...being white liberals and corporations.  As far as I recall, nothing during that popularization period had anything to do with the right - and people on this thread - associating "woke" with "illiberal," "authoritarian," or "doctrinaire" politics.  

Also, I think it should be emphasized that the point of Sanders' op-ed is that any term loses its authenticity when it becomes popularized.  By becoming mainstream, something inherently loses their dynamic of being for "outsiders" (whether they be political, social, etc.).  Again, that's obviously true of anything.  In terms of language, my favorite bit on that was from Chef in "South Park is Gay!"  

Quote

Mr. Garrison:  Chef, what did you do when white people stole your culture?

Chef:  Oh. Well, we black people just always tried to stay out in front of them.

Mr. Slave:  How did you do that?

Chef:  Well, like with our slang. Black people always used to say, "I'm in the house" instead of "I'm here." But then white people all started to say "in the house" so we switched it to "in the hizzouse." Hizzouse became hizzizzouse, and then white folk started saying that, and we had to change it to hizzie, then "in the hizzle" which we had to change to "hizzle fo shizzle," and now, because white people say "hizzle fo shizzle," we have to say "flippity floppity floop."

Mr. Garrison:  We don't have time for all that, Chef! Oh, if only those Queer Eye For the Straight Guy people understood what they were doing. [thinks] Wait. [rises] That's it! I know exactly what to do! [yanks on Mr. Slave's leash] Come on, Mr. Slave! Let's get back to our flippity floppity floop. [exits the front door with Mr. Slave]

Chef:  Oh no! Damnit! Don't call it that! [the door closes]

 

[Heartofice]

I'm not even sure what the point of these conversations actually is. Like what is you want to happen? 

It's pretty clear the word 'Woke' is being used in 2 different ways, one positive and one negative and how likely you are to do that probably depends on your political leanings.

But so what? The sense I'm getting in all these threads is 'hands off our word!', but its much too late for that, and people can use words however they wish. So really what is it everyone is arguing over?

[Ran]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

before the right weaponized and bastardized it. 

Per the history I cited, it was the left and corporate America that bastardized it, and the right began to lampoon it and weaponize it.

Blame white people and/or capitalism.

Edited April 15 by Ran

[DanteGabriel]

Thank you, Ran, for once again identifying the true evil we must all strive against: corporate white liberalism.

[Ran]

Just now, DanteGabriel said:

Thank you, Ran, for once again identifying the true evil we must all strive against: corporate white liberalism.

Beat you to it!

[James Arryn]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Woke did originate in black culture, but was then co-opted not by the right but rather  by white leftist millenial allies and then businesses who also started using it with increasing broadness, and only then does it begin to be picked on by the right. MTV News was telling white kids in 2016 that they should know the term (and using a decidedly non-racialized sense of 'woke' in its example), while it's in late 2018 and definitely by 2019 that ironic or pejorative senses started to appear. Wikipedia has an extensively cited article about the history of the word, including noting the prescience of Sam Sanders, formerly of NPR, writing in 2018

Pretty spot on.

 

I’d note the timeframes. It was used in the black community for decades, began to be used by white liberals…without really changing the definition, btw, just pursuing the same awareness for other prejudices…and was incorporated into mainstream via the Oxford dictionary in 2017. 
 

In just under two years, it was already being used sarcastic by the people who you’d expect to reject it’s intention, as the wiki you cited observed ‘’By 2019, opponents of progressive social movements were often using the term mockingly or sarcastically, implying that "wokeness" was an insincere form of performative activism.British journalist Steven Poole comments that the term is used to mock "overrighteous liberalism". In this pejorative sense, woke means "following an intolerant and moralising ideology. Among American conservatives, woke has come to be used primarily as an insult.”

So, decades of usage, gradually broadening but staying on message, in America incorporating a rejection of American exceptionalism and the myth of America as a country devoted to equality and freedom for all, etc. as it applies to the same kinds of prejudices it always meant, going back to the early 60)s. Finally official incorporation, after almost a century of usage and half century of broad usage, gaining profile with the social media. It coincided with other terms about social progressiveness but emphasized a need for vigilance in a society long practiced in turning blind eyes and deaf ears to systemic prejudice. 

Then less than two years (!) later it is being widely used to mock it’s until-then meaning. By whom? Oh, by the same group of people of whom almost half think that paying attention to racism in America is bad to very bad for society (46%). Left/Dems on that? Single digits. Pretty clear divide on whether we should pay attention to racism. 
 

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/08/12/deep-divisions-in-americans-views-of-nations-racial-history-and-how-to-address-it/

 

Why are we acting like this ie in any way mysterious? Consider what those 46% want. Consider what kind of society intentionally ignores prejudice. Consider what kind of people think that’s better for society. How do you expect those types of people to react to the growing usage of a term that preaches awareness of prejudice? In a country where over half of white respondents think systemic racism doesn’t even exist*, could we really expect any other reaction? It was going to be either dismissive or it’s going to actively reject it. Want to know another term, a VERY old term describing that clear historical trend: reactionism.

Definition: “In ideology, reactionism is a tradition in right-wing politics; the reactionary stance opposes policies for the social transformation of society, whereas conservatives seek to preserve the socio-economic structure and order that exists in the present.“

I ask again, why are we trying to solve the riddle which is as mysterious as Duke fans hating UNC? Conservatives don’t like progressiveness, they don’t want to look at or address systemic bigotry (except of course for the ongoing horror that is the ~ holocaust of innocent Christians) and so they use a term for doing those things ironically and insultingly.
 

Kellstedt shows a clear pattern re: race, awareness, media and incidents of racism in modern US history, going back over 50 years.

1) pre-incident ambivalence.

2) significant racist incident, lynching or high profile hate crime or similar.

3) Heightened usage of the term racism and related terminology in the US media. 

 4) sustained period of liberalism with the government is encouraged in taking active steps to reduce systemic racism.

5) “Invariable’ backlash of conservatism, usually including attempts to undermine or mock the connected language, and a subsequent sustained period of conservatism where the government is discouraged from involving itself in opposing racism in any way whatever. 

6) Rinse, repeat. 
 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/2669308?casa_token=ABrC40U1HGAAAAAA%3AITJVFSUWQePAF6SY-0J65mbFk_RZP3ZN95kp80j9iF8orIMOKtYudu8e6alFd8fQUJHBFxg7sjdWwpZunfWgFYxTj7y8H1GYoV2_remwdQ6_ac1DPw&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents
 

No mystery, nothing new, the same kinds of people doing the same things for the same reasons. Similar thing happened with the term ‘gay’ in the 80’s, btw. After the late 70’s saw a significant increase in the profile and social acceptance of homosexuality in society and popular culture, particularly films, where there had been around 50 identifiably homosexual characters in films as a whole before 1970, contrasted with hundreds in the 70’s/first few years of the 80’s.
 

The result? We should all know by now, the word ‘gay’ co-opted from its usage re: homosexuality by people who opposed it and turned it into a synonym for bad, weak, invalid, lame, etc. for the same reasons. Do we blame that on the over usage or too broad application of the word ‘gay’, or do we think it’s maybe a lot simpler…like schoolyard dynamics simple…and it’s just reactionaries being reactionary? 

 

*https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-11-16/poll-many-americans-dont-believe-systemic-racism-exists

Edited April 15 by James Arryn