Scales on Eyes

To be “woke,” according to Elaine Richardson, is to be politically conscious and aware. “It (wokeness) comes out of the experience of Black people of knowing that you have to be conscious of the politics of race, class, gender, systemic racism, ways that society is stratified and not equal.” It sounds like a way to warn someone to be aware of what’s happening, keep their eyes open and their ear to the ground, take the temperature, read between the lines.

But leave it to some high-profile Republican politicians with names like DeSantis and Trump, and others with a particular agenda, to corrupt the word and overuse it, to take the concept and run in the wrong direction with it. As Domenico Montanaro observes, “Republicans on the campaign trail are using it as something of a catchall to criticize anything on the progressive side of the political spectrum they don’t like, whether it’s teaching about racism in schools or gender transition policies or even books and libraries they deem inappropriate.” 

The “progressive side of the political spectrum…” There it is. There’s what many Republicans are really afraid of, quick to slap the “woke” label on anything that smacks of addressing oppression and making life a bit easier for people who feel constantly put upon and marginalized. And ignored, even vilified.

John F. Kennedy is quoted as saying, “If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people–their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties– someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal”, then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

Can we lump it all together, or is it inappropriate to appropriate a word? Seems to me what Republicans are railing against when they cart out their disparagement of “wokeism” is their deep-seated fear of what many others view as progress, as fulfilling responsibilities, simply taking care of people who are in need of being recognized as fully human.