Woke: a little word with a big reach

In this article I explore what the word woke means to different people. I look at the historical context and also at what's happening to this word in modern society. In order to discuss this, I have spent a month researching, using many different online sources in order to truly try and understand what this one little word means in 21st century society both here in the UK and in America.

Who is saying what

Knowing I wanted to write this article, I asked people in a Facebook writers' group of 147,000 members to tell me what the words woke and anti-woke mean to them, what the woke and anti-woke agendas are, and who leads them, making it clear this was research for an article. After a few hours, there were hundreds of responses, then the group administrator deleted the post and all the comments as he'd received many complaints and as it had got very political. Everything was lost, and couldn't be retrieved. I scribbled down what I could remember from the bits I had managed to read. At the same time, a previous Facebook post of mine about my blog on positivity and mental health also received a lot of attention and another thread about woke spontaneously broke out in the comments. Fearing this might also get deleted, I took screenshots of all the comments.

The thread mainly involved two men speaking out against what they feel is the problem with woke. Both were white and male, one in the UK and one in Canada.

What I learnt from the comments on both posts is that there is genuine concern that the woke agenda is a threat to freedom of speech and that it is toxic and judgemental, the very opposite of what it purports to be. Woke was described as dangerous, fascist, the current social order and a modern secular religion.

One man gave an example of woke by sharing a picture from an exhibition. "This is from the Conceptions of whiteness exhibit at Vancouver Art Gallery, paid for by the government. It shows a straight white guy with the caption 'When you're the problem...' Now if that image had a person who was Black, Jewish, Holding a trans flag, Wearing a rainbow (gay), Brown, Asian, There would have been protests. However, since it clearly shows a man intended to represent a straight white guy, this was 100% cool. This is how woke operates. The white man is at the bottom of the totem pole in the cult of woke." Only a few people identified themselves as woke. They felt that people who were anti-woke were ignorant, and that the anti-woke stance enables straight white people to be racist, homophobic and transphobic.

More of the words used in the comments from both posts are included in the summary below.

I then did a search of some of the people mentioned in the comments, and found numerous other examples from both the UK and the US where people used the word woke. I'm presenting just a tiny sample.

In the US

In an article for The Conversation, Professor of Philosophy Letitia Meynell recalls that in the US a few years ago, there was considerable anxiety in some quarters about political correctness, particularly at universities. Now, she says, the concern is known as wokeness, and that even though the terminology has changed, the concerns are much the same. She is interested in looking at ways to think about and discuss political correctness/wokeness so as to avoid polarisation and to increase mutual understanding, and she says that typically wokeness and woke ideology are terms of abuse, used against a variety of practices that, despite their diversity, have a similar character. She explains that what is often dismissed as woke are things that are new, or requests for things to be viewed in a new way.

Erika Christakis, an employee at Yale university, was part of the argument that broke out about American universities. She came under attack in 2015 for her response to a request from the Intercultural Affairs Committee that students should avoid wearing racially insensitive costumes at Hallowe'en, such as Native American headgear, turbans or blackface. She wrote an email to students saying that they should be able to wear any costume they want. Christakis said, "Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious, a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition." This led to a massive debate about free speech that became entangled with the concept of woke. Those who attack woke ideology cite this case as an example of how it is being used to take away people's rights.

Jordan Peterson is a psychologist and author who appears on US television with views that he also expresses on X. Recently on X he said about the American Psychological Association (APA), "Even the academics are waking up to the fact that @APA wokification will be the death of the clinical and research enterprise. I'm dead serious. Obviously it's time for a new organization. Where are my colleagues? Still hiding? I'm afraid so." He attached an article which says that the strategic vision of the APA in terms of diversity, equality and inclusion amounts to "the institutional wokeification of the entire organization, which in turn will (a.) dictate how psychology is viewed by the public, (b.) how it is taught in universities, and (c.) how the training of professional psychologists will be socially engineered following APA’s systemic policies and practices drenched in CSJ [Centre for Social Justice] propaganda."

Mike Pompeo, who served as a senior politician under Donald Trump, tweeted in 2019 that “WOKEISM, MULTICULTURALISM, all the -isms—they’re not who America is."

Ron DeSantis, a governor in Florida, used anti-wokeness in his 2022 reelection campaign in Florida, saying, "This is where woke goes to die." DeSantis signed a woke law — the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act, which would outlaw classroom teaching in Florida similar to Thatcher's Section 28 we had here in the UK in the 1980s and 90s. It was blocked by a federal judge.

In the UK

A Guardian article from 2022 explained that, according to an analysis of public attitudes, an overwhelming majority of people in the UK hold the woke belief that it is important to be alive to issues of race and social justice (the Merriam Webster definition of woke). Four in five Britons said that they believed in being attentive to those issues. The researchers concluded that the country is not as divided by culture wars as is often assumed. This implies that there is more agreement in the UK than there is polarisation. Or at least there was in 2022.

In a 2023 article for the Evening Standard, Ayesha Hazareka explained that she knew a backlash was coming after she was working on the Equality Act 2010 as an adviser for the Labour Party. She pinpointed Donald Trump's US election campaign and victory as a key turning point,

"Since then, everything has changed. His arrival unleashed a rage which had been bubbling away under the surface of society. He gave people — including other politicians — the permission to let it all out. To say the things which, until then, would have been deemed impolite, rude or not socially acceptable. The war on woke began."

Now in 2024, Esther McVey, a minister in the Conservative UK government talks about "the woke minority." McVey, a UK Conservative MP, was appointed in November 2023 as a Cabinet Minister without portfolio. In practice, she is dubbed our common sense czar. Her official remit includes

• driving delivery of government’s priorities and ensuring effective communication of government’s priorities, and

• ensuring efficiency and value for money in government policy and ensuring efficiency and value for money in government delivery.

But it has been widely shared that she has been appointed for another reason. The Guardian quoted a government source when she was appointed, saying that she will be "leading the charge on the government’s anti-woke agenda."

Reporting on her appointment, The Big Issue stated that a shadow looms over Britain. "It’s not our shortage of affordable housing, soaring energy bills, or the climate crisis. It’s the “scourge of wokery”. But concerned Brits can sleep soundly in their beds. Former GB News presenter Esther McVey is here to sort it." They go on to quote Cleo Madeleine, communications coordinator for Gendered Intelligence:

“When we say someone is woke, what we mean is aware of structural inequality. But in a right-wing political context, it’s become an insult. It simply signifies to a right-wing base, we will throw queer and other marginalised groups under the bus to fight these culture war battles.”

McVey recently wrote an article in the Daily Express, about how the public refuses to be browbeaten by the woke establishment. She says that the Labour Party "seem to have been completely captured by woke extremists," and that a Labour government "will jeopardise Brexit and inflict woke socialism." In the same article she writes that the Irish referendum regarding gender and family, which would have provided a wider concept of family and women's roles, shows that the public will not be browbeaten by a "woke minority" and adds, "Let's hope the result in Ireland brings about a retreat of the woke extremists in the UK as well." She includes phrases such as "woke extremism", "zany ideas" and "extreme ideological sect." She refers to woke people as "the chattering classes."

In 2023, Nigel Farage, the former Brexit party leader, dubbed the NatWest bank a “woke warrior” during a very public argument about his financial affairs. Farage is very outspoken about his fight with everything woke. And some of our press use the label in a derogatory way too. In The Daily Express, a recent story about Farage says he "has blasted a woke activist's comments as nonsense in a fiery showdown about climate change and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on his GB News show." The woke activist is Tim Crosland, director of a climate change charity.

Oliver Dowden, ex-chairman of the UK Conservative government, called woke a “dangerous form of decadence” that is “everywhere,”

Historical context

The history of the word woke is well documented. It began in America in the early years of the twentieth century, and was used in Black vernacular as a warning to be wary of racism. It is only recently that wokeness has become a staple of British and US media and political discourse. Its exponential trajectory can be traced back to 2014, when the Black Lives Matter movement gained global attention during anti-racism protests after the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. The phrase “stay woke” was used widely. It stuck. And then it grew. It was adopted by liberal social justice advocates during the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements in 2020.

Over time, the word ceased to be specifically about issues of colour. For decades, it had been predicted that the word could be appropriated by white people who would mangle the original meaning. Politifact say that William Melvin Kelley discussed this as far back as 1962 in a New York Times essay. This often happens in the evolution of language - the meanings of words change. But this particular word has changed radically. The word woke went beyond applying to racial social justice and increasingly became used in relation to to LGBT+ rights, feminist causes, and environmental issues.

