Don’t Sleep: the weaponization of the word woke and why we need to wake up

Woke. It’s a word that will definitely stir up emotions no matter who you are. In our current polarized climate, it’s probably dangerous for me to write about it. Yet I think I need to because we don’t have enough people standing up for what it actually means. The right has plenty of people willing to use it in their culture war and there isn’t enough resistance to that. As progressives, we need more people willing to fight against the hateful idealogy and step on a few toes. I don’t want Breakdowns&Breakthroughs to become purely a political site, there are

enough of those out there. With that being said it’d be disingenuous if I didn’t admit that a lot of what I write about is at least somewhat political in nature. I write from a progressive viewpoint and philosophy. I believe in humanity and helping people become the best versions of themselves. Which shouldn’t be a political stance but unfortunately is in our fractured society. While I don’t want to engage in the culture wars, I’m going to step in here to help move the discussion forward. 

The conservative right labels anything that it doesn’t agree with as “woke”. Whether it’s books or movies with progressive themes or movements like Black Lives Matter, whenever there’s something that goes against their idealogy they label it as “woke”. This allows them to make blanket statements without having to explain anything. When asked about the meaning most who use it seem to have trouble defining it. Though how they describe it shows that they know more than they’re letting on. A spokesperson for 2024 Presidential hopeful and Florida Man Ron Desantis said that “woke” is the idea that there are systemic injustices or systemic inequalities in the US. So essentially any criticism of our current system or threat to the current hierarchy of power is “woke”. Desantis has built his entire platform around being anti-”woke”, so his only policy is to keep things the same. Even if it’s not related to injustice he will label it “woke”. Climate Change is “woke”. Teaching kids emotional intelligence is “woke”. It’s all marketing because he and the right don’t have actual policies for governing. They have to rely on making their base feel attacked. 

That marketing works extremely well, all thanks to how the internet is designed. Labeling stories that create anger and frustration with “woke”, it ensures that more of that content will be shown to more people. This is how the attention economy works. People spend more time looking at things that make them feel outraged. That content then gets pushed by the algorithm because it’s drawing more attention which means more ad money. By creating an association between that outrage and a word, organizations and people can use just that word and not a lot else to tap into that outrage and take full advantage of the algorithm. This is exactly what Fox News and the GOP are doing with their use of the word “woke”. They don’t have to explain anything they just have to use this word which they’ve weaponized to keep their base up in arms and the algorithms will do the rest. This is why polarization is so bad in this country, the algorithms have shaped two different worlds based on the type of content that sparks strong emotional reactions. That emotional reaction keeps people activated in a way that pits them against the other side. We’re no longer one tribe in this country, we’re two or more all based on the content that’s fed to us. It’s why the “culture wars” has been such an effective tool in the rights grasping at relevancy. 

Although polarization is bad on both sides, it’s the right that has fallen into the rabbit hole the most. Whether it’s Qanon, a stolen election, or “woke”, there seems to be a break with reality. Again it’s because those in charge have taken advantage of the algorithms to make these people terrified of policies that actually would help them. That’s why “woke” actually is a boogeyman, not to the GOP base though but to those who have weaponized the word. To those people, it is their worse nightmare. If a plurality of Americans were to actually wake up to how this country actually works, they’d vote all of these assholes out. That’s where the idea of “woke” originated. It wasn’t created by white rich kids doing DMT in their college apartments. It was Black Americans who were trying to “wake up” their peers to the fact that there were systems in place meant to restrict their freedom and keep them metaphorically locked up long after the physical chains were gone. To be “woke” meant that you were aware of what was actually going on. You saw that poll taxes were just ways to restrict Black Americans from voting. You saw that Jim Crow was a means of enforcing the caste system. You saw that there was a caste system. It meant that you weren’t going to stay asleep to how this country was being run and who it was being run for. The civil rights victories of the ’60s and ’70s were in a large part due to people from different backgrounds being “woke”. If people weren’t aware of the inequities, injustices, and human rights violations in this country then they wouldn’t have stood together to fight them. That’s why it’s such an apt term, before you learn about a lot of this stuff you really are asleep. Which is pretty easy to do as evidenced by what happened in the ‘80s and ‘90s. There were people still doing the work, but consumerism and the wins of the civil rights era made people complacent, particularly white people. They thought that racism was over and it was a new golden era. An era personified by the regressive politics of Reagan and Clinton. 

Despite the challenges the internet has caused recently, its original inception did help move things in the right direction. With information spreading faster and easier, more people than ever were exposed to the fact that racism and the systems that keep it in place were still thriving. They just had different names. Instead of poll taxes, there were mandatory minimums and No Child Left Behind. They also woke up to how the financial system was failing us, sparking the Occupy Wall Street movement. We woke up to climate change too. It was easier to wake up and wake others up too. Unfortunately, misinformation can cause a lot of problems here, but we wouldn’t have many of the modern social movements and the support behind them without the Internet. That’s why I feel we need to stop playing defense against the right and start defining these movements ourselves so that people can truly understand what they mean. “Wokeness” is not about forcing anyone to live a certain way. It’s about recognizing that other people are forced to live a certain way and that either you don’t have the same rights as other people or other people don’t have the same rights you do. The core of it is recognizing injustice and refusing to accept it. 

Now I understand how monumental and challenging that task is. I also understand how polarizing this type of talk can be. It’s why a lot of politicians tread carefully and won’t directly refute the right’s rhetoric. We have a branding problem and disadvantage when it comes to sharing information, based on the type of content that the algorithms prioritize. There’s also an image problem where being “woke” can be seen as cringy, we do have a lot of Urban Outfitters teenagers trying to prove their “wokeness” with superficial social media posts. So maybe we need a new word, but we shouldn’t run from what it stands for. To be “woke” means to be aware. It means to be cognizant of how inequality is used to consolidate power. It also means being hopeful that now you’re awake other people can wake up too. Progressives shouldn’t run from this attack, they should embrace it. Being progressive means that you want to improve the systems that are broken today. The only way to do that is if people are aware of the fact that something is broken. The right is afraid of that and that’s why they’ve started this culture war. If people wake up to these facts then maybe enough of them will demand that they get fixed. In that fixing, many of those who’ve benefited from the current system like Ron Desantis will lose relevance and power because they don’t have the solutions. They may have the leg up on branding right now, but that’s not an inevitability. We’re the ones who actually know people with empathy and understanding. We can and should do better.  “Woke” may or may not be the word we use, but that doesn’t mean we should run from the meaning behind it. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t wake people up, and we won’t get to where we need to go if we don’t wake more of them up.