That 4-Letter Word ~via Ken Taub
Ken Taub, another deep thinker I am fortunate to be connected to, provides us with a great follow-up post to last week's thought provoking piece from Minter Dial. This time addressing the much maligned word "WOKE," and some discussion about other misguided or poorly worded phrases and slogans that often diminish the efforts they are created to support. /Ted
What’s a 4-letter word that was supposed to be breezy slang for smoother social intercourse and sensitivity -- a little neo-Buddhist and a little street-sexy -- but quickly became a turn-off? It’s a word that will infect and perhaps effect the next election. Hint 1: it rhymes with choke, not suck. Hint 2: if you had $5 for every time Ron DeSantis used this word the last three years, plus how much he will use it the next four, you would wind up with a very big bundle of cash in your lap.
Second question (and the answer): What’s a better term for Being Woke… than being woke?
Empathy cultivation? Historical literacy? Inequality acknowledgement?
Or is it: Radical inclusivity? Oppressor confession? Justice time, baby?
Language is at least three things: powerful, tricky, and open to interpretation. Regarding this woke business, it seems most of us understood the gist here, at least to one degree or another. I mean, we were willing to lean in, listen. Others, not so much. Couldn’t be bothered.
To the justifiably aggrieved, African Americans no doubt felt that arising from a hard-hearted national slumber was long overdue. The older phrase of Social Justice being no rocket booster, it’s more of a snooze pill. Perhaps there was an enthusiasm gap on all sides, and so a linguistic opportunity. Someone, maybe watching a Seinfeld rerun, stopped slumping, sat up, and announced in a eureka moment that Get Woke! might be the next Serenity Now! “Cool,” the friend next to him on the couch said, “I’ll bite…”
So back when that one witty cat (or Erykah Badu) urged even more friends to Stay Woke, all appeared fine and dandy at first, and then 10 or so years passed, and one cool breeze of a word became just another fat tug o’ war rope. What started as a deliberation (Wait, consider this…), became, in these fractured times, a sharper thing, and for some an insisted upon-thing.
There are many ways to say: See me! Show me that you care! As for that new phrase, make it all lower case and remove the exclamation, and get woke sounds more like a sad-eyed request not some zealous instruction. But in these times, as it happens, the opposing camps decamped to their cultural corners, and then one camp began to march, sounding the bugles. Get Woke got multiple exclamation marks; many heard a sharp bark, a dog bordering on the dogmatic. A wake-up cry for a new day, whether whispered or shouted, became a problem.
Now “Woke” may not be as dopey as Defund the Police, but neither is it as significant or soulful as Black Lives Matter. Those three words are both a heartfelt plea and a people’s behest. They are the living heir to the signs and slogans carried in protests in the 1950s and 1960s: I Am a Man. We Shall Overcome.
Speaking of armies, battles and guns… Something’s missing here, like a word or two or four, and missing words can have great consequences. For example, the Second Amendment, in a clumsy syntax, reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
What it meant in full at the time was altered by what was left out: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people serving within a Militia to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Historians, aware of the times and the context, acknowledge this to be the full, intended meaning of the Second Amendment. We all feel, and are tragically living with, the absence of those four simple words in our Constitution.
As for Black Lives Matter, it has been interpreted by the viewers of FOX, some other fearful types, and too many working-class whites as: Black Lives Matter More. So we see some resentment and pushback -- and politics devouring history, sociology, and sense.
But what the slogan actually means, and profoundly so, is: Black Lives Also Matter.
Now, if that had become the slogan, would FOX and the Republican Party have been more kind and less critical? We wish. Nonetheless, this former marketing professional and copywriter happens to like Black Lives Also Matter. It is not just implied, it is affirmatively stated. It very much makes Black Americans a vital part of E Pluribus Unum: Out of Many, One. It is inclusive by reality, as well as contemporary mores, Judeo-Christian ethics, and simple human decency. Black Lives Also Matter being, above all, a statement hard to argue with.
But we’re left with the Second Amendment and Black Lives Matter as they are. This is this. Edits after the fact have no gravity. They merely float away like a wish made upon a dandelion, right before its delicate seed pods blow away.
As for Woke, now? We know what the far Right and too many of today’s Republicans have done with the phrase. They’ve weaponized it. Other people’s chocolate is their broccoli. They just don’t like it; it tastes bad being told how inherently bad one is. Or, it just feels like more righteous finger-wagging, especially to a culture war-weary public.