ABC News put it succinctly: "The term has recently been used by some conservatives as an umbrella term for progressive values, often using it with negative connotations. However, the term was originally coined by progressive Black Americans and used in racial justice movements in the early to mid-1900s. To be woke politically in the Black community means that someone is informed, educated and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality,"

Conservatives in the UK and in America have increasingly co-opted the term and used it as an all purpose condemnation of certain traditionally left-wing notions and values. As a result, it has all but lost its original meaning and place as a calling cry within the Black community. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, told PolitiFact that woke started on the left: "The woke were people who understood that America is a systematically racist place and also understood that capitalism is inherently unjust and unfair. The Republicans who condemn woke believe the opposite. They believe that America is inherently a great place and that socialism is inherently evil. These are the battle lines. It’s a good fight to have."

The Guardian says that the war on wokeness that really took off here in the UK in 2022, was a result of the right rallying around a made-up menace.

Research findings

In 2023, Smith et al published a comprehensive article entitled Land of Woke and Glory? The Conceptualisation and Framing of “Wokeness” in UK Media and Public Discourses. This very long report looks in detail at what's been going on over here in the UK, and includes a study analysing coverage in the UK press social media, and results from a survey asking people to define wokeness, just as I tried to do in my little way. They had considerably more success because they did it properly.

Here are some key findings about woke from their research:

It is a multi-faceted concept observed at individual, group, cultural and corporate levels, even extending to governments, and it includes a wide range of positive and negative framings. It can described as a feeling or sense, is imprecise and hard to define, and is not attributed to any particular group. Those against it can characterise it in their own terms - it is viewed as both a weakness and a danger, a threat to society. Reactions to wokeness are not straightforward; woke goes beyond the narrow parameters of a left versus right binary. For some it is a threat, for others an ideology. In the press, woke is almost always used as a derogatory label, an undesirable push for change. Issues deemed as woke such as racism, sexism, and anti-LGBT+ attitudes, are dismissed as irrelevant, not real problems. People in the UK who question the UK, such as our role in history and whether Brexit was a good idea, are unpatriotic. Woke is used mostly in isolation but also appears in phrases such as woke virus, woke brigade, woke police, denoting authoritarianism. Approximately 79% of people on Twitter /X were unfavourable towards wokeness. The figure could have been much higher due to the ironic use of hashtags and emojis. Just under half of Smith et al's survey respondents (47%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am woke." Just under a third (31%) disagreed with the statement, and just under one fifth (19%) agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am anti-woke.”

Smith et al identified six distinct woke categories.

1. The aware woke - being aware of the prejudices in society, and actively, compassionately supporting those groups who are marginalised

2. The weak woke - those with emotional and mental fragility; liberals who are childish and emotional, in a perpetual state of being offended and celebrating victimhood

3. The corporate woke - corporations who employ the language and iconography of social justice activists, which may or may not be sincere with some making hollow gestures designed to pander to modern audiences

4. The privileged woke - white, young affluent upper/middle class people who are disconnected from real social problems, where actions are motivated by the accruement of personal benefits, such as a positive self-image or receiving praise, rather than challenging the status quo

5. The woke agenda - Despite woke being viewed as weak and trivial, woke people's ideology is simultaneously viewed as a societal threat. The authoritarian woke are the woke mob who vilify those who undermine their agenda. They attack figures like JK Rowling, Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson and Piers Morgan, who become victims and celebrated underdogs, despite their wealth and influence. A woke religion has also emerged according to those with this view where woke people internalise a secular doctrine in defiance of reason and science. Wokeness is seen as oppressive and irrational in a way that parallels religious fundamentalism or even extremism.

6. The anti-woke agenda - its vagueness is observable in the sheer range of issues that it covers, including sport, sex education, the police, and theatre. The perceived misuse of the word has prompted some people to discuss its reclamation, with a minority of people saying they are OK being woke.

Summary

Here's a list showing what people in the UK and America say about woke, based on my own findings on Facebook, and on the articles and research I have read in the space of a month in Spring 2024.

