Tornado Alley (PROG)

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A history of “wokeness” Absolute clarification of what "woke" originally meant. Step right up! If you have any minuscule of doubt about wokeness this is the article for you!! LOL Seriously, you'll understand how the right has dishonestly mutilated the original meaning of the word to distract from an important social concern. Toss the social in the trash . It's all political man!!!

A history of “wokeness”

Stay woke: How a Black activist watchword got co-opted in the culture war.

By Aja Romano @ajaromano Oct 9, 2020, 10:00am EDT

Before 2014, the call to “stay woke” was, for many people, unheard of. The idea behind it was common within Black communities at that point — the notion that staying “woke” and alert to the deceptions of other people was a basic survival tactic. But in 2014, following the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, “stay woke” suddenly became the cautionary watchword of Black Lives Matter activists on the streets, used in a chilling and specific context: keeping watch for police brutality and unjust police tactics.

In the six years since Brown’s death, “woke” has evolved into a single-word summation of leftist political ideology, centered on social justice politics and critical race theory. This framing of “woke” is bipartisan: It’s used as a shorthand for political progressiveness by the left, and as a denigration of leftist culture by the right.

On the left, to be “woke” means to identify as a staunch social justice advocate who’s abreast of contemporary political concerns — or to be perceived that way, whether or not you ever claimed to be “woke” yourself. At times, the defensiveness surrounding wokeness invites ironic blowback. Consider the 2020 Hulu comedy series Woke .. https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=66960X1516588&xs=1&url=https://www.hulu.com/series/woke-034909c6-8c46-4cad-8d0d-062574a9e5f1&referrer=vox.com&sref=https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy&xcust=___vx__p_21201920__t_w__r_google.com__d_D. , which attempted to deconstruct the identity politics behind ideas like “wokeness,” only to garner criticism for having an outdated and too-centrist political viewpoint — that is, for not being woke enough.

On the right, “woke” — like its cousin “canceled” — bespeaks “political correctness” gone awry, and the term itself is usually used sarcastically. At the Republican National Convention in August, right-wing Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) scolded “woketopians,” grouping them together with socialists and Biden supporters, as though the definition of a “woketopian” was self-evident.

[...]

“Wokeness” may be a religion, a cause for weary exhaustion, or both

Despite critics’ attempts to turn “woke” into a laughable or problematic concept, many people continue to use “woke” unironically. Chloé S. Valdary, founder of the “compassionate anti-racism” program Theory of Enchantment, told me she still sees Black communities primarily using the phrase to mean staying alert to systemic injustice “all the time, especially on Instagram.”

“In some posts they’ve used it to mean staying alert against police brutality,” she said. “In others, they use it as a catchall term to signal their objection to ‘whiteness,’ broadly defined.”

“I associate it with much more than Black Lives Matter and police injustice,” Prior told me. Like many people, she said, her earliest awareness of the term coincided with the activism surrounding the Ferguson protests. But she added that she now sees “stay woke” as a cry against systemic racism in general.
"“People today who identify as woke see themselves as having been awakened to a new set of ideas, value systems, and knowledge”"

Both Valdary and Prior also acknowledged that across the political spectrum in 2020, “woke” seems to represent a consciously progressive mindset — but that concept is loaded with irony and cynicism. Even on the left, the idea of being “woke” can be a double-edged sword, often used to suggest an aggressive, performative take on progressive politics that only makes things worse.

For instance, consider how the phrase “woke discourse” gets used on social media: The “discourse” can be about a zillion different things, but attaching “woke” to it usually denotes a perception of embittered exhaustion at progressive semantics and arguments.

It's a biggie https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy

You'll see "woke" also has a number of meanings within the black community, but
none even close to the change of meaning conservatives have abused it with.

"Labeling everything as "woke" is becoming as common and disingenuous (as many don't even know what it
means) a tactic for conservatives as Trump's "fake news." Don't like it? It's fake news. Don't like it? It's woke.
Mar. 17, 2021, at 1:38 PM
Why Attacking ‘Cancel Culture’ And ‘Woke’ People Is Becoming The GOP’s New Political Strategy"