It’s Time for Woke Pride
To be a Republican in the year 2023 is to spend every waking moment outraged and terrified by "woke"
The term ‘woke’ has become an all-purpose term used by culture wars Republicans to designate what they are against without giving an actual reason for their opposition..
In fact, their appropriation of the term is evidence of their bad intentions and lack of moral character.
The term “woke" was created by Black people referring to being alert to systemic racial injustices. The first documented use of the phrase “stay woke” happened in the 1930s when Lead Belly ended his song by advising Blacks traveling through Alabama to “stay woke.”
They try to get past questions about what they perceive the meaning of the word by suggesting that asking for a definition proves the ‘wokeness’ of the asker.
Via Amanda Marcotte at Salon:
The inability to define "woke" is a feature, not a bug. "Woke" is very much meant to be a word that cannot be pinned to a definition. Its emptiness is what gives it so much power as a propaganda term.
"Woke" is both everything and nothing. It can mean whatever you need it to mean, and you can deny that it means what it obviously means. The ephemerality of "woke" is what makes it so valuable. "Woke" morphs into being when a right-winger needs to feel outrage and evaporates into thin air should anyone try to ask a rational question about it.
Everything is "woke": Banks. Children's books. The military. Disney. M&Ms. Super Bowl performances. To be a Republican in the year 2023 is to spend every waking moment outraged and terrified by "woke," certain its wokey tendrils will snake their wokeness into your brain and woke-ify you into wokeitude.
Right-wing propaganda over the decades has been rife with terms that have been appropriated and rendered meaningless, allowing conservatives to apply them to everything. "Marxism," "socialism," "political correctness," "demonic, "and "sexualization" are deliberately amorphous terms use to convey a sense of outrage without evidence.
Evidence, as opposed to nothingness, prompts rational discourse, and that’s the last thing reactionaries desire.
The latest and greatest example of the reactionaries’ misapplication of wokeness involves Silicon Valley Bank. It’s a lot easier to blame the presence of several (far from a majority) women and minorities on the board of directors for the bank’s collapse than bad management decisions or –heaven forbid!-- deregulation.
The subtle way of saying this comes from columnist Andy Kessler at the Wall Street Journal, using Tuckerian eyebrows raised and “just asking questions” to make their point. ….wink, wink.
“Was there regulatory failure? Perhaps. SVB was regulated like a bank but looked more like a money-market fund. Then there’s this: In its proxy statement, SVB notes that besides 91 percent of their board being independent and 45 percent women, they also have ‘1 Black,’ ‘1 LGBTQ+,’ and ‘2 Veterans.’ I’m not saying 12 white men would have avoided this mess, but the company may have been distracted by diversity demands.”
Never mind, as Vice pointed out, the board for SVB was less diverse than any of the country’s top five banks.
Donald Trump Jr. inserted two terms misappropriated by reactionaries in his tweet::
“SVB is what happens when you push a leftist/woke ideology and have that take precedence over common sense business practices.”
In an interview with Fox News’ conspiracy theorist Maria Bartiromo, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed that the bank was too concerned with diversity efforts to focus on its “core business.”
The anti woke circus didn’t stop with aforementioned stupidity. Noooo. Throw the term BLACK LIVES MATTER into the mix and you’ve got something guaranteed to get the Facebook crazies riled up.
Here’s Judd Legum at Popular Information with the low down: (emphasis mine)
Tuesday night on Fox News, host Jesse Watters asserted that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) "donated $74 million to Black Lives Matter." That was why, Watters claimed, federal regulators did not pursue more aggressive oversight of SVB's business practices. According to this theory, SVB was treated with kid gloves because it was "woke."
Watters' claim is false. The actual amount that SVB donated to Black Lives Matter was zero. But that didn't stop similar claims from being made repeatedly on Fox News, conservative websites, and social media.
"Silicon Valley Bank, brace yourself, spent more than $73 million on donations to BLM and related organizations," Tucker Carlson declared on Tuesday night. On Wednesday morning, Fox & Friends' Ainsley Earhardt claimed that SVB donated "more than $73 million to Black Lives Matter." There were many more examples on Fox News.
Tuesday night on Fox News, host Jesse Watters asserted that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) "donated $74 million to Black Lives Matter." That was why, Watters claimed, federal regulators did not pursue more aggressive oversight of SVB's business practices. According to this theory, SVB was treated with kid gloves because it was "woke."
The source of this misinformation was the Claremont Institute, a once respected player in conservative intellectual circles, which has given itself over to the dark side. They’ve been active in stoking fires over the so-called stealing of the 2020 election, and spreading misinformation pretending to be serious research and analysis is now a big part of their mission.
Suffice it to say the “research” behind their accusation about the scandalous $74 million is based on promises made by SVB to organizations and institutions having no discernable connection to BLM.
For example, fees SVB collected for processing loans under the Paycheck Protection Program were donated to Arizona State University, Florida A&M University, Tulane University, and Xavier University for COVID-19 assistance and scholarships. There is no discernable connection between the colleges and BLM.
There’s another term associated with capitalist “workness” and part of the Republican campaign to make America Racist Again: “ESG.”
Today, Florida Gov. DeSantis announced an alliance of 18 states determined to "push back against President Biden’s environmental, social, corporate governance (ESG) agenda."
Mind you, Environment, Social, & Corporate programs are something companies voluntarily offer to investors as a means of evaluating corporations responsibility to the places and people they serve. It is not a mandatory program, however some institutional investors, like universities and pension funds include evaluation of ESG as part of their investment strategy.
The evil in ESG is that it supposedly ignores profits to score brownie points with activists.
From the Washington Examiner:
The anti-ESG alliance will be formed with Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming, according to DeSantis's office.
"Proliferation of ESG throughout America is a direct threat to the American economy, individual economic freedom, and our way of life, putting investment decisions in the hands of the woke mob to bypass the ballot box and inject political ideology into investment decisions, corporate governance, and the everyday economy," a draft letter expected to be signed by the states reads.
Under ESG policies, firms typically push for companies to seek environmental sustainability and heightened diversity. A cacophony of conservatives has railed against ESG, decrying it as a distraction from focus on business endeavors.
The beauty of the term “woke” is that it can be included in just about any area of campaign rhetoric. For example, Fla Gov. DeSantis says covid was a “woke virus” since some health professionals signed a letter supporting the George Floyd protests outdoors with masking.
This is insane. Even washing machines can be included in the war against wokeness, as Tenn. Sen. Marsha Blackburn demonstrates in the video below.
It’s time to start using words that have real meaning in pushing back against this abuse of the language as a means of not being truthful.
When the term comes out of a reactionary politician’s mouth it’s about, racism, sexism, discrimination, child labor, anti-science, and just being mean while looking cool doing it.
Words like equality, non-discrimination, justice, and, above all, empathy are ways to reveal the intent behind the spewers of anti-wokeness.
So, be woke and proud of it. Polls say the American people know about the positivity of wokeness. MAGAts are using them in a negative context to motivate their base. Let’s use them in a positive sense (while pinpointing the actual intent of reactionaries) to motivate a broad spectrum of American voters to elect a better class of politician to office.
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