Positive statements about woke

• Informed

• Educated

• Conscious of social injustice and inequality

• Respecting fairness

• Being wary of racism

• Belief in systemic failures in society and the need to address them

• Awareness

• Compassion

• Understanding what is unfair and unjust in society

• Respecting equality

• Respecting human rights

• Actively supporting groups who are marginalised

• Aware of structural inequality

• Alive to the issues of race and social justice

• Understanding systemic racism

• Understanding that capitalism is inherently unjust and unfair

Negative statements about woke

• A virus of the mind

• The current social order

• State control

• A threat to society

• Removal of freedom of speech

• A form of fascism

• Toxic

• Unkind

• Hypocritical, the opposite of what it purports to be

• Judgemental

• Prejudiced

• Blinkered

• The subordination of facts and evidence to anecdote and ideology

• Extremism

• A cult

• Weakness

• Puritanism

• Zany ideas

• Socialism

• Emotionally weak and fragile

• A tool to manipulate behaviour

• Irrational

• Oppressive

• Authoritarian mob

• Secular religion

• Hollow

• Disconnected from real social problems

• Privilege, self-praise, self-serving social script

• Unpatriotic

• A dangerous form of decadence that is everywhere

Clearly, there were many more negative statements than positive, which reflects the strength of feeling from the people who aren't fans of woke. As Politifact says, the definitions of the word are now "allover the place." Similarly, ABC News have said that "the definition of woke changes depending on who you ask." And if we needed any more evidence how literally divisive this word is, it now has two distinct meanings according to Merriam Webster:

1. aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice

2. politically liberal or progressive (as in matters of racial and social justice) especially in a way that is considered unreasonable or extreme.

Conclusions

It is abundantly obvious that the word woke means different things to different people. It is used both as an affirmation and as a slur. Of course, it's not the first word that this has happened to. The word queer is another example.

The word woke, and what it stands for, seems to have evolved into the modern equivalent of the term political correctness. You may be old enough to remember people talking about political correctness gone mad a couple of decades ago, when equality laws were being introduced.

There doesn't seem to be any set woke agenda, or any person or group that leads it. So, is the woke threat real? People on both sides of the argument talk passionately about the other side being extremist and ignorant, convinced that their opponents' views are not based on fact. There is genuine concern from both sides of the fence, and I'm sure from those sitting on the fence, that there is something dangerous going on in society. And I think that both sides are right.

Politicians in the US and the UK, who are by definition part of the establishment, talk about the woke establishment, and the threat of woke extremism, and yet I am unable to define what they mean.

Some people feel that the woke establishment has been synthesised in a deliberate way by politicians, the press, and other people with the power to influence, in order to divide and conquer - to promote arguments, hatred and themselves. Adopting an anti-woke stance provides a shield behind which people promote division in the name of freedom of speech. It is a word that is used to provoke rather than unite - well, it unites those who are non-woke or anti-woke, but it sets them apart from that indefinable woke agenda.

My research has led me to conclude that real progress towards a better life for us all, whatever our beliefs, is being jeopardised. I have seen in my sixty years on this planet that it is possible to accept and respect the views of people whose ideas oppose one's own, without having to agree with them, and that it is possible to live alongside people who are different from oneself. When in doubt about what is fact and what isn't, I'll turn to research and science. They don't have all the answers, but they are more reliable than vox-pop and conjecture.

Increasingly over the last few decades, people are being asked to accept the existence of otherness, and to think about things they haven't had to think about before. That, I believe, is at the root of many of our problems in the UK and the US, where traditionally our patriarchal societies have been dominated by white straight-presenting cis men telling everyone else what's what. It's understandable that some people want to go back to what they feel they had before, where they felt comfortable. However, it's also understandable that Black, LGBT+ people, women and environmentalists for example, have every right to be visible, and also to feel safe.

Everyone is concerned about their lives and their futures, whatever they think about the word woke. We would all like a good standard of living, somewhere decent to live, a sound education for our children and access to services when we need them. That's what our politicians and other leaders should be focusing on, surely.

There is so much more that has been written and said about woke. For this article, I have tried to offer a balanced analysis but I am sure my own bias has come through in the words I have chosen. I am human. We all are. We are all in this together.

Parts of this article are based on issues I discuss in my award-winning book.

Bent Is Not Broken. Buy the eBook (various platforms) or get the paperback on Amazon via:

www.books2read.com/BentIsNotBroken

***Queer Indie Awards 2023 Winner:

Best Non-Fiction***

To read more blogs about about LGBT+ culture and history, and to find out more about the author, head to www.bentisnotbroken.com 

Reference: Land of Woke and Glory? The Conceptualisation and Framing of “Wokeness” in UK Media and Public Discourses

David S. Smith,Lee Boag ,Connor Keegan &Alice Butler-Warke

Published online by Taylor and Francis: 27 Nov 2023