BS: What Is Woke?

Subject: BS: What Is Woke?
From: PHJim
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 01:58 AM

I was reading a thread above the line and noticed this comment:
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Subject: RE: Where have all the folkies gone?
From: GUEST,akenaton - PM
Date: 12 Feb 22 - 06:23 AM

Folkies have become Wokies, RIP folk music.
____________________________________________________________________

I've heard the word "woke" used a lot lately, usually by right wing folks, but I was never quite sure what it meant. Was it a real word, or just something that someone made up? (I guess all words were made up by someone)
I checked a couple of on line dictionaries and found that they all were very similar to this:

Merriam-Websterhttps://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › woke
Woke - aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)

Strangely enough, Most of the right wing sites seem to use this word as an insult. This definition sounds pretty complimentary to me.

This led me to find some definitions of other right wing "insults".
One of the worst insults for a right winger is to call someone a "liberal".

liberal adjective
1.
willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas.
2.
relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

Similar: tolerant, unprejudiced, unbigoted, broad-minded, open-minded, enlightened, forbearing, permissive, free, easygoing, laissez-faire, libertarian, latitudinarian, unbiased, impartial, nonpartisan, indulgent, lenient, lax, soft

Opposite: narrow-minded, bigoted

liberal noun
1. a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare.
2. a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

This also sounds more like a compliment than an insult.

While I wouldn't use these words to describe myself, I sure wouldn't feel insulted if you want to use 'em to describe me.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 02:16 AM

Ditto, PHJim.

I treat both woke and lefty as compliments. And liberal as long as it not in the UK political sense :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Senoufou
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 02:48 AM

Me too! I see it as being tolerant, understanding, kind, informed and without nasty prejudice.
But the word can be flaunted as a badge of moral rectitude by people who support, for example, allowing transgender women (who are really men) to compete in sporting events against actual women. Or letting them enter women's private spaces (toilets, changing rooms) which in my humble opinion could be rather dangerous. Perhaps I'm not as 'woke' as I'd like to think?

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 03:29 AM

I agree with the sport bit, Sen, but not sure what can be done. Disagree about the rest though. There have been mixed changing rooms and bathrooms for years with no problems.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 03:46 AM

Before "woke", we had "political correctness gone mad". It is the "gone mad" bit that turns it from a positive to a negative attribute. Someone who is described as "woke" may have good intentions but can still be a pain in the arse.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 04:08 AM

This is a blatant attempt by a person banned from membership here to start what is clearly a non-music topic, regardless of the way the thread title dresses it up.

---

The "Where have all the folkies gone" thread is certainly a legitimate music discussion, and the person in question is not prohibited from posting music posts to music threads. It's appropriate to move the "woke" discussion here, since that gets away from the topic of music.
Joe Offer, Mudcat Music Editor

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 04:11 AM

Sorry, I didn't mean you, Jim - I'm reading on my phone without reading glasses. I'm talking about the bloke you quoted. Apologies.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Pete from seven stars link
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 04:26 AM

OP seems a fair assessment to me    The words certainly have a wide meaning!   I tend to observe though ,that the tolerance of those who might be described as liberal , often excludes those who don’t share what they perceive as liberal values , which may well include woke issues!

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 05:30 AM

I got that wrong, Joe. I just saw the attempt to bring "woke" into a music discussion by you-know-who as a blatant attempt at infiltration, that's all. I'm typing this on a iPad with my reading glasses on, by the way.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 06:09 AM

I studied Soviet propaganda tactics in the 1970s, and I read the East German Neues Deutschland newspaper every morning for a couple of years. The newspaper had at least one terrific Berliner dialect cartoon every day, but most of the rest of the newspaper was propaganda rather than news. At the time, I didn't dream that the techniques of agitation and propaganda (Agitprop) would ever take hold in the West. But now it seems they have - and labeling is one of the most effective techniques of agitprop. If one can define a label (like "woke") as something bad, and then pin that label on something that may be perfectly valid (like respectful treatment of all races), one can completely destroy a completely valid concept without every actually discussing it.

This has been done very effectively with CRT, which is rarely expressed as Critical Race Theory. This is a very good label, because very few people in the world actually know what CRT is, and yet the propagandists have been able to convince many that CRT is bad. And then they label every discussion of racism as CRT, and convince the world that this is an awful thing.

They've done the same with LGBTQ, and socialism, and Marxism, and so many other labels. How many other propaganda techniques have come into common use in the Western world?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 07:25 AM

The right demonized the word tolerence so of course woke is on their naughty list. Woke is not full blown enlightenment but it is the dawn's early light compared to darkness. When cancel culture types on the left use woke it is in the extremist sense just as the right is extreme in it criticism. So woke can have 3 meanings if you are left, right or center.

Being woke in regards to racism begins with admitting it exists and extends to accepting that institutionalized racism may stupidly advantage or disadvantage people today depending upon what shade they may be.

