No one has yet called me ‘woke’ to my face. This is in all likelihood not because they fear I am some kind of hard case who would throw the word back in their faces. It could be that they haven’t realised just how woke I am. Or because they have no idea what woke actually means, but here, stolen from someone else’s social media feed, is a simple truth:
Yes, that’s what being woke actually means. Okay, it could be argued, with real merit, that I am not educated in the scholastic sense, but I’d like to think I am, and have always been, empathetic and enlightened. I’m aware of injustice and inequality, making me … woke! And that’s a bad thing?
Unfortunately, some on the far right are trying to steal the word woke and turn it into something else, as part of their culture wars. The majority of Republican voters in the US see woke as being “overly politically correct and policing others’ words”. It’s the same with the voices of the far right over here where an imaginary liberal elite is inflicting ‘wokery’ on us all when actually no such thing is happening at all.
One example is when people say, “You can’t say X anymore because of wokery”. X might mean racism, misogyny, homophobia but the point is no one stopped people saying it. These things, which were widely accepted and normal fifty years ago just aren’t any more. That isn’t wokery: it’s just changing attitudes, that’s all. No one has banned Jim Davidson from being a racist comedian. It’s just that there’s not much of an audience for what he does, because if there was he’d be playing arenas rather than tiny seaside towns.
In any event, many of those who use the term woke have no idea what it means. Let’s use an extract from a speech by Donald Trump:
“And I don’t like the term woke because I hear woke, woke, woke. You know, it’s like just a term they use. Half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.”
There’s more:
“A lot of things going on with our military, with the woke and all this nonsense. They’re not learning to fight and protect us from some very bad people. They want to go woke. They want to go woke.”
Trump is a very easy target, but he probably deserves to be. None of what he says makes any sense at the best of times, but when you get millions nodding along to pure word salad, you wonder what the hell is going on. It’s political correctness gone mad, except that of course it isn’t. That doesn’t exist either.
The culture wars mean enemies have to be invented, specifically enemies that don’t exist. As well as the liberal elite, they will be the left who, as Liz Truss pointed out brought her spell as PM to an end. You know, those left wing Tory MPs, the left wing Bank of England and those left wing industry bosses who were concerned she might crash the economy. (She did, by the way.)
Me? I’m proud to be woke because I think it means I am a decent person. At least I think I am, although I do have my moments. I don’t want to be involved in culture wars. I believe we can all live together happily ever after in a modern, free, secular, tolerant world. But if anyone attacks you for being woke, just remember what woke actually means. That will tell you everything you need to know about them. And even more about you.
