Woke nowadays refers to being aware or well informed in a political or cultural sense, especially regarding issues surrounding marginalized communities - it describes someone who has “woken up” to issues of social injustice. Having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those involving the treatment of ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities. Aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice). However many people now interpret woke to be a way to describe people who would rather silence their critics than listen to them. They see the Woke culture as being holier-than-thou and in-your-face. Certainly there are "woke people" who preach too much and need to tone it down, but that doesn't make them wrong. Worse, there are those on the right who see it as a threat. At CPAC, Nikki Haley said, "Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down!" Other quotes: “At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful. It basically gives mean people a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.” ― Elon Musk “You know what woke means? It means you’re a loser. Everything woke turns to shit." -- Donald Trump Ron DeSantis has been grabbing national headlines with his relentless attacks on so-called “woke”, especially with his Stop-Woke (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act, which prohibits educational institutions and businesses from teaching students and employees anything that would cause anyone to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin. Could it be those who oppose wokeness are afraid of change? Are they unwilling to become more tolerant toward those who are different than them? I know life isn't fair, but shouldn't we try to make it more fair? They don't seem to think so. These people think Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group and wokeism is a disease. Fuck! If you don't want to be woke then go back to sleep!!
Prohibiting educational institutions and businesses from teaching students and employees anything that would cause anyone to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin sounds good to me. It even seems to line up perfectly with wokeism, what part of that do you oppose?
Step one of 12 programs is admitting one has a problem. Until that step is taken, there can be no recovery and healing. That is why racism, discrimination, and hate are still with us. This country has tolerated the horrors of racism, anti LGBT and hate for too long. Now the haters even call those that would heal the wounds “woke” as a derogatory term. As long as bigots are elected and can’t face their sickness, things will not change. True in Florida, Mississippi, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Idaho, Montana, the US….Enough.
Actually it's the opposite of wokeism. Living in denial isn't the answer. Slavery happened. The holocaust happened. I oppose slavery and genocide, thus I don't feel guilt over either one. But I can't understand those who would deny either happened, or deny that either was as bad as they're made out to be. That's the part I oppose.
Besides the problems Newo points out--the denial--another big problem is the authoritarianism: prohibiting teaching of the truth or "dangerous" ideas. This smacks of Hitler's book burning or the Index of Forbidden books the Catholic Church foisted on people back in the day. (It hasn't officially existed since the 60s, at least as something subject to ecclesiastical penalties.) As for Desantis' laws, I'm surprised there hasn't been a legal challenge by the ACLU. A chilling effect on speech!
Why, do you think, factual, unbiased history of Nazism, WW II, and the Holocaust is compulsory for all German high school students, without the slightest concern that it might "cause anyone to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin"?
So we need to break it down into two maybe three parts. Prohibiting educational institutions and businesses from teaching students and employees anything that would cause anyone to “feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin sounds good to me. It even seems to line up perfectly with wokeism, what part of that do you oppose? There's the prohibition. That's an issue. Should people be allowed to say anything? The Woke don't tend to be free speech absolutists but favour a particular narrative and oppose things being said that go against it. I haven't seen a consistent standard upheld here. Next there's the question of what makes someone "feel guilt, anguish or psychological distress"?. Germans, Jews, everyone should be taught about WW2 and the holocaust. Will that make them feel guilt, anguish, psychological distress? Who's to say? Probably some. Lastly who gets to decide what speech is likely to upset someone? Do we teach it first then survey the students to see if anyone was upset and if so what then? There are two competing goals: teaching ideas vs avoiding making people feel bad. Some ideas will upset people. I've heard it argued that getting upset is the only way to learn.
The truth should not be whitewashed, so to speak. White people once enslaved black people, that's a fact. Some white people may feel guilt over it, I say do your own part in your own time to make things more fair and there's no need to feel guilt. Christians once attacked and killed Jews, culminating in pogroms and the holocaust. Again, do your own part in your own time. I remember in history class in the 1960s when I was first taught of the atrocities white people committed against native Americans, and it confused me because Hollywood and other institutions had always portrayed the Indians as the bad guys. I was upset about being misled and felt some guilt, but I realized the truth must be told. We're all born innocent, so face the truth about your ancestors without guilt but with the resolve to be better than that.
Now FOX News and the GOP claim Silicon Valley Bank folded because it was a Woke Bank. Uh huh. So Trump's deregulation had nothing to do with it. If anything goes wrong blame it on woke. Woke is the GOP's newest scapegoat.
The SVB doesn't seem to be that "woke". Greg Becker, its CEO and President, is a white male, the executive team was all white and mostly male, and its board of directors had only one African-American member and one LGBTQ member. Nothing in SVB's financial disclosure reports shows any damaging spending on diversity initiatives. The bank seems to have failed because of liquidity issues, not the "woke" quality of its bank loans. Trump's 2018 bank de-regulation seems to have contributed to the crisis, by reducing the buffer of shareholder money for absorbing losses.
“Florida is where woke goes to die,” - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis "Let your woke flag fly!" - Jen Psaki
