Woke

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?