Woking on Sunshine
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution. — John Adams
Wherever the relevance of speech is at stake, matters become political by definition, for speech is what makes man a political being. — Hannah Arendt
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions. — Vaclav Havel
Slang or slanguage is constant and evolving. It can begin from numerous variant sources. Professionals in certain occupations, people in certain regions, people of various ethnicities, younger generations, words created by writers and musicians: there are dozens of potential sources of new words and phrases.
Some appear and disappear quickly. If they stick around awhile, they get incorporated into dictionaries. The word ‘woke’ has been getting increased use by politicians in recent years. Especially in the last year, it’s being demonized as a negative by a major political party.
So it’s important to understand what it means and its origins.
Merriam Webster: “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”
They also say “It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning.”
And indicates it generally refers to social awareness.
Noting that tracing words to earliest uses is often impossible, their research indicates it first gained broad use after the release of a 2008 Erykah Badu song, ‘Master Teacher’.
Whether one believes the human race was a deity creation or originated via evolutionary processes doesn’t matter in language research. All language began as a set of noises that groups began using via the group’s agreement that the word and its meaning were acceptable for a common understanding.
After the Badu song, per Merriam Webster (bolding mine):
”Stay woke became a watch word in parts of the black community for those who were self-aware, questioning the dominant paradigm and striving for something better. But stay woke and woke became part of a wider discussion in 2014, immediately following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The word woke became entwined with the Black Lives Matter movement; instead of just being a word that signaled awareness of injustice or racial tension, it became a word of action. Activists were woke and called on others to stay woke.
Like many other terms from black culture that have been taken into the mainstream, woke is gaining broader uses. It’s now seeing use as an adjective to refer to places where woke people commune: woke Twitter has very recently taken off as the shorthand for describing social-media activists.”
In the world, all countries have a dominant or majority group of citizens. That majority can be defined by skin color and/or a specific ethnic background. Further subdivisions can arise over time, such as differences in belief systems or religions. The largest group with the most practical power and influence often asserts its dominance by resistance to the words, actions or beliefs of the smaller groups.
(I’ve eliminated the hyperlinks and numbers associated with footnotes in the following Wikipedia passage and added bolding.)
In February 1890, the United States government broke a Lakota treaty by adjusting the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota (an area that formerly encompassed the majority of the state) and breaking it up into five smaller reservations. The government was accommodating white homesteaders from the eastern United States; in addition, it intended to "break up tribal relationships" and "conform Indians to the white man's ways, peaceably if they will, or forcibly if they must". On the reduced reservations, the government allocated family units on 320-acre (1.3 km2) plots for individual households. The Lakota were expected to farm and raise livestock, and to send their children to boarding schools. With the goal of assimilation, the schools taught English and Christianity, as well as American cultural practices. Generally, they forbade inclusion of Indian traditional cultures and languages.
To help support the Lakota during the period of transition, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) was to supplement the Lakota with food and to hire white farmers as teachers for the people. The farming plan failed to take into account the difficulty that Lakota farmers would have in trying to cultivate crops in the semi-arid region of South Dakota. By the end of the 1890 growing season, a time of intense heat and low rainfall, it was clear that the land was unable to produce substantial agricultural yields. Unfortunately, this was also the time when the government's patience with supporting the so-called "lazy Indians" ran out. They cut rations for the Lakota in half. With the bison having been virtually eradicated a few years earlier, the Lakota were at risk of starvation.
The people turned to the Ghost Dance ritual, which frightened the supervising agents of the BIA. Those who had been residing in the area for a long time recognized that the ritual was often held shortly before battle was to occur. Kicking Bear was forced to leave Standing Rock, but when the dances continued unabated, Agent James McLaughlin asked for more troops. He claimed the Hunkpapa spiritual leader Sitting Bull was the real leader of the movement. A former agent, Valentine McGillycuddy, saw nothing extraordinary in the dances and ridiculed the panic that seemed to have overcome the agencies, saying:
Nonetheless, thousands of additional U.S. Army troops were deployed to the reservation. On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was arrested for failing to stop his people from practicing the Ghost Dance. During the incident, one of Sitting Bull's men, Catch the Bear, fired at Lieutenant "Bull Head", striking his right side. He instantly wheeled and shot Sitting Bull, hitting him in the left side, between the tenth and eleventh ribs; this exchange resulted in deaths on both sides, including that of Sitting Bull.
