AMERICA'S MISINTERPRETATION OF WOKENESS TODAY
" From Politics To Mainstream Media, Apparently Today Social Awareness " WOKE Is Being Misunderstood."
From Republicans to Democrats, along with critical race theory now being introduced within our nation's school systems. It is now apparent that history is on a path to repeat itself, only this time we as a nation may not be able to recover.
Today, " Woke " or the mindset of has once again been redefined, and is now being used by the self-serving aspirations of our current administration, in their continued efforts to divide and control us. Apparently the Democrats in Congress have earmarked billions of taxpayer funds to federally fund wokeism in their districts.
We as Americans need to stop being played as fools by our official's agendas, that will be detrimental and could potentially cause a collapse of our democracy.
To understand " Woke" or the mindset of, we need to realize how our current administration has reshaped the definition to support their agendas.
History Of Woke:
Black Americans in their ongoing fight against racism and social injustice have used the term " woke " at key moments of history.
In literal terms, being woke refers to being awake and not asleep. One Urban Dictionary contributor defines woke as " being aware of the truth behind things. " Meanwhile, a current definition signals a shift in meaning to, " the act of being very pretentious about how much you care about social issues."
The Oxford Dictionary expands its definition of the word " woke" in 2017 to add it as an adjective meaning "alert to injustice in society, especially racism.
Although some say " woke " dates back to the 1800's. The earliest known examples of wokeness as a concept revolve around the idea of black consciousness " waking up "to a new reality or activist framework and dates back to the early 20th Century. In 1923, a collection aphorisms and ideas by the Jamaican philosopher Marcus Garvey included the summons " wake up Ethiopia ! wake up Africa."As a call to global Black citizens to become more socially and politically conscious. A few years later, the phrase " stay woke" turned up as part of a spoken after word in the 1938 song " Scottsboro Boys", a protest song by blues musician Huddie Ledbetter. The song describes the 1931 saga of a group of nine Black teenagers in Scottsboro, Arkansas, who were accused of raping to white women.
Ledbetter says at the end of an archival recording of the song that he had met with the defendants' lawyer, who introduced him to the men themselves. " I made this little song about down there", Ledbetter says. So I advised everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there- best stay woke, keep their eyes open.
Further, the Urban Dictionary adds: " Being woke means being aware.... knowing what's going on in the community. To summarise, woke means a person is consciously awake.
Woke first used in the 1940's referred to awareness of issues that concern social justice as well as racial justice. Awake is often rendered as woke.
In the 1942 First Volume of Negro Digest, J. Saunders Redding used the term in an article about labor unions. Twenty years later, a 1962 New York Times article was titled: If you're woke you dig it: No mickey mouse can be expected to follow today's Negro idiom without a hip assist.
On June 14, 1965 Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a commencement address called Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution at Oberlin College,
" There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.... The wind of change is blowing, and we see in our day and in our age a significant development.... The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through this social revolution."
Forward to 2008, Erykah Badu sang " I stay woke " in her popular song Master Teacher. In July 2012 Badu tweeted a message to " stay woke" in solidarity with Russian Rock Group Pussy Riot extending the fight for social injustice to another context.
Like politically correct, before it, the word "woke" has come to connote the opposite of what it means. Technically, going by The Merriam-Webster Dictionary's definition, woke means " aware of an actively attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice, " but today we are more likely to see it being used as a stick with which to beat people who aspire to such values, often wielded by those who don't recognise how un-woke they are, or are proud of that fact.
Further, politically, wokeness has been seen by some progressives and liberals as aspirational, and the hashtag #Staywoke abounds social media. Many conservatives, however view wokeness as a joke or conversely, as a societal evil akin to cancel culture. They frequently use the term " woke mob" to describe collective outrage that results in a loss of professional or social standing because of a person's beliefs, statements or actions.
The political divide is not surprising, since its Democrats and young people who are most likely to be involved in protests for racial equality.
We must take a serious look at the actions by our Democrats along with President Biden's recent claim that Republican changes to voting laws in states like Georgia are equivalent to the Jim Crow era. Biden's claims are without merit and factiously false, in blaming Republicans, and once again shifting attention away from his true intentions.
Jim Crow Laws, 1877 through 1954:
Jim Crow law, in U.S. History, any of the laws that enforced racial segregation in the south between the end of reconstruction in 1877 and the beginning of the civil rights movement in the 1950's.
After The American Civil War ( 1861-1865), most southern states and later, border states passed laws that denied African Americans their basic human rights. It is not clear how, but the minstrel characters name " Jim Crow " became a kind of shorthand for the laws, customs and etiquette that segregated and demeaned African Americans, primarily from 1870's to the 1960's.
After the Civil War, most white southerners opposed radical reconstruction and the Republican Party's support of Black civil and political rights. The Democratic Party identified itself as the "White Man's Party", and demonized the Republican Party as being " Negro Dominated, " even though Whites were in control. Determined to capture the south, Democrats " redeemed state after state.... sometimes peacefully, other times by fraud and violence.
By 1877 when reconstruction was officially over, the Democratic Party controlled every southern state. The south remained a one-party region until the civil rights movement began in the 1960's. Northern Democrats most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards African Americans offered no challenge to discriminatory policies of the southern Democrats.
Some have stated in 2014, after the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, and again today. The word woke became entwined with The Black Lives Matter movement: Instead of just being a word that signaled awareness, it became a word of action calling of injustice or racial tensions.
Today, call-it-what-you will, the term "woke" which was originally used to define one's awareness to a multitude of issues ranging as simple as to one's awareness of their community, to one's family, education, diet, healthcare, and environment, has now been redefined for the motives of our politicians and fueled by mainstream media.
As Americans, we need to open our eyes to the wedge that our elected officials are driving between us. Creating a divide we may never overcome. Since our Government, for reasons we my never understand, but I feel we do, or they can't just figure out after all these years what is needed. Together we need to stop being played for fools, and correct the present inequalities that we face, which are being promoted by the people we elect. Instead of pointing the finger, we need to be the ones that fix the present situation
FILED UNDER: May 9, 2021 Commentary, Woke, By Art Fletcher & Leonard Madison, Reporting For: Englebrook Independent News: