Deconstructing “Woke”

Introduction

“Woke” was a term originally introduced in African-American English, and gained popularity in 2014 in the light of the Black Lives Matter Movement https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/woke-meaning-origin. It has been used to describing awareness of structural social disadvantages, including racism. The Mirriam-Webster article above writes “Stay woke became a watch word in parts of the black community for those who were self-aware, questioning the dominant paradigm and striving for something better”. Since then, the term got adopted by other social justice advocates to raise awareness of such structural disadvantages, and to call on others to also stay woke. However, this has recently been seized on by right-wing commentators and is said with a negative connotation, where woke people are as “overly sensitive to idealistic causes with a lack of understanding of reality”.

This co-option of “Woke” has drifted negative to such an extent that simply saying that someone is “Woke” provides a pretext for dismissing a person and their views. This is borderline bullying, in the sense that it is criticism by labelling someone as part of a category without providing the more meaningful content behind that criticism. Unfortunately, this sort of political slandering is nothing new. Previous iterations include “Dirty Hippies” and “Political Correctness/PC Gone Mad”-style headlines (and perhaps you are aware of others). It is no accident that this is in part generational as well, there has been concerted campaigns to make sweeping generalisations about Millenials. It appears that media has sought to cast millennials as ungrateful, self-serving, overly-idealistic, and other such denigrating remarks. Here we see some of these adjectives share some commonalities with criticisms that someone is “Woke”. The fact that younger people tend to be more progressive too allows some generational differences and annoyances to be alluded to and mixed in with sharp criticism of the lack of cooperation from, say, a certain person, group of people, or organisation to toe the line according to the critic’s social expectations.

Key Criticism behind the word “Woke”

To return to what conservative critics of progessive complaints might mean, a woke person is someone who is overly sensitive or too idealistic.

It should be noted that these claims are based on the beliefs about what one ought to be affected by psychologically, in the first case, and in the second case it is based off the concept of what possible alternatives there are.

Here is how the full argument could be run:

• i. People claim these comments/ or this sponsorship deal (for example) hurts them as they are members of a social group
• iia. It cannot be meaningful to have one’s experience as membership of a social group affected based off comments/sponsorship alone OR
• iib. If it does affect their experience, the problem is in the person’s own psychological weakness than the comments themselves
• iii. One ought not object to something that doesn’t meaningfully affect their experience as a member of a social group, or one ought not to criticise other people’s comments when the fault is really their own psychological weaknesses
• Therefore, those who are affected by this are not justified in objecting to it

I think two responses might be made to this, first that woke people aren’t just concerned about the psychological impact that comments, sponsorships etc. make in terms of their conception of themself, but also that allowing such commnts/sponsorship to go unchallenged reproduces poor treatment of this group of which the peson is a member. Hence it would be harmful to the group as a whole to allow it to stand unchallenged.

The second response is to say that it’s definitely meaningful to have one’s experience as a member of a social group affected by comments or sponsorship, since that these comments are an instance of systematic dismissal of that group of people, or an instance of the group’s poor treatment in general.

A response to these responses may be “but how do you know that this is really a part of poor treatment in general, couldn’t it be just a particular instance that they can shrug off?”. Here there are some good reasons why those claiming poor treatment don’t or shouldn’t shrug it off and why I generally don’t believe those who tend to be skeptical about structural disadvantage. My reason is simply because it is very easy to see how epistemic biases could create ignorance of such structural disadvantage where one exists. For example, suppose you believe there is no general discrimination against group X. This fact itself means it is likely that you would not see any case where group X is being discriminated against, even if it were to happen because of this lack of awareness. And because you have not seen it happen, you are not aware of it, therefore it doesn’t happen, and so on. Even if such an instance was pointed out, the general belief and lack of awareness in the structural disadvantage itself would mean that this observation would be unable to overturn the overall belief, and that the behaviour towards the group member in thus instance was just an individual case study and ought to mean nothing in the scheme of things. It is very hard for people on the outside-perspective to really see the world the same way as someone who is a member of that disadvantaged category does, since the person in the structurally disadvantaged category has to deal with it very frequently, and has a long history of knowledge about it in various times and places, whereas the person who didn’t grow up in that category doesn’t. I am therefore likely to believe the person who claims structural disadvantage for themselves over the one who claims it doesn’t happen to that group.

Case Study - The Netball Australia Diamonds

We mentioned earlier two components which seem to constitute many criticisms of “: woke” behaviour used in a negative sense, one being “overly sensitive”. We have seen this kind of criticism levelled at the Australian Diamonds netball team after it declined the sponsorship of Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting, due to comments by her father, Lang Hancock, 40 years ago that argued for sterilisation of indigenous people. I assert and most commentators appear to agree that the comments themselves were, and are, horrible and deeply wrong. Also there has been no response from Gina Reinhart herself on the comments from her late father’s comments as far as I am aware. Nevertheless, critics of the player who originally raised the concern of accepting Hancock prospecting’s sponsorship, along with other players who supported this player and Netball Australia say that “They are biting the hand that feeds them” and it/the player is being “overly sensitive”, or shouldn’t be worrying about something that happened 40 years ago. Words like “Ungratefu;”are also being used.

