WTF Is Woke?

I found myself marveling, the other day, at the outright bigoted actions of Ron Desantis and other people complaining about "Woke".   So I started trying to figure out what the heck they're upset about.

And it literally sickened me all over again.  Because it's so sad and so ... damned predictable.

I really shouldn't have to repeat this, but it seems I might need to explain where I'm coming from.

As a kid, I grew up in what was one of the least integrated regions of the country.  Central Minnesota, specifically around St. Cloud, Minnesota.  Which is where I can point out that my high school year books which provide a bit of an overview of the population.  I have pictures of around 150 graduating students for four years, and that final yearbook includes the three years of students after my class.  In those 7 years of students, there is one Black face.  it belongs to Charles White, who was a few years ahead of me.  And I am a bit ashamed to point out that there were also very few Asian or Latino faces, either.

Which, as I grew older, was something of a source of confusion for me.  We had three colleges in or near town.  St. Cloud State was within the city limits of St. Cloud and did recruit students from around the world - obviously far more successfully recently than they did in the 1970s and 1980s.  We also had St. John's University, where my father worked on campus for one of their subsidiaries.  And it's sister school St. Benedict's, where both of which brought in students from around the world, including a small number of of all minority students.

But I do not ever recall any sort of guidance or any lessons from my parents or anyone else to avoid or hate other people different from me.  I do credit that on creating a place in my brain which didn't see color as a way to divide people.  Sure, we saw the news and stayed informed about what was happening, but it never occurred to me in the slightest way that, aside from opportunities, these people were ever any different from me.  It did not occur to me that they may be better or worse than I was at doing something.

Which I note here in why I was always gobsmacked by people who, of late, are upset and campaigning against "woke".  It seemed to me that these people were using the phrase to campaign against people being aware of, and working to resolve, the inequalities in our world.  That takes a lot of balls and a huge deficit in IQs to get upset by it.  

There are some things that I've found aren't "woke" but sometimes get added to it for sheer absurdity.  A few weeks ago I read an article on a news web site (CNN, if memory serves me correctly), which detailed the more recent pushback against titles like "ma'am" and "sir".  Younger people are now upset by the use of these titles when they are addressed.  They think it smacks of ageism, when it is, as I was taught and learned through the years, it is rooted in the expression of respect.

Huh?  Well, I have learned over the years that to refer to a woman whom I do not know as "Miss" is to court potential outrage because I'm disrespecting her marital status.  To presume to call a woman "Mrs." begs that I also include her proper name - and if I do not know it, there's another social faux pas.  So I have been taught, over my life time, to allow a lady to go first, hold the door open, be respectful.  I may not always remove or tip the had I'm wearing, but I don't think it's ever appropriate to say "hey you" or any other disrespectful method of address.  

Some women see the word "ma'am" as "too old" for them.  Point of fact is that it is an address of respect, shortened from "madame" which has, these days, been co-opted to apparently refer to the leader of a brothel, which is certainly something that would get me in trouble with anyone, and something I do not even pretend to wish to suggest.  Lacking a viable alternative to "ma'am" isn't what's stopping me, the bottom line is that it's just not something that I can afford to lose sleep over.  I have bigger problems, as do we all.

Look, I understand, my core guide in how to behave is an adapted "Wheaton's Law" - that is, Don't Be A Dick.  Am I going to force "ma'am" on women who object?  If they provide me a preferred pronoun, then I will use it to address them.  I'll use a name, if so provided.  If they choose to use it as a club to highlight my poor behavior, I guarantee you that there will remain a healthy section of the population who will look at them as the outliers.  To disdain a show of respect says far more about you than it does about me.

Which is where we get back to the whole "woke" thing.  It is the politicians' job to divide us.  Not unite us, that much is certain in 21st Century politics.  They're no more capable of bringing us together than they are of leading any group out of an open paper bag.  Why people would be in a paper bag of any size for any reason, I do not know, but I see that as the lowest level of exercised leadership I can come up with, as it should be pretty damned easy.  Or would be, if any of our current political leaders had spent any time at all studying leadership.

Leadership, overall, is all about bringing and keeping a group together, and maintaining direction towards an accepted common goal.  Ron Desantis and the rest of the Republican witch hunt on "woke" are all presenting the alternative, which is to continue to perpetuate the existing systems which seek to divide us.

How's that?  Well, one of the main planks in Desantis's platform seems to be to avoid teaching certain facts about history - such as a simple ancestoral history of large portions of our population will find many of the people in this country can trace back to many different levels of involuntary emigration.  That is, I expect a majority of people in the 1800s who were leaving Ireland who wanted to leave their land, their families, and their traditions to establish a whole new set in America.  Or the current waves of immigrants trying to cross the border from Mexico, people fleeing ineffective or corrupt governments, unsafe or cartel-dominated regions to bring children to a country that obviously does not want them to come, even though they're bringing only what they could carry across thousands of miles to face the hostility and downright racism of certain places.  

