What it means to be “woke”

There is a kind of bait and switch going on when people use “woke”. When some are pressed on the meaning, they define it as a radical leftist ideology that is against basic tenets of Western liberalism. Hostile to free speech, free enterprise, free association, etc. Others use it as a way to mock leftist “virtue signaling”. Those are very different things, but ambiguous language serves a purpose of adding connotation that is not warranted.

 

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/03/time-to-end-the-use-of-woke-as-a-pejorative

Time To End The Use of “Woke” As a Pejorative

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Each one of the people I have quoted is very confident that critics are being unfair by saying that “woke” has no clear definition. “It’s very clear, how can you deny it?” they reply, and proceed to give an extremely specific definition of wokeness, which they say is obvious. The only trouble is: the definitions contradict each other! It’s not that nobody can give a definition, it’s that there is no generally agreed-upon definition, which is necessary for words to be meaningful instruments of communication.

Take DeBoer’s definition, which he says is extremely obvious, so much so that anyone who denies it is operating in bad faith. Wokeness, he says, refers to a style of doing (liberal) politics that emphasizes “right thoughts and right utterances” over movement-building. In other words, wokeness does not refer to the belief in systemic injustices, but to a particular way of responding to those injustices that tries to fix our language and interpersonal behavior rather than strike at the root of the problem.

This is not at all what Matt Walsh means by the term. While Walsh and deBoer would both agree on some of the people who are woke (Robin DiAngelo, under any definition of wokeness, is woke), for deBoer wokeness is more about how you do politics. For Walsh, wokeness is just leftism, and includes the belief that “society is systemically oppressive towards certain supposedly marginalized groups.”

Here we have a problem: deBoer and Walsh can have a conversation with one another where they both insist wokeness is terrible and has to go. Neither of them likes wokeness. And they might both cite Robin DiAngelo, who is indeed very annoying, as a clear example of what’s wrong with wokeness. But they’ll be using the same word to talk about very different things: deBoer will mean that we should have a more effective radical leftism by focusing on altering “material conditions” rather than eliminating language, while Walsh will be talking about the need to eliminate leftism altogether. Two people could mean entirely different things by, we must end woke-ism (but both think their meaning is completely clear), which is why it’s not a very helpful term.

The problem here is that “woke,” like “political correctness” (which in many ways it is just the successor term of), is just too vague. It covers too much. If you’re against wokeness, are you against people who believe systemic racism is real? Or are you just against people who “virtue signal” about their anti-racism? DeBoer says that woke-ism prioritizes individual soul-searching over mass movements for policy change. Okay, but then is Black Lives Matter (a mass movement for policy change) woke?

Take the definition Mandel eventually managed to come up with. She says it’s the belief that “our institutions are built around discrimination” and “all” disparity is a result of discrimination. Wokeness seeks a “redefinition of society” to achieve “equality of group result” and is “enforced by an angry mob.”

When I read this, the first thing I wonder is: am I “woke”? I wouldn’t say our institutions are built “around” discrimination but that there is a lot of discrimination in our institutions. I wouldn’t say “all” disparities of any kind are the result of discrimination but do think where racial disparities exist, it’s reasonable to have a presumption that observed disparities are unfair and that they may be, at least in part, systemic in origin. “Equality of group result” is too vague for me to say whether I agree with it. And one person’s “angry mob” is another person’s popular protest, so I’m not sure whether I am pro angry mob. Were the George Floyd protests an “angry mob”?

Briahna Gray, reflecting on her viral exchange with Mandel, said similarly that the whole reason she asked for a definition was that she was trying to understand whether she agreed with Mandel or not. She wasn’t trying to produce a gotcha. She just understands that people understand the term to mean many different things, so if someone doesn’t offer a clear definition, it’s impossible to know what they’re actually talking about when they’re talking about wokeness. Brie is a critic of some of the things that can be included under that label (as I am). But she wouldn’t agree with an anti-“woke” guest if they were using the Matt Walsh definition of wokeness as leftism. (Although note that even Walsh doesn’t offer a workable definition. I’m a leftist who wrote a book called Why You Should Be A Socialist but I don’t believe in “collective inherited guilt” or think heterosexual white men—I am one myself—are Satans.)

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