There’s a lot of indicators that I’m getting old, but one of them kind of came as a surprise to me — when I listen to the news, some of the words they use don’t make any sense. This is especially true when I try to understand political “news.” I realize politics has a language of their own, but some of the words they use nowadays apparently have taken on a whole new meaning than when I “learned” them in school.
One word that puzzles me is “woke.” Watching the news the other night, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, pretty much indicated that all the current problems that America faces mostly stem from “wokeness.”
I think woke means, or at least used to mean, socially aware, or empathetic. Apparently, not anymore.
Governor DeSantis recently signed a Stop Woke Act into law and bragged about it during his “midterm victory speech.” In Washington, there is talk in the House of Representatives of forming an “anti-woke caucus.”
It seems like woke is the blame for everything from deadly mass shootings to increased medical costs.
My extensive research found that “woke” was once used largely by black people, encouraging them to stay mindful of racism in America. Its use was fueled by black musicians, social media and the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the term only entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017 — by then it had become more of a fashionable buzzword than a set of values.
The term is now mostly used by political figures — maybe because it doesn’t actually mean anything. That might be part of its appeal — one can slam “wokeness” to oppose various issues without spelling out any specific objections.
So after all my extensive research, I’ve decided that “woke” is interesting, but, at least for me, it’s just kind of an unusable word — because it doesn’t actually mean anything. Actually, it obviously means something — I just don’t know what….
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