Defining Woke
Also Known As: *Sigh*
This was sparked by an interview where Bethany Mandel was asked by the host Briana Joy Gray to define woke. Mandel struggled with giving a definition, and admitted that Woke was hard to define, particularly given the time restraints. To Mandel’s credit, she did say that a chapter of her book was dedicated to exactly that question, but silly Bethany, the internet doesn’t read books. People on Twitter took to saying that the question “broke” Mandel. Which is kind of the evolution of the whole “DESTROYED” meme.
She later cleaned it up to a single tweet:
If that ever gets deleted:
“A radical belief system suggesting that our institutions are built around discrimination, and claiming that all disparity is a result of that discrimination. It seeks a radical redefinition of society in which equality of group result is the endpoint, enforced by an angry mob.”
That’s not a bad starting point. It’s probably as good as you can do in a limited number of characters.
Nicholas Grossman, senior editor at Arc Digital, who used to be more discerning but seems to have lost his ability to nuance lately, contributed this:
Again, in case the internet loses this:
“A clearer definition of "wokeness," and it usefully highlights the bait and switch. This definition is coherent, and does sound like something I don't want taking over society, but few believe it. When Mandel denounces specific cases of "wokeness" she's not using that definition.”
The cases referred to being Victoria’s Secret dumping their Angel models for Olympians, including Megan Rapinoe, and Mandel referring to that as “Get woke, go broke, underwear edition”.
I will now attempt to explain why those two statements (the definition and “get woke, go broke”) aren’t contradictory, although I doubt Victoria’s Secret will lose money on this.
I think I’ll take that in reverse.
I need to say this because I think Mandel used a bad example. Victoria’s secret has been hemorrhaging marketshare since the mid 2010’s. In 2013, one third of all bras sold in the united states originated from Victoria’s Secret, and that’s reduced since to one fifth. What happened? People disagree, I tend to think it has to do with better competition, pricing, and technology. Yes: Bra technology. Alongside some changing demographics and culture. I think the change from beauty models to Olympians might be a good idea because it changes the narrative of their products from “wear this to please your partner” to “these are functional and look cute”. I’m not going to say that this is going to save VS, but it’s not the silliest thing I’ve ever seen.
That said… There are cases, and the recent Bud Light controversy is going to be a gold standard example where going woke will equal going broke. That has more to do with knowing your target audience than anything else though… If your customer base is already “woke” going further “woke” probably won’t interrupt your brand. If your customer base is a lot of working class people looking for cheap beer, and you go “woke”, well… You lose billions of dollars in sales and 10% of your share price in a month.
But for the Rest?
First off… This is going to be hard, because “woke” is like “CRT” as a label, because there is a large demographic of people who use it as a stand-in to broadly describe issues that they see as problematic but may not have the time, will, or ability to properly describe. Similar to “CRT”, “Woke” is something that progressives used themselves before conservatives started using it, and they used it basically the same way conservatives do now: To describe things that basically trend alongside progressivism. I don’t think it’s entirely unreasonable with a label like this to say, “It’s hard to describe, but I know it when I see it” because I think that progressives also understand, generally, what is meant by woke and this attempt to define it is a distracting tactic. Merely telling someone that they can’t define the word they’re using does not in fact mitigate their problem, it never will, and I think that’s kind of the point.
A progressive definiton of white privilege would probably be:
“White privilege is a product of systemically racist social structures which center whiteness and marginalize people of color while reproducing white supremacy. This reinforces dominant power structures and a cultural hegemony that benefits cisgendered, heterosexual, white males at the expense of BIPOC, Latinx, and LGBTQS2+ folx."
From that, you could basically ad lib in any progressive bogeyman. A definition of “The Patriarchy” would basically be identical to “White Privilege”, maybe changing “race” to “gender”, ditto for “Heteronormativity”. These things, and so many others, combine to create the amalgam of “woke”.