The French phrase Vive la difference means ‘long live the differences’ and was initially invoked to indicate an appreciation of the differences associated with men and women. But dominant groups seeking to maintain their superior standing often don’t celebrate the features of those they wish to address as inferiors.
The Ghost Dance is one example of that. Calling the indigenous tribes of America ‘heathens’ is another example. Christian European settlers and their descendants were majority Protestant and some looked down on the ‘heathen’ tribes, on Catholics, Muslims, Jews, agnostics and atheists and other people who created fresh divisions within the larger Protestant faith. Among other events, world history includes at least 50,000 witch burnings between 1400 and 1900, along with other means of execution.
Indian children were pulled from families and placed in Christian schools and orphanages all over the US Midwest and West. Between 1769 and 1833 in what is now California, 21 outposts and missions were established by Catholic priests to convert tribal members to Christianity backed by the military force of the Spanish Empire. And certainly, many Indians rejected and rebelled against this violent imposition.
Both politicians and religious leaders have utilized rumors, conspiracy theories and lies to persuade people, playing on their suspicions, biases and ignorance about people that differ in some way. Some of them claim playing on the prejudices of others is inherent in human nature. It isn’t. Bigotry and hatred are taught. And often become deadly.
Today those leaders seek to gain or maintain power, or their paychecks, by playing up divisions. Celebrating or appreciating the differences in people, their appearances, manner of dress, their speech, political ideas, religious beliefs, their musical/artistic/language differences, scientific knowledge, physical skills or limitations is more ‘inherent’ in the majority of people. Communities and nations who emphasize their acceptance and enjoyment of a broad and diverse population tend to be safer, stronger and more content.
Those opposed to diversity or against the elimination of differences in the human rights, freedoms and opportunities available to different groups are intolerant and their motives are generally suspect and based in self promotion, but at the expense of others. For many people, some discomfort occurs with change itself, and it occurs in lots of things: religious ceremonies, technology, popular music, fashion, work. Some leaders choose to exploit those discomforts, turning them into fears and hatred, solely for their own advantage or the advanage of a few of their big campaign donors.
It signifies their own weakness as leaders. For any problems the nation or their district faces, they lack any constructive solutions. They aren’t ‘for’ anything. They are ‘against’ anything a political opponent is ‘for’. And they’re ready to destroy even wildly effective government programs to demonstrate their cred as ‘againsters’.
In part, that’s the peril of a two party system of government that had John Adams so worried. Just as some religious leaders put little focus on bettering a community, it gives rise to the laziest copout there is: that every decision is between the good and the holy and the bad, with sin and devils evident.
And the best way to counter the divisiveness and hate provocations is through consideration, kindness, logic and education. It doesn’t matter what your religion or political party is, if your clergy or elected representative promotes book censorship, bookburning, physical violence or the government censorship of education and training, they’ve already failed at leadership.
This is why the meaning and origin of the word ‘woke’ is critical to our understanding when you hear it being used by the tiny ex-wrestling coach Jim Jordan to suggest that ‘wokeness’ is harmful to the country. Another former member of the Freedom Caucus, Florida Governor DeSantis, is invoking it as a call to arms every time he wants to censor a history book, shut down a debate on any topic, restrict the rights of women or non-heterosexuals, or voice opposition to the very idea that government has an interest in or obligation to promote the good health and welfare of the citizens it’s supposed to serve.
And using the terms ‘woke' and ‘wokeness’ is deliberately and overtly racist. They can deny it repeatedly, they can claim they meant what Merriam Webster defined, that they used it as a ‘general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning’ but grabbing the words of other groups a politician is opposed to, stripping away its original meaning and applying a new meaning to suit one’s self is theft and in this case, a racist theft. Just as some will call a liberal a Commie, they’re implying that liberals or Democrats are Black criminals. It’s meant as a racist slur, a dogwhistle to white supremacists every time they utter the word.
