What does WOKE mean?

Author: Sidewalker

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#1
Sidewalker
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It seems the far right has seized on the word “woke” as asymbol of everything they don’t like, the way it is used it appears to be anumbrella term designating the “them” of their “us/them” thinking.  “Florida is where woke goes to die”, wtf doesthat even mean?

Those of you who talk about how terrible "woke" is,please clarify, how do you define “woke”, explicitly, what does “woke” mean to you?
#2
Best.Korea
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When you hate something a lot, you have to label it.
The woke has no definition used by the right wing.
It is simply used to connect separate ideas into one, to attack them.

For example, you support abortion? Well, you probably support Biden too. You probably support trans surgeries. You probably support high taxes. You are a marxist.

Woke is the word used to group people into one group, and attack that group based on all ideas in it, to avoid discussion about one particular idea. Its an attempt to dodge.

Ban guns? No! If we accept the woke, they will make us legalize trans surgeries on children. They will imprison religious people. It happened in Europe. Keep your guns!

Thats how propaganda works. Label the opposing side with a catchy nickname and use their worst ideas against them to defend your ideas that would otherwise be refuted.
#3
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@cristo71
@Best.Korea
Pakman: Good, good. I have to talk to you about Woke and Wokeness. You wrote the  book. It's in the title. One of the things I'm interested in when it comes to the Anti-woke  movement and woke as a cancer or a problem is that there's about a half dozen or more  polls that show that wokeness seems to be the predominant perspective. If you look at the  whole country, I won't give you the full list, but just so we put a couple here, there's one  poll from Pew which finds that about six in ten Americans say on the issue of going far  enough, the right far the right distance or not far enough on making trans people feel okay, not discriminated against, understanding their issues. 60% say we've hit the right note or we  actually have not gone far enough. There's one from the Hill. About 60% of the country is against  any restrictions on drag performances. This is the sort of thing I'm talking about. You maybe you  will dispute the numbers, maybe you won't. But those are some of the data I'm working with.  Doesn't it seem as though the Anti-woke idea is maybe overplaying a hand that might  do well in some parts of the country but won't win a national campaign, as evidenced  by what Ron DeSantis is seeing right now, losing 42% of his support in the primary?

Vivek: So I want to say something, which I've said before, but it does seem to  matter. So I'm going to say it anyway. The media seems to be the one that uses a  label of anti-woke to describe my campaign. I am running a campaign to revive national  identity and at the time I wrote "Woke inc." you know what? People criticized the title. Back  then, People said, "nobody knows what this word is." Okay. So at the time I wrote  the book, that was actually the chief criticism  of the title. And unlike many on both the left  and right, I will define exactly what it is that  I view as a symptom of the deeper malaise in our country.

Pakman: I thought that you were going   to define woke itself.

Vivek: Now. Well, "wokeness" is a symptom and I will define the symptom, but  it is also a deeper cancer. And wokeness is a worldview that says that there are certain  invisible social relationships between us grounded on oppression or oppressor relationships  and statuses of people based on race, gender and sexuality that you're either oppressor or  oppressed based on those genetic attributes, that there are invisible societal injustices resulting  from them, and that we have to be awake, alert to  those injustices and then correct for them. Left  to right. I think you have to agree that that's a neutral definition that describes at least what we're talking about.

Pakman: I have a different one, which is much simpler, which is simply becoming woke,  is becoming aware that there are problems in our society bigger than any one person's  circumstances. That's how I define it. And I know it's very different from what you're saying.

Vivek: That's that's a slightly different definition, and one that is set up for more people  to agree with it. But I think that that's not a, respectfully David, That's a definition that on its own does not support the specificity of policies that follow from it. Right? Racial quota systems in boardrooms. The fact that a company  cannot list on Nasdaq unless it has a certain number of quotas filled by racial minorities or  sexual minorities on its board. That is a much more specific instantiation that more closely tracks my  definition of wokeness than a general simplified definition that there are just vaguely "some things wrong" in  the world and that there are systems that don't result from individual behavior. Well, okay, that's a big  leap to get from there to racial quota systems, especially when actually in that very rule and I'm  just triple clicking on that just to get specific, but it is not an outlier. It is an example  of what we see pervasively where people then came back and said, Well, how about  veteran status or disability status?   To which the government, the SEC and the  Nasdaq said no, because that would reduce the desire to forms of diversity on that board. So  we are talking about very specific instantiation of a culture that we can't just elide in the  form of a general neutral definition, that there  
are some unfair systems that when you correct  for them, that's not the essence of the claim.  A definition that alone would support the range of policies  that we see. And so I think we have to owe it to ourselves to at least be specific and get on the  table, where I'll give Ibram Kendi at least some credit for being specific when he expressly  says "The right answer to past discrimination is present discrimination. The right answer to  present discrimination is future discrimination."   Those are his words, not mine. You have to take  people like Ayanna Pressley at their word. "We don't want any more black or brown faces that  don't want to be a black or brown voice." I know that's a little bit uncomfortable to smoke out  because it makes a lot of my friends on the left uncomfortable because they don't want to agree  with those exact statements, even though they do want to agree with the more simple and neutral definition of  wokeness that you provided. But we have to smoke that out when there are policies that directly  track what the leading advocates of this movement have said in their own words. That's not me  putting words in anybody else mouth. I think we have to own that up and get that on the table  so we can actually have an honest, clean hearted debate about it.  

