reminder that every time people complain about wokeness they're literally just complaining about being conscious about systemic racism, because that's what woke means.
Just replace "woke" with "being a decent person" and it becomes pretty clear what these people want.
"Woke" started out as a simple acknowledgment that a person is conscious of the systemic oppression of various groups. Now the right wing has got its claws into the term it's been effectively neutered. Now all it means is, "stuff that right wingers don't like"
It's like "defund the police" which quickly became "abolish all policing".
It's a useful strategy for them and it works to prevent honest discussion on how to solve societal problems by preventing people from having a shared understanding of the language needed for such discussion.
Ugh, "defund the police" is a terrible phrase if you actually want the movement to succeed. I wish they would have gone with something along the lines of "police reform". Immediately every conservative glommed onto "now they want to abolish all police!"
We do need a massive overhaul to police. Unfortunately that means better marketing of the idea of it's going to happen.
I could be wrong but "defund the police" was just a discussion point for activists talking amongst themselves. In that context it makes sense. What happened was that this inelegant phrase was seized as a weapon by the right and then every Dem politician had to answer if they supported the idea of abolishing the police.
I'd imagine that many people would be receptive to the idea of taking some money out of police budgets so social workers and people trained in deescalation can be hired. For example cops aren't a good fit when dealing with people facing mental health crises because they mostly turn to use of force and make a bad situation worse.
If you twist this into, "are you in favor of abolishing all police?" then most people are going to say, "hell no, what a stupid idea, you moron".
Now any discussion about the rotten state of policing in the US had been effectively hobbled. Discussion is shut down. The right wing wins.
What happened was that this inelegant phrase was seized as a weapon by the right
I vividly remember tons of memes and posts on reddit, done in leftist grups by leftist people stating the sentence "defund the police". The right did manipulate the meaning, but saying that they were the sole perpetrators of the popularity of the phrase is silly.
In number? idk, about 1-3 a day that was on the top of r/all with tons of comments, iirc it was when the Floyd protest were happening, alongside the BLM movement (not the organization). I don't remember it too well, it's been 3 years already, but I do remember that it was a whole thing with posts, comments, memes and so on.
I know the real idea behind it. I just never liked it being summarized as defund. It's more like restructure. Personally, I would be much more aggressive with an overall. It's rotten top to bottom.
Unfortunately police reform doesn't necessarily imply taking police funds and diverting them to nonviolent responders instead. It's hard to make that into a catchy phrase that can't be misinterpreted. I could see cities implementing some rubber-stamp oversight board filled with ex-cops and saying, "see, we reformed the police! They have oversight now."
just about every police reform has failed to provide any independent oversight, failed to address the core problems, and generally just poured more money into the already bloated and militarized police force.
For better or worse, that aspect is never going away. Places with less funds, like rural counties and cities, rely on their police to do everything that gets called in to 911 and isn't fire/ems/construction (which, thankfully, they have dedicated teams/people for).
I still have a hard time how “woke” is bad. Woke means your not asleep, it means you are not guided by others. How can people turn this into a bad thing. I’m proud to be woke.
This is 100% correct. The term has no definition in their world, it is just another form of their "boogeyman" control methods to keep the stupid and scared engaged. It only works on these fearful idiots because of this fact.
Same happened to the terms "political correctness" and "social justice". The meaning gets twisted into something grotesque by think tanks and then it's shipped out to talking heads so Billy-Bob can regurgitate it at the water cooler.
Critical Race Theory, school libraries full of porn, caravans of migrants heading to the southern border, activist judges legislating from the bench, and so on.
Lots of 'woke' people are shitty people. I've had way too many experiences in the past few years with 'woke' people screaming at me about how I need to read more women authors or I'm a shitty awful human being. Or other equally absurd things, like I'm a bigot if I don't ask you what your pronoun is. If you have a pronoun preference, how about you tell me? Just like you tell someone how to pronounce your name if it's non-standard.
I know lots of progressive people, and I am progressive. But I would never say I am 'woke'. People who self-identify 'woke' tend to be mentally ill crazy people in my encounters, and use their politics as an excuse for abusive and hostile behavior just the way right-wing nazi nutbags do.
Hell I even had a transwoman assault me verbally one day while I was just reading a book in a cafe. Comes up to me and demands that I give her my table because I'm a white cis guy and I should give up my 'privileged' to her. I told her to f off. My small business has been harassed by 'woke' activists who demand we give them money or they will say we are anti-black/lgbt+, etc. That's not woke, that's blackmail.
Most 'woke' people I meet are basically 20 sometime trust-fund types who need a cause to give her their miserable lives purpose, because god knows they can't get their shit together and do something positive with their lives. If they did maybe they'd stop being such awful abusive people who threaten and harass others.
Hell I even had a transwoman assault me verbally one day while I was just reading a book in a cafe. Comes up to me and demands that I give her my table because I’m a white cis guy and I should give up my ‘privileged’ to her.
Hell I even had a transwoman assault me verbally one day while I was just reading a book in a cafe. Comes up to me and demands that I give her my table because I'm a white cis guy and I should give up my 'privileged' to her. I told her to f off. My small business has been harassed by 'woke' activists who demand we give them money or they will say we are anti-black/lgbt+, etc. That's not woke, that's blackmail.
Atheism is refusal of forced ideas upon someone. Which means one has to use critical thinking to determine their path in life. The problem is that it’s much harder to control the masses if that population thinks for themselves.
I honestly can't believe that using this word unironically has caught on. Everything I think is just a stupid joke on the internet turns out to be the internet reflecting just how idiotic humanity really is.
Either that, or just an unpleasant shock at just how 'mask-off' some people have become.
Hey! It's "being a decent person in a way not sanctioned by their local culture". If you're decent to the correct people with enough pandering imagery that's fine.