(Editor's Note: The following piece by guest-blogger Ranger Bob looks at the word "woke" which is often bandied about in political discourse, and usually with derogatory implications. Bob, who never takes anything at face value, uses this posting to delve beyond the name-calling aspects of the word and to see what really is at play with this relatively new political terminology.)
Woke vs Asleep: Different, Yet Alike
by Bob Randall
Google defines “woke” this way: “alert to injustice in society, especially racism”. Merriam-Webster defines it this way: “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)”. Some definitions throw in activism. The term woke originated from the African American cultural discussion of inequality and tends to be thought of as liberal.
I tried to find an antonym of woke. It wasn’t easy. The best I found was from Word Hippo: “got your head down”. I don’t think any of those definitions are adequate anymore.
I admit that I was (and still am) slow to pick up new “hip” words. The first time I was asked if I was woke, I said “sure”. I’ve learned slowly that I should generally ask for a definition under such circumstances. While I might have a definition of something, it might not be your definition, especially if it has been made into sausage by the extremes of politics. Looking back at that moment, I don’t think my friend had any better idea of what woke meant than I did. I thought it meant “keeping up with current events and being able to apply critical thinking to find solutions to problems”. I think he thought it meant that you weren’t going to vote Republican. Maybe they are the same things, but they are not the definition of woke.
I propose here that the opposite of woke should be thought of as “asleep”. I use those two terms as labels as they are no longer descriptive, they only serve as labels. One designates the far-left and one designates the far-right. You may not like that idea, but progressives have lost control of the word woke. I have observed some woke things that disturb me. Cancelling of lectures at college campuses because of content, firing of college professors because they dare to say something unwoke, the proposal that all indigenous ways of knowing should be taught as science, equal to science, or even better than science. I could go on. I think that ideas should be discussed and debated, not cancelled. I think that indigenous cultures should be honored as cultural, studied as anthropological, and that the knowledge they achieved by trial and error, observations over much time, and practice can be considered as “science loosely construed”.
The tenets of “woke-ism” are still admirable if your woke activism involves passing out leaflets, writing to your congressional representatives, writing letters to the editor, lecturing with counter arguments, demonstrating peacefully, etc. Unfortunately, woke-ism has been thrown into the political sausage grinder and has been stuffed into casings along with a lot of other things that you may not want to eat. This sausage is now being served back in the political ads I see on TV every day. They ask me to vote for them because they are more un-woke than their political opponents. Woke has become a label for the far-left and any discussion can be dismissed by describing it as woke.
I ask you to contrast and compare cancelling lectures (a woke idea) with banning books (an asleep idea). How about pushing the idea that science is colonial or western (woke) compared to pushing the idea that climate change scientists are following a liberal agenda (asleep). I’ll take it a step further just in case I haven’t pissed you off yet and go way out on a limb: I don’t care if you claim that gender is non-binary so long as you define gender as non-reproductive. Before you call me transphobic, let me tell you that I have a trans-grandchild for whom I use their preferred pronouns, I call them by their new name, and I celebrate that they are finally happy with the person they are. On the other hand, I have degrees in biology, and I know that you can’t study biology without studying reproduction. Reproduction for humans requires two gametes: one type is larger and immobile, and the other type consists of small swimmers. That is binary. I recognize that some people don’t contribute to reproduction and that things like self-identity, sexual preference, etc. may be on a non-binary continuum. I recently kept track of two different webpages discussing the binary-ism (they were actually discussing the same newspaper article). One group of comments was definitely woke but they didn’t make good arguments as they mostly denigrated anyone who disagreed with them. It seems that they didn't care if they convinced anyone as they were just waiting for the other side to die. The other webpage had better arguments without labeling others. They were not asleep, but they weren’t woke either. I should have sought out a website for the asleep to see what they had to say, but I didn’t have the patience. They probably would have used a lot of labels like the first group I described. Woke vs asleep, they are two sides of the same coin. They didn’t start out that way, but the word woke changed meaning. It’s now a dog whistle. Sorry. Near the end of this writing, my thoughts return to my original, but incorrect, definition: “keeping up with current events and being able to apply critical thinking to find solutions to problems”.
While fooling around with a definition for the un-woke, I stumbled across a four-year-old article in the Harvard Crimson that said all of this better than I did. Four years ago, this young person had already figured this out and I didn’t even know woke was a thing back then. Well, I told you I was slow. Among other things, she says, “Conservatism is not about being misinformed and being woke is not about liberalism. There are educated, impassioned individuals on all sides of an issue.” That’s not how I said it, but the statement implies that woke-ism has become a way of accusing the other side of being wrong. She nails that down with “Such a usage of language is merely one example of rampant political polarization in the United States. We would rather assume that people on the other side are misinformed or downright idiotic than acknowledge the viability of different opinions or priorities”. I encourage you to read the entire article at: https://www.thecrimson.com/
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