Pakman: Yeah, what's interesting about that is, most of the examples you're coming up  with as someone on the progressive left are not examples I would defend. And simultaneously,  it sounds like you're also not denying that when it comes to the way we treat people, when it comes to the questions asked in these polls about Wokeness, when it comes to  trans controlling books, drag shows, etc., I'm not hearing that that's actually the fight  you really want to have. Which if that's the case,  
I like that. I think that that's good. Yeah. 

Vivek: I think that we all need to do better of "smoking out" the best argument for the side that we actually disagree with to contend with that. Not  with some "caricature" of it. I saw a little bit of it in the start of  this conversation, right, where you're going to be able to smoke out a simplified version of that which can be caricatured. But these are our fellow citizens. Their concerns come from a deep place, where if you  can do a better job of articulating and smoking out where that concern comes from, then we have an  obligation to do that. And that's what gives me my motivation in this race, where people will say,  Somebody's living 50 miles radius of where I am in central Ohio today and, for example, they say  the First Amendment applies to tech companies. Oh!, They're rubes because they don't know that  that only applies to the government. To then actually, double click on that and say, you know  what? There's something to that intuition. And it turns out if a private actor's doing what the  government actually implicitly goaded them to do,   then the First Amendment does apply in every  instance. To be able to say that when there is something of value there, don't just sweep that under the rug and reject it. Smoke it out, and then let's have that real debate.





#4
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@Sidewalker
First, note that “woke” is an adjective which originated in progressive circles. It seems to have usurped the label of “political correctness” or “politically correct.” I would define “woke” as possessing the belief that there is an oppressor/oppressed power structure based in immutable characteristics. It comprises these concepts:

Anti racism
Critical race theory
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
Intersectionality

Perhaps it includes gender theory and the trans rights movement as well, but the immutability of trans identity is in question.
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#5
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@cristo71
First, note that “woke” is an adjective which originated in progressive circles.yh black communit
Interesting, the popularity of the word clearly came out of the black community, I'm not sure "progressive circles" is the best  description of it's origination, the people who use it, would use a different term than "progressive circles".

It seems to have usurped the label of “political correctness” or “politically correct.” I would define “woke” as possessing the belief that there is an oppressor/oppressed power structure based in immutable characteristics. It comprises these concepts:
ve
Anti racism
Critical race theory
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
Intersectionality
Good answer,  I do believe it's predominantly used as code word forblack people.
Perthehaps it includesce gender theory and the trans rights movement as well, but the immutability of trans identity is in question.
Yeah,I think it started as a racist dog whistle, and now it's become a label for the "them" of a bigot's "us/them" thinking.  


#6
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@Sidewalker
Interesting, the popularity of the word clearly came out of the black community, I'm not sure "progressive circles" is the best  description of it's origination, the people who use it, would use a different term than "progressive circles".
Sure, I can readily agree to that. I should have said that the word “woke” did not originate in conservative circles. If it originated in the black community, an internal friction manifests— if “woke” does comprise the gay and trans rights movements, those are hardly causes for which the black community is known to advocate. As Douglas Murray likes to say, “Intersectionality… isn’t (intersectional)!”

Good answer,  I do believe it's predominantly used as code word forblack people.
Oh, so you are far more interested in declaring what you believe than learning what I believe, despite your thread’s pretenses otherwise. Duly noted!

Yeah,I think it started as a racist dog whistle, and now it's become a label for the "them" of a bigot's "us/them" thinking. 
To this, I refer you back to my previously stated observations above.
#7
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woke is about being overly sensitive to identity politics of minorities. calling things racist that aren't racist, for example. they're so open minded that their brains have fallen out. it's fair to label the phenomenon since it's so prevalent in society. 
#8
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@cristo71
Anti racism
Critical race theory
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
Intersectionality
I think it doesn't matter how the WOKE word came out, at the end we all relate it to the concepts you listed, because sometimes the meaning of some words doesn't make sense.