In this critique there seems to be little consideration about the impact these words, and the lack of apology of them, might have on the person that objects to the sponsorship. Here is a common theme in criticisms where people are being labelled as “woke” negatively: ignore or belittle the feelings of the parties affected by the comments, sponsorship/etc and instead look at why their complaints are not justified. For me, in the context of the historic and ongoing poor treatment of indigenous people in Australia, it should be obvious that such comments and lack of apology may be affecting to an indigenous person. However those who are labelling it as “woke” negatively appear not to consider this as important, and they certainly rarely seek to see the possiblity that this social context may affct the feelings here. This lack of recognition of social context is present in many critiques of progressive positions and leads to progressive critiques being cashed out as purely irrational, emotional reactions. It is no accident that feelings are negatively mentioned in the title of a popular blog by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro (“Reality doesn’t care about your feelings”), because the implication is that progressives sympathetic to these people who make these complaints come to their perspective based purely off emotions, that these emotions aren’t relevant, and that Shapiro’s blog / conservative critics of progressive complaints are on the side of “reality”.

Here we see also how the “overly sensitive” criticism aspect of behaviour or positions that are seen as negatively ‘woke’ then slides to the paired criticism of being “overly idealistic”. Since conservatives believe the cause is not a big deal, the change advocated for by the woke person’s position is not only not justified, but cannot really happen. The reason is they see it is driven purely emotionally. Again, the earlier analysis about ignorance of wider systemic disadvatage seems relevant in explaining this overly-reductionistic and apparently uncompasionate perspective on the issues structurally disadvantaged people and their supporters wish to highlight.

My belief is that also there could be a deeper different moral and political perspective being presented here and motivating these criticisms of structuarally disadvantaged people. This is that those who “don’t see the big deal” with these “woke issues” also come from a perspective that believes that a function of a sportsperson is to play sport and not to represent political causes. This is an aristotelian view of morality, where the good of something is its function, and therefore since the sportsperson play sport, their function is to merely play sport well. Anything else is a “distraction”.

The other value that is different is the belief that the current heirarchical order of society is itself a social good. These power structures, conservatives believe, keep society effectively functioning and prevent chaos and anarchy. Authority is seen as its own justification – it’s not that the authority was gained legitimately, but, now that it’s there, it should be maintained to ensure predictable patterns of behaviour. “Our lives are like a fiddler on the roof – just a small change could have them falling off” to quote the musical Fiddler on the Roof. So it’s a belief that society ii fragile, precious, and ought to be maintained through existing power structures. People who challenge or question the status quo and current structures of authority are risking broader social upheaval. Haidt also finds that conservatives are intuitively pro-authority, which for Haidt is a fundamental moral intuition, compared to progressives who just don’t have that intuition.

Conclusion

In my view, critics of “woke” actions who wish to use it negatively need to unpack the actual meaning of “woke” and see if indeed the complaints of people who are being labelled negatively as woke are 1. in fact legitimate, and 2. What action if any is to be done in light of these social disadvantages.

Given the history of the concept of “woke”, it need not be used merely as an insulting term, and those who socially work towards understanding of the structural injustices to historic minority group could reclaim it and use it in the place of “socially aware” as it was used in 2014. There is a vagueness about what “staying woke” might actually demand from us, but a general goal to be more awaren of the social disadvantage of others seems a good place to start and a way we can be more inclusive. It is fair enough to consider whether the calls to, say, boycott such-and-and-such a company for a particular reason is realistic or justified. But it cannot be dismissed a priori by just labelling such a call as “woke”. We must actually understand the criticism as much as possible, consider if the criticism may be reasonable given the person’s membership of a group that has suffered social or historical disadvantage, then separately whether the response being demanded by the person is reasonable given this impact on them and their group- and by ‘reasonable’ which I mean it is both ethically justified given the likely or possible impacts and whether it is indeed feasible to implement. If we do believe that the position is not realistic, let’s say exactly that and make testable predictions about that. Crucially we ought not to dismiss the person’s feelings or position out of hand. There is no need to diminish the experienced disadvantage even if we do see the particular action being taken as unjustified or not realistic. Those who agree with the person also may be doing so because they disagree about whether the demand of the person are really unrealistic or not, or simply showing their solidarity for the structural disadvantage of someone else.

So let’s distinguish between criticisms of complaints that are based off likely structural disadvantage (which we should consider as a legitimate feeling) and criticisms of the particular action(s) that are being advocated for in light of these. For instance we may argue that whlie we accept that these comments or companies that said X Y or Z are indeed hurtful, the political redress is unreasonable in light of its opportunity cost or simply that it is likely unfeasible.

Maybe we don’t like to be told “stay woke”- but perhaps we can consider the possibility of the perspectives of the person who has lived experience of this to understand what difficulties in their lives they have had to experience due to their membership of a social group, and consider perhaps that their community may have suffered more than others currently or historically, and that this is why they are asking us to be on the lookout for language and actions which implicitly (or explicitly) seek to devalue them.

The deeper question is, why is there a need to insult someone on the internet at all, and it certainly speaks very badly of our species that this is perhaps the common level of discourse on large social media platforms. Unless we unpack what’s going on and seek to detox internet discourse we will suffer greatly in having more productive discussions from different perspectives.