Then there's the largest group of involuntary immigrants who were brought here from their own land usually in chains, restrained like barrels or crates of cargo in sailing ships to become slaves in this country.  While not all of them were Black, a huge majority was so.  As to why people are worried that teaching this history might be problematic, I have to confess I do understand a few of their reasons.  I mean, I would be horrified to learn my family here in America owned other people.  I can say with a fair amount of security that we did not, mostly because almost all of my ancestors came to this country after the Civil War was fought.  Regarding their history in Europe, I do not recall history ever specifically showing that people in Switzerland, Germany, or in the Nordic regions ever enslaved other races.  There may have been captives from battles, but as I don't have many ancient military people or wealthy landowners in my background, I doubt there was a need for help in addition to the hands of the family members.

So I'm sure that it's disturbing and uncomfortable to uncover that in a background.  And it sure as hell makes me uncomfortable when the more brutal excesses of slavery were explained in my education.  Of course, like many of my generation, Alex Haley's miniseries of "Roots" was less an eye opener, and more of a brutal kick to the crotch wake-up call.  Before seeing that on TV, I had to confess that my images of southern slavery were mostly people working, then families being separated, people escaping, and running away.  The brutality didn't occur to my child mind, but it was rather painfully obvious once I'd seen the show that there were so many minor things that the slave owners could not permit to occur that it just made sense.  Sure, they controlled their slaves by violence, because most often they were outnumbered on their plantations, by design.  So I'm sure it makes Ron Desantis uncomfortable to hear what people did to other people.  

Like most history does.  Which is why I see their efforts for what they are - which flat out is their desire to paint those people who want to see that sort of pain taught in schools so we can avoid it in the future.  

I mean, we don't need to rely only on that.  I live in a town where a man was killed because another man kneeled on his neck.  And three others, all of whom had sworn an oath to protect and serve, stayed silent as the man on the ground was murdered.  Thankfully, I do not need to include "allegedly" in their because the court case which determined Derek Chauvin and the other officers killed George Floyd came back with a guilty verdict, confirming that which we saw in the cell phone video.  After spending time in Florida, and granted, it was not quite a full week, I worry what else it is that Desantis and his cronies are covering up down there, with their crusade, because let's face it, ignoring the past gets only one thing - escalation to a worse outcome in the future.

Does that mean I expect slavery to return under Desantis?  I doubt it will, but who knows what might happen if we continue down that road.  Because there are far too many people looking to libraries, to make sure certain information is not available.  Which is a little bit of what provoked me to produce yesterday's blob - er, blog post - about information control.  The internet will deliver information if people are aware to look for it, so I guess in one sense I do think those people wanting books banished from library shelves does serve to guide some readers to specific topics.

I mean, when I was a kid in school, we had to read Watership Down - the story of a flock of rabbits being gassed out of their homes and trying to remain.  It certainly put in my already empathetic head the ideas that the continued building of our world meant destruction for other beings on this planet.  Sure, their stock market probably took a dive, as did their population, which helped me to recognize that we do need to consider the feelings and lives of others as we move forward in our own lives and developments.  

So does that make me "woke"?  I guess the definition I found from Merriam-Webster is probably the most useful.

The meaning of WOKE is aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)

Guilty, as charged.  Italicization and underlining are my contributions to the definition.  So we're all clear here, to be anti-woke, or to be like Desantis, is to be deliberately ignorant regarding important developments and news in our communities regarding struggles of racial and social inequality.  Or to be in favor of perpetuating the whole Jim Crow system crap, deliberately engineering a system that does not permit people to succeed and benefit from their labor, their ideas, and maintain the current "caste" they're in.

Look, I chose "caste" deliberately, because let's face it, Desantis and his friends don't just look down on people who are racially different from them, they're also looking to keep them that have not down below their positions.  Ain't that a wonderful thing, I suppose they're thinking, because if they're better than someone, that puts them closer to God - and perfection.

I'm no saint, but I can guarantee you that if that's your view in life, I have a pretty warm spot you'll spend for eternity, because we have a pretty solid example of what God wanted us to do in the stories of when his Son was on this earth.  He didn't spend his time courting the leadership, chatting with the rich, enjoying the trappings that undoubtedly could have come if he sought them.  Nope.  He fed the hungry, He healed the people who were sick, and He generally showed us that while we may not all be of the same race or circumstance, we're all worthy of respect, and when someone needs help, it is our job, if we are in any way able, to provide itl.  

So next time Ron Desantis goes with his hand out to Washington for aid to his state for a weather disaster, maybe we should point out to him that it's definitely a "woke" thing to care for people who have had bad things happen to them.  Clearly, God wanted them not to be there, otherwise why else would he have destroyed their homes?