So let’s be fair. On the other end of the spectrum, too much Woke has been thrust, again and again, upon a chin-scratching, what-did-we-do-wrong-now, C- or D in history public. The pushers here are not only African Americans (attempting to shine a clear historical light while others cynically attempt to erase the history class blackboard) -- there are some very proactive Caucasians, too. Of course.
As is so often the case, it is not only Black voices we hear but pesky, passionate white progressives, piping in and approaching the issue with the same fervor as college sophomores trying to get their omnivore parents to go vegetarian.
Sympathetic? Sure. Socially regenerative? Perhaps. Overdone? Please. As mature adults, we realize that many people are simply wrung out, weary and defensive.
So yes, this Big American Issue, now tagged with the street slang name, is about history and empathy, as well as justice denied, with respect and social capital now due. What it is not is color-blind. It is something different than Dr. King’s exhortation to judge people not by the color of their skin but rather by the content of their character.
Skin color is not only the key distinction, it’s also very much the issue. As in: You treated us horribly because we’re Black. Now it is time to treat us favorably because we’re Black. As in: we have too long been the victims of your negative predispositions, disdain and defilement. You suddenly, conveniently, want us to forget all the nonstop hostility for so very long? Sorry, no.
So, we’re now tripping over Woke. And what, exactly, is wrong with the word “woke”?
Is it too flippant? More jive than meaty? If so, does the exhortation to Get Woke sound to some ears like a cryptic way to say, Screw yourself? No? How about… Indict yourself?
As for my own issues with Woke-ism and its underlying message: it’s a divider, not a uniter. At worst, it’s fundamentally accusatory to modern Americans. Even at its best, it’s someone else’s recipe for you as a social being (particularly white social beings). Double-edged, the word “woke” is both high-spirited and heavy. Years from its intro, the word has a kind of undeniably sharp and weighty feel to it. A little rain became snow, snow became snowballs, and snowballs became iceballs — thrown hard.
Get Woke! also has no happy music to accompany it. I mean, we don’t need Motown here, but something’s missing, right? The sound many hear (and not just crackers and conservatives) is an undertone of debilitating stasis, as if tremendous racial and interracial progress was some sort of illusion and not a commendable reality these last 60+ years.
For this older guy who remembers hard-won Civil Rights and so very much progress, Get Woke can sound like sarcastic Yeah, thanks. It accents Black vs. white, paying little homage to the actual, intertwined Blackwhite nation we are (see my earlier Substack of the same name, Blackwhite: kentaub.substack.com/blackwhite )
How to get rich, quick? Get handed a Benjamin every time someone mutters… Enough already. Again, so many people are seriously worn out from the last 8, 10 years. They have reason to be. A very being chunk of the country believes there is still not enough racial justice. Another big chunk thinks that everything is now racialized.
Perhaps, as with so many things in this life, they are both right.
Sure, but in matters related to history, inequality and justice, most Black people are inclined to shrug and say, We’re sorry. Boo-hoo to you. Now many white folk, and not just Trumpers, are equally likely to respond, Boo-hoo? We have a two-word reply, and it’s not Merry Christmas. It’s Go Away (or Enough Already). We watched Roots back then, we voted for Obama. What do you want from us?
And here we are.
So where do we go now with all these flinty emotions and all these iceballs made of contentious words and divisive slogans? We go to history books. Read just two (yes, I know we’d rather be entertained than informed. George Santos. The Donald. Jimmy Kimmel). Okay, skim two books by two different historians. Skim well. Read the first few pages, the end, and at least twenty paragraphs. Or maybe Wikipedia?
What else? We get slightly brave and go to Evangelical churches and to Black churches. Listen not so much to their political words, but to the yearning and cries for meager respect behind the words. We go to school board meetings, and there too, just listen. We can also take notes, and then after the meeting, if inspired, write a sincere editorial for our local town paper (if there is still a local paper in your town).
Or we hit the pool. Then, blowing out all our hot air, sink to the bottom of our integrated pool, relaxing for a brief bit, and while looking up at the quiet surface, get clear. If we’re lucky, it may take only 15 or 20 seconds to realize we’ve been on a wild teacup ride. Or simply going in circles.
Woke? We Americans are asleep in a hundred ways: with all the junk we consume, the TikTok, streaming shows and video games we disappear into, and all the endless distractions we dare call living. Most of us wouldn’t know from an awakened state any more than we’d know about an airborne, keen-eyed tiger until it hit the ground and bit us on the ass. Instead, we’re playing ping pong with slang terms, thinking there’s something transformative there, when all we’re doing is playing a game. A game where no one wins.
