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« on: 07 October, 2020, 07:44:48 PM »
Surprised no one's mentioned the interesting journey the phrase "woke" has taken
It began as an African-American term, meaning to be awake to the systematic injustices and dangers that a white dominated society posed to black people. It somehow got picked up by white liberals, and became a broader descriptor of being alert to discrimination and bigotry. In my experience, it feels its now became something that is almost only used to mock or insult people. It's basically "political correctness gone mad" for people who spend too much time on Twitter.
Can you query it? Depends what you mean by that. The impulse to breakdown discrimination and bigtory is good and important, but specific examples may take the principle beyond the point of common sense, especially when you're dealing with white-dominated institutions prone to overreact to what an atypical group of activists are saying. A good example is some Americans adopting the word "latinx" as gender neutral term for latino/latina people, something that has increasingly been proven to be incredibly unpopular within that community because it doesn't map onto Spanish. Likewise there's been a lot of backlash towards "defund the police" from African-Americans.
Likewise there's often good arguments that politicians (more in the states) have become too quick to frame policies in ways that needlessly irritate poorer white voters, where a more traditional class frame would make the policy more popular (casting economic redistribution as a "reparations for slavery" was a good example of this).
And of course there's the argument that a lot of culture war issues are arguing about symbolism which might be interesting to people online, but doesn't actually do much for minorities. A lot of BAME people have expressed irritation that (as they saw it) white liberals steered the conversation on race equality towards statues, rather than actually dealing with the issues they faced.
And finally there is an issue in the UK with people conflating the issues that we face as a country with those that America, a very different country, face. There is obviously racism in Britain, but its not the same as Americas, and adopting the same frame doesn't work. For example, America is more racially segregated than Britain is, and so sometimes their framework doesn't allow for things like Adele donning a Notting Hill Carnival costume as an example of her celebrating the culture of where she grew up.
So yeah, it would be silly to go along with every "woke" argument. But you can disagree about particulars without losing sight of the need to address the systematic issues that people face in the UK and other countries.
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