What does woke mean, I asked?
It means, he said, anyone who takes
something, a bit of pseudo-science say, and then exaggerates it, takes it way
out there. Greta Thunberg, she is stereotypically woke.
Just to be sure, because I wasn’t, the
word having blurred in my mind, not settling on one meaning or another, I went
on an internet search: Is Greta Thunberg woke? What I found was a Woke Hall of
Fame with the headline: Young People Making a Difference.
This page is dedicated to the many young people doing incredible
things around the world to make a difference. Every month, we will update our
‘Hall of Fame’ with more amazing young change-makers, telling their story to
inspire and motivate others to follow their dreams and also make a difference.
Dear oh dear, young people making a
difference, what a farce. As if they could,
or can, being, as they are, young. Young are not supposed to make a difference.
They are supposed to irritate, do drugs, argue, sleep most of the day, play computer
games, but, at the same time, be polite, watch, listen, and wait until we older
folk mess up everything outside their bedroom so bad they have nothing left to
live for. Or with.
The Hall of Fame included many we have
heard off, and some we may not have: Pakistan’s Malaia who campaigned against a
Taliban ruling banning the education of young girls; Emma Gonzalez who lead a campaign
against guns in the US after seventeen of her fellow students at her high school
were murdered in a mass shooting; Payal Jangid who fights to end child
marriages in India; Greta Thunberg, of course, the climate warrior; and Joshua
Williams, who wanted from age four to end world hunger and has set up a program
called Food Recovery and
Distribution Program.
It is quite
a list and ideally would cause some complacent, inactive heads to hang in shame
and have them realise what a fine thing being woke is, and yet it is so often used
to mock.
According to
the on-line Oxford Dictionary it means “aware of social and political issues,
especially racism”. Note “aware of”, not protest outside your front door, or burn
down your chicken coop after setting the birds free. But it is now often used by
people who think that some “are too easily upset about these issues, or talk
too much about them in a way that does not change anything”. The woke list
above is full of doers and the complainers, could we guess, often do nothing but
complain? All right, maybe some of the non-listed woke also talk too much rather than supplementing
the talk with the do.
What has happened
is that instead of calling someone soft, or pathetic, or left-liberal, or a do-gooder,
the disparagers now use woke as an insult. It is just another language shift
and as gay once meant happy, it now usually means someone who has a sexual
relationship with someone of the same sex.
It all
started in 1962, according to more than one source, in Harlem, New York City.
An African American novelist, William Kelley, wrote that “If you’re woke, you
dig it.”
What he meant
was if you are awake, if you have woken, then you understand.
Here’s
another quote, this time from Garvey Lives!, a play by Barry Beckham: “I
been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon’
stay woke. And I’m gon’ help him wake up other black folk.”
Then in 2012,
it was taken up by Black Lives Matter and the group used the hashtag #staywoke.
What could
be so upsetting about young people who are awake to the issues that surround
them?
What has
become apparent is a growing hysteria from a range of commentators employed by on-line
news channels, newspapers and probably free-to-air tv stations, about others
they condemn as woke, those too concerned about climate change and the resulting
decline in flora and fauna diversity, rising sea levels, dramatic weather
patterns, including flooding, intense wildfires. Then there is poverty,
inequality, racism, sexism and a wide range of issues it seems they think we
should keep quiet about, move on from, away from, or ignore.
Does this rising hysteria
reveal a deep anxiety, perhaps even guilt about personal complacency, ignorance about issues, a fear of issue they cannot understand, maybe a sensitivity to what they have claimed is wokeness?
Using their definition of woke, have the insulters become woke about woke?