All the same, I think the WOKE culture goes beyond those concepts. As far as I'm concerned, WOKE is equal to progressivism, which is a left-wing ideology aimed to change society based on the neo marxism philosophy. I mean, it's all about marxism at the end, these people are looking for an "egalitarian society", the same shit communism tried to do but in this case they don't use economy to achieve that but other means. The best way they found to change social structures is by using social movements that can align with their goals: feminism, lgbt, antiracism, indigenism, veganism, environmentalism. All those social movements are not bad per se, but it's the WOKE culture that lead them to radicalize because for Karl Marx, as you know it, the only way to change society is through the use of violence, or in the case of a "democracy", the use of coercion by law.

As an example, nobody would say that classical feminism was harmful, but on the contrary, it was wonderful becasue it changed for good how women are treated by society. However, it has been the WOKE culture that radicalized the feminist mindset as a way to break the current social structures so to build a new one with marxism as the primary foundation, and I think they are doing a big progress. If you realize, women are demanding equal pay and in some cases they got it, like the case of female american footballers. If you think this is not marxism I don't know what the fuck it is.
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@IlDiavolo
I agree for the most part. While Woke ideology ultimately leads to Neo Marxism, I don’t know if I would equate the two. There seems to be such a thing as “Woke Capitalism,” but perhaps that is just a contradiction in terms?

It is interesting to observe how Marxism has evolved from a class struggle to a race/identity struggle. Class is mutable, whereas race is not. I haven’t read a clear, cogent explanation of how it transpired, perhaps there isn’t any single explanation, but it seems that in the USA at least, progressives have lamented the lack of progress in black communities, especially after the improvements provided by the civil rights movement and the assistance provided by LBJ’s “Great Society.” CRT addresses the former specifically, while Neo Marxism addresses both, I think. Also, postmodernism in the academic world is largely responsible for the shift in focus from class to identity, I believe.

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@Sidewalker
Woke us just another thing for Karens to bemoan.
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@Barney
Especially anti-Marxist genetically oppressive Karens!



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#12
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@cristo71
Oh, so you are far more interested in declaring what you believe than learning what I believe, despite your thread’s pretenses otherwise. Duly noted!
Offended that I also share an opinion, the word for that is "snowflake", we were talking about woke.
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@Sidewalker
Do you think woke has any elements of race to the term?
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@IlDiavolo
for sure. They lost on Classism, so they went straight to racism. If it wasn't a Marxist movement, there would be no calls to create systemic remedies awarding people  "social justice" based on skin color. Most left demagogues embrace Ibram X Kendi, not shun.

 “The life of racism cannot be separated from the life of capitalism,” he says. “In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist.”

-Kendi
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@Sidewalker
Offended that I also share an opinion, the word for that is "snowflake", we were talking about woke.
Offended? No. Disappointed in the fraudulent curiosity of your OP and your subsequent one-dimensional insights? Definitely… somewhat…

For those who might be curious, interested, and have an attention span greater than that of a goldfish, I offer up John McWhorter, author of “Woke Racism”:


Or, half as long but same idea:


And finally, for those who lack the above qualities, I posit this instead:


#16
Best.Korea
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@cristo71
I dont even know why people bother posting so many links here.
I wouldnt watch any of that even when I have time to.
#17
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@Best.Korea
Aint nobody got time.

#18
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@Best.Korea
Well, I do it for a few reasons:  to add value (education, entertainment, etc.), avoid plagiarism, avoid “reinventing the wheel,” and not everyone is what you might call “a reader.” I definitely prefer it over the pseudo intellectual ramblings of a bot.
#19
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@cristo71
not everyone is what you might call “a reader.”
Almost all noteworthy books are available on youtube as an audiobook.... But I guess some people hate to use the ears (or cannot)
#20
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@Greyparrot
That’s what I mean about “adding value.” Their horn section is on par with Tower of Power.

#21
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@cristo71
TOP is top for a reason.
#22
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@Greyparrot
Even audiobooks require one to set aside the time… time that could be spent on this site!

Please, take that as sarcastically as it was intended.
#23
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@Greyparrot
I have a rather limited amount of time on Earth. Listening to books is the dumbest way to use it. It would just build a false idea of personal importance. World wont get better if I read a few books. Books are boring junk filled with propaganda of someone else.
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@Best.Korea
 Books are boring junk filled with propaganda of someone else.
Every historic Marxist regime agreed with you about books. You should really support Marxism.
#25
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@cristo71
Even audiobooks require one to set aside the time… time that could be spent on this site!

