The term “woke” is used regularly now in the U.S. and Canada. What does it mean and what does it imply? There is certainly much emotion embedded in the term.
The quote was made in the Washington Post[1] that the word “woke” is “a slang term for … progressive activism,” according to Taryn Fenske, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s communications director, who added that the term also referred to a belief that there were systemic injustices in the United States. In the context of racism, the term “woke” has come to reflect aspects of systemic racism, where the term means being alert to the ways in which racism can be subtle. Generally, the WaPo article says, the word is applied to a broad range of things that were generally embraced by the political left.
A more recent understanding of the word “woke” as reported by Urban Dictionary[2] is that it is an obsessive or deliberately obtuse approach to certain civil rights, particularly in relation to equality. The term has also been taken to mean that the “woke” person may be acting in their own self-interests to achieve their own ends. This puts a person on the defensive. If it is true, show us the objective evidence for a rebuttal.
It is generally a weaponized word used by one side of the political spectrum to disparage the other side and attain power for itself. There is more than the word “woke” that is being said. It communicates a judgmental type of emotion or affect. Disparagement can be conveyed to others through emotional contagion, as contagious emotions spread through society without words necessarily being attached. It is saying that somehow the so-called “woke” people are to be disparaged, ridiculed, or scorned, or even rejected, vilified, or denigrated, without actually using those or similar words. Often the receiver, if they tend to be sensitive to these types of judgments, and subconsciously anticipate that they may be made toward and about them, may absorb whichever word, those or other similar words, that they may sense is being described and attributed to them, although the feeling is a negative one. Instead, they need a “gatekeeper.”
The term “woke” does seem to refer to people who have insight[3], people who see through things and see what’s going on, with an unbiased view, in the interpersonal, social, and psychological underground of society. The term seems to be derived from “awoken” which is generally regarded as a symbolic reference to insightful. This is generally regarded as a good thing, but the term “woke” is often framed in a negative context. People with more conservative views in the U.S. seem to be less inclined to have this insight or may have a different type of insight reflecting their bias. They may want to focus criticism on people who have insightful ideas into psychological and social causes of unrest, racism, and related issues, by calling them “woke”. It is as if these insightful people should be shunned by those with a conservative bias because of their so-called liberal ideas, being on the side of those who disavow racism and similar ideas. Those with more conservative views must feel some threat there because they sense that their view may be lacking in unbiased insight and that other people who are more neutral, being perhaps prospective but undecided proponents of the conservative view, will catch on to this and see the conservative side as lacking merit as they would be exposed as using the meaningless term “woke” purely to join a cause, thereby losing more proponents.
In this way, the word “woke” carries much in the way of embedded emotion, so that the emotion (by the tone of voice or the context in which it is printed) can convey these negative types of words without actually saying them. It is embedded in the way that when a word gets used a lot in a similar context there is an obvious attitude about it that carries with it some unsaid emotional component. This can be conveyed automatically now just by hearing the word or seeing it in print. If it is directed toward a person or group, it can be automatically absorbed by the receiving person, unless that person is aware of the manipulative possibility in their use of the word and their “gatekeeper” then disavows it. Then they don’t accept any of the emotion that is embedded with the word. Their gatekeeper is that part of themselves that filters out incoming material from others so that only that which is a general fit to one’s values and beliefs is accepted internally. Your gatekeeper is the part of you that decides whether to accept an incoming feeling, emotion, or belief as opposed to letting it enter into yourself (into your emotions and beliefs) automatically.
A person susceptible to the effects of emotional contagion with a weak gatekeeper, uncertain as to what they believe in, and no real certainty about what the word means may automatically absorb an emotion that is carried by the word. It is likely to make them nervous or worried if they think “woke” is a bad thing and they have caught some bad feeling about it. If they have made a comment or done something that seems a little on the liberal side, if they don’t want to be disparaged, ridiculed, or rejected, they will do all they can not to be thought of as “woke”. The average person will probably take it as that one shouldn’t be “woke” if one wants to be on the good side of the apparently strong people. If they agree with the meaning and the context and think it is a good thing, their gatekeeper allows it and the accompanying positive emotion to be absorbed. This is especially true if one has a sense of the meaning of the word as spread in society and in the news and wants to be kept on the right side of things.