Woke is derived from Black culture and became a standard during the BLM protests against police brutality and a biased justice system. The majority of marchers in most places were white, but Republican leaders chose to make ludicrous claims that there were tens of thousands of ‘antifa’ out there, burning down cities and killing people.
93% of the marches and protests involved no arson, violence or looting and could only be construed as peaceful. By far, more assaults (or overuse of force) came from police and security, and in far too many cases against journalists. And rightwing groups, from militias, Proud Boys & similar violent gangs, the KKK, Hell’s Angels and others also contributed far more violence than the leftwing ones. Deaths attributed to BLM members were zero, to Antifa, just one. And up to 26 million Americans marched (about 1 in 13 citizens) and took part in over 9,000 events in the largest protest movement in US history.
That’s 1 in 13 saying they oppose racial targeting, racial stereotyping and an ongoing pattern of violence from certain police departments in the country who are sworn to serve and protect. To protect who? From what? Standing for social justice is as American as apple fritters.
They own the woke, the reality of personal history experienced directly or by observation. Decrying all Democratic politicians as part of or beholden to BLM marchers grants them too much credit and diminishes the hard won changes the marchers and their leaders got for their message and persistence. They understood the pain and need for reforms and they won them.
They own their history and there’s no race theories involved. If you take their language and use it as a political weapon for your own gain, coddling white supremacists while censoring BLM and Black history, there’s no valid reason to justify it. Racism denial has become an essential part of the modus operandi of many Republican officeholders precisely because racism is practiced so frequently.
The Freedom spouting DeSantis, like the Freedom Caucus that gave him his wings, stands for denying women all their human rights, aiding and abetting a president whose pandemic denials and lies helped the virus kill far more Republicans than Democrats, has passed off his moral judgment that no school employee can talk about homosexual people to younger children, will limit what local boards and school superintendents can mandate to protect health, and what the educators and parents guiding them can teach. What ‘freedoms’ are actually being protected or gained by the caucus that bears the name?
In 2020 Florida’s 13.1% poverty rate was 2 points higher than the national average. For Black people (19.8%) it was double the rate for white Floridians (9.2%). Its affordable housing availability rank is 50th, the lowest in the country. Its affordable healthcare coverage for people under 65 ranks 46th.
Where’s the DeSantis’ proposals to fix what's broken in Florida instead of addressing the unbroken things? I used to think ‘woke’ meant ‘aware’ but it’s way more than that. DeSantis is very aware of what he’s doing, leading moths to a flame. Unlike Trump he’s not prone to impulsive decisions that require his staff to scramble to implement without prior notice. So he can play authoritarian games with people’s lives like Trump did, without the train wreckage of Trump’s criminal and destructive impulses.
He’s not woke and socially aware Black or Brown or White activists aren’t threatening to do anything except promote more justice in our justice system.. But in covering up history and biology, and his consent to limits on human rights for women, in his refusal to do anything at all to alleviate or correct racism, he’s become the champion of White supremacy and White male grievance at the very idea that women and people of color are full fledged people too.
Whether it’s Trump, his Florida Prince in waiting or the other right wing extremists dishing up fresh fear casseroles, it’s time to consider a return to the aims and goals of a just society with dreams worth working for.
And let’s not forget, this fear-different-people approach isn’t exactly new. Commies/Blacks/Elvis/Hippies/Beatles/Environmentalists/Peaceniks are coming for your guns/women/children/stoves next. Then they’ll march in the pedophile cannibal drag queens and force us all to eat rainbow flavored grits.
Josh Turner (who teamed up with Allison Young to create The Bygones, featured in Tuesday’s newsletter) was part of a college a capella group that included Carson McKee (bass voice and drums here). The equally talented Reina del Cid is the other lead singer on guitar and Toni Lindgren is on bass guitar.