Please, take that as sarcastically as it was intended.

My eyes seem to be going faster than my ears as I age. God bless audiobook technology for the age impaired.

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@Greyparrot
I used to be a marxist. I realized that marxism doesnt work. People are stupid and cant understand. You cant have utopia in this. This world is filled with evil. Communism doesnt work with wild animals. Marx wasted time writing woke manuals.
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@Greyparrot
The only true thing in Communist Manifestoo is struggle of the opposite classes. It indeed will end with common demise of everyone engaging in such struggle.
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Sidewalker
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@cristo71
Offended that I also share an opinion, the word for that is "snowflake", we were talking about woke.
Offended? No. Disappointed in the fraudulent curiosity of your OP and your subsequent one-dimensional insights? Definitely… somewhat…

For those who might be curious, interested, and have an attention span greater than that of a goldfish, I offer up John McWhorter, author of “Woke Racism”:


Or, half as long but same idea:


And finally, for those who lack the above qualities, I posit this instead:

LOL, well I guess we know what your hot button is, don't we Pumpkin.


#29
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@Sidewalker
well I guess we know what your hot button is
“What you mean ‘we,’ White Man?”

#30
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Woke ideals promote social justice and equality.
They raise awareness to systemic injustices present.
Through woke ideology, marginalized voices amplify.
It acknowledges historical and ongoing oppression.
Woke advocates empower marginalized individuals to speak.
It seeks to dismantle structures that perpetuate inequality.
Woke fosters empathy and understanding among communities.
Open discussions challenge deeply ingrained societal biases.
By being woke, people educate themselves constantly.
Woke individuals question norms and challenge conventions.
It strives to create inclusive and diverse spaces.
Woke principles advocate for conscious allyship.
It interrogates power dynamics and encourages introspection.
Woke forces society to examine its injustices.
Activists pushing for change find empowerment.
Woke movements inspire solidarity amongst different groups.
It supports progress towards an equitable future.
Woke challenges standard narratives and encourages critical thinking.
It highlights the need for continuous learning.
Through being woke, individuals learn from mistakes.
Woke pushes for the eradication of discrimination.
It aims to achieve true equality and inclusivity.
Woke ideologies counteract systemic disadvantages faced.
It acknowledges intersections between race, gender, and sexuality.
Woke conversations expose unconscious biases and prejudices.
It mobilizes individuals to fight for change.
Woke challenges individuals to acknowledge their privilege.
It empowers individuals to become active allies.
Through being woke, people confront uncomfortable truths.
Woke encourages collaboration to achieve collective liberation.
It sheds light on often ignored perspectives.
Woke ideologies dismantle oppressive structures and systems.
It reminds us to elevate suppressed voices.
Woke advocates strive for justice and equity.
They seek to create a fair society.
Woke inspires individuals to challenge the status quo.
It empowers individuals to use their voice.
Through being woke, people work towards progress.
Woke principles address systemic inequities experienced.
It calls for dismantling power imbalances present.
Woke ideologies remind us of our humanity.
They encourage empathy and compassion towards others.
Woke movements spark conversations that generate change.
It brings communities together to tackle injustice.
Woke principles inspire individuals to take action.
They facilitate the creation of inclusive environments.
Through being woke, we strive for unity.
Woke ideologies equip individuals with knowledge.
It combats ignorance and bigotry through education.
Woke advocates fight against societal discrimination.
They challenge oppressive systems and structures.
Woke encourages self-reflection and personal growth.
It motivates individuals to unlearn harmful beliefs.
Through being woke, people actively dismantle prejudices.
Woke movements foster a sense of empowerment.
It nurtures an environment that values diversity.
Woke ideologies champion social, economic, and political justice.
They shine a light on hidden inequalities.
Woke activists uplift historically ignored voices.
It paves the way for a fairer society.
Through being woke, individuals embrace intersectionality.
Woke guides individuals to question societal norms.
It promotes inclusive policies, practices, and institutions.
Woke activists work towards a more equitable future.
It demands accountability from those in power.
Woke ideologies pave the way for change.
They inspire individuals to be better allies.
Woke pushes us to confront unconscious biases.
It challenges us to create inclusive spaces.
Through being woke, individuals can effect change.
Woke principles remind us to uplift others.
It gives marginalised communities hope for justice.
Woke ideologies dismantle harmful systems and structures.
They foster environments where all thrive.
Woke is a catalyst for social progress.