It seems to constitute a message to the people that if you want to be on the “in” side of society, as long as the conservative wing feels it has power, you should not be “woke.” It seems to carry an embedded meaning that being labeled as “woke” will ruin one’s reputation among the “in-crowd,” defined by a user of Urban Dictionary as “a small group of people perceived by others to be particularly fashionable, informed, or popular.”[4] The membership of this “in-crowd” is usually the majority in a specific area or people.
De Santis was quoted as saying that he views wokeness as “a form of cultural Marxism” or an attempt to de-legitimatize cultural institutions. Cultural Marxism is a code word for socialist. The whole town is painted black, in other words, anyone labeled “woke” is regarded by the in-crowd, by the Governor, as being socialist or against valued cultural institutions. This is fear-based, as socialist countries in Europe seem to be doing quite well.
The institutions are not named, likely on purpose, as to make things specific is to remove any emotion attributed to the charge. Emotions are easier to apply to things generally, and the PR people know this. And the embedded emotions are the major aspect here that can do damage. If one veers away from the term woke as applying to themselves, as if they are not in that group that is a woke group, one will automatically find oneself on the right-hand side of the political spectrum, as others may treat them that way. Then they may find themselves agreeing with conservative views. Likely, though, to be there, they would be leaning that way in the first place, even if subconsciously.
The gatekeeper, the executive part of the brain, knows that we need to use logic, facts, and knowledge to make executive decisions on when it is alright to open the internal gates to allow incoming emotions to be caught and even absorbed, or whether to just connect or let them bounce off of you. It is the job of the mind to decide when this is constructive and when it isn’t. The mind gives the instructions, and the body responds automatically to the mind’s instructions. So, if you hear yourself being called “woke” and you get upset right away you are absorbing, for at least a few moments, some emotion embedded in the word. It is important then to reflect on this so you can make an informed choice to agree or disagree that the term fits you.
Without this informed choice, there appears to be a conditioned response involved, where the use of the term elicits an emotional response that has to do with somehow shunting a person who is “woke” aside, to the rear of the bus so to speak. So this term seems to arouse a response in people that they shouldn’t be “woke”, as it becomes an automatic reflex, without thinking, that “woke” is a bad thing to be. When a term is a short term with a hard-sounding consonant, as the k sound is, in a short one-syllable word, it brings a mild unpleasant subconscious emotion in the person, that has more power than may be conscious. People regarded as woke would be shunned. This is not just semantics, as the emotion is embedded in the word. People who manufactured this term were likely attracted to this effect, even if not consciously. But “woke” has no real actual substance as a meaning.
All the term woke is, is the term awoke without the a. Awoke, awake, and aware mean people can see what’s going on. It means people are more awake and aware when they are woke, as the alternative is being asleep and unaware. When the engineer is asleep, the train goes off the tracks.
This strikes one as “woke” being a term that is attacking enlightened people. This is run by fear, fear that if people find out what’s really going on and expose it to a larger segment of the population, there will be some serious negative consequences as a result of that exposure. The “woke” campaign seems to be run by fear that enlightenment may mean something negative for the conservative-minded folks. Fear is not a good motivation unless the cause of the fear is realistic.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/05/warnock-walker-georiga-runoff-trump-constitution/?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere_AMP&location=alert#link-JPXHYIH6INC25DYUTHQXYZQYJY
[2] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=woke
[3] Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines insight as the power or act of seeing into a situation, or the act
or result of apprehending the inner nature of things or of seeing intuitively: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/insight
[4] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=in%20crowd