From Wokal Distance:
We've all seen that jargon coming from people with similar views, politics, and ideas, all demanding sweeping social change from the left. They may do advocacy in different areas, but the similarity of the language, and the fact they are always concerned with oppression, privilege, systemic power, diversity, equity, inclusion, inequality, sex, race, and gender indicate a coherent worldview is at work here. This inability to name this ideology prevents people from criticizing the project of social, cultural, and political change coming from the left. The woke want to demand social change without acknowledging, much less defending, the worldview at the center of their project. Thus we have social and political movements, all of which use similar language, have similar policies, similar concerns, and which work together in “solidarity” with each other, all while claiming that there is no underlying common worldview which can be given a label. So I would like to now explain what I think is going on using Zebras as an analogy. This will make sense I promise you. Many animals have fur, feathers, or skin that blends in to their environment. This camouflage helps them blend in and hide. This owl is a fine example:
Zebras, however, are different. Zebra’s are covered in black and white stripes even though the environment they live in is mostly brown and green. If you see a zebra by itself, it's very easy to see. It's like they have a neon sign over them saying "lions, please eat me"
So how does Zebra Camouflage work? It's simple: Zebra camouflage works by making zebras blend with the herd so that lions can't focus on any one zebra and target it. For Lions to kill a zebra they need to be able to pick one Zebra, focus on it, and then go after it. But...If lions can't pick a target the Zebras are safe. Look at the pictures below and see how hard it would be to keep track of any one Zebra in the herd
Scientists discovered this as they studied Zebras and got confused about which individual zebra was which, because all the zebras just blend into the herd. So, they tried to fix this by tagging a zebra with red paint so they could keep track of it. Guess what happened?
The Lions killed the tagged Zebra. A tagged zebra stands out from the herd so lions can tell it apart and focus the hunt on it. If a Zebra gets separated from the herd it loses the benefit of it's camouflage, at which point the lions can focus on it, target it, and kill it.
This is a great analogy for the game the woke are playing. Once a worldview is named and defined, it can then be pointed out, highlighted, and subjected to criticism. Once you can *IDENTIFY* a worldview or set of ideas you can focus on it and criticize it.
Naming an idea lets us separate it from the herd of other ideas. The woke don't want us to label to their ideology because if that happens we can tag examples their ideology with a label when we see it. This lets us to highlight it, point it out, and examine it when we see it
We label and name things to help us "tag" them, so we can point them out and focus on them, the woke are trying desperately to destroy all of our linguistic "tags." Woke activists do not want us to be able to single out their ideas and subject them to criticism.
Woke ideas can't withstand proper rational and logical analysis. The lions of truth: evidence, logic, rationality, etc, will eat the Zebras of Wokeness, Gender Ideology, Critical Race Theory, and Critical Social Justice for lunch if they can focus on and identify them.
So, to avoid getting eaten by the lions of reason the woke want to make their ideology impossible to focus on and tag, label, or name. They want their ideas to blend in with all our other ideas, as though wokeness fits right alongside reason, evidence, logic, and rationality.
We need to use labels to be able to point at, highlight, and tag concepts so they can be seen and then examined for criticism. Using labels like "woke," "CRT," AND "Critical Social Justice," lets us tag woke ideas so we can hold them up to the light and examine them.
This is what the woke want to avoid. What the woke want is to act like all the bits of woke activism we see are unconnected phenomena spontaneously springing fourth in the name of justice in an organic and decentralized way.
They want to act as though things like BLM, Defund the Police, “Diversity, equity, and Inclusion,” and Drag Queen Story Hour are diffuse and unconnected movements when in fact they are all connected by their adherence to an underlying worldview and ideology.
Do not let them use linguistic and rhetorical sleight of hand to hide their worldview. You do not need to give an exhaustive definition in every conversation. All you need is a definition of wokeness that communicates its ideas in a clear way so people can examine it.
The woke can be as bold as they want because they often have the support of government officials and local fascist storm troopers impersonating LE.
The fun begins at the 1:40second mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXbzrxEuL54&t=105s