At least thats the way I hear it.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 07:41 AM

Getting us to use the word at all is a good example of successful propagandising. It's excluded from my lexicon.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 07:50 AM

I quite like it as Woke=Dawned. If it has dawned on you that everyone is equal and the old stereotype jokes are insulting, you have woke. If you are still stuck in Bernard Manning's Embassy club in the 1960s, you have not yet woke and are, quite possibly, brain dead :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 08:58 AM

"Getting us to use the word at all is a good example of successful propagandising. It's excluded from my lexicon."

I agree Steve. I never use the word myself but, like Dave, I regard it as a compliment when used by others (e.g. my wife's Hard-Right family) to try to insult her and me - it drives them nuts when we don't react! ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 11:12 AM

Sadly, once the meeja get the wrong end of the stick with a word, that's that. In the software world, "hacker" used to be a badge of pride, and a "hack" described a bit of creative cleverness; nowadays, any act of electronic vandalism or online lockpicking gets called a "hack", and I end up shouting at the TV. It's largely careless labelling by newspaper reporters and subeditors who would themselves be offended by being called "hacks".

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 11:29 AM

If I'd seen Ake's post it would have been deleted. Nothing leaves his mouth without being divisive and intending to insult members of the group. That's why he isn't a member any more.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 03:58 PM

Cheers, Maggie.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Apr 22 - 05:04 PM

Cancel culture corporals like censorship. Free speech requires more speech not less.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Senoufou
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 02:33 AM

Like all new terms, 'woke' will gradually fade from modern vocabulary. It will be seen as out of date, then a new term will emerge. Sometimes old words such as 'cool' are resurrected. I suppose younger people seize on a new word and disseminate it.
However, the important thing about words is that they're fully understood by all, in order for them to convey thoughts and opinions.
By the way, I do feel uneasy about entering a public toilet or cubicle in a clothes shop to try on a garment and finding a physically male person there. I don't mind at all if a man wants to wear female clothes. But women are somewhat at risk in these places from predatory men posing as transgender etc as a cover for unacceptable actions.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 03:32 AM

I checked a couple of on line dictionaries and found that they all were very similar to this:

Merriam-Websterhttps://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › woke
Woke - aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)

"Woke" in this context is not in my Chamber's dictionary app. I guess it’s too recent for Chambers 13th edition. It is in my WordWeb dictionary app That offers two definitions:

1. Aware of and alert to social injustices.
2. Perceived as smug, virtue signalling and intolerant of other view points.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 05:22 AM

Interesting article for you here, Sen. Should put you mind at rest and, hopefully, demonstrate, that the predetor issue is a myth,

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 07:11 AM

Woke is a word that I've never seen used in a complimentary way. Yet people who are "woke" are actually showing concern for issues - isn't that supposed to be a good thing? - that their lazy accusers are not. I hereby suggest that a suitable antonym for "woke" would be "brain-dead."

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 07:56 AM

See my post of 22 Apr 22 - 07:50 AM, Steve :-D

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 08:42 AM

I saw it. I was agreeing with you! (Don't start...) :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 09:23 AM

Yet people who are "woke" are actually showing concern for issues - isn't that supposed to be a good thing?

Ideally, yes - but there are those who want to be seen to be showing their concern, like the celebrities who fly across the Atlantic to take centre stage in Trafalgar Square to protest against climate change. Virtue signalling, together with a certain amount of revisionism = "woke".

DC

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 09:34 AM

If you're virtue-signalling, aren't you exhibiting "fake woke?"

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 09:53 AM

Taking Jon's definitions above:

1. Aware of and alert to social injustices.
2. Perceived as smug, virtue signalling and intolerant of other view points.

It would be nice to go with #1 but too often #2 applies, and it's not just "perceived".

DC

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: leeneia
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 10:24 AM

I've never been comfortable with all the forms of "wake."

I woke up. I was awakened. I awoke. He woke me up. (Is that correct?) Whatever the case for those forms, I am sure that there has never been a past participle pronounced "woke".

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 11:26 AM

The past participle is "woken."

Scroll down and look for past participle.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 12:50 PM

Fake woke could morph into foke wake. Which is what I hope to have at my funeral :-D

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 12:54 PM

Or you could have a fake wake before someone dies or a fake woke which is what happens when roused from slumbering through The Famous Flower Of Serving Man

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 01:46 PM

Sorry, the last one should have been a foke woke but the spilling chucker got me again!

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 08:09 PM

Not quite on-topic, but I can't resist. It was my uncle's funeral yesterday (I wasn't close and I didn't go), at Blackley cemetery near Heaton Park. As the coffin slowly disappeared from view, the song played was Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now" ...

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: BrooklynJay
Date: 23 Apr 22 - 09:17 PM

From Wikipedia, possibly one of the earliest uses of the word:

Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, uses the phrase near the end of the recording of his 1938 song "Scottsboro Boys", which tells the story of nine black teenagers accused of raping two white women, saying: "I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there – best stay woke, keep their eyes open."

Jay

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Apr 22 - 04:44 AM

That last post of mine is absolutely in the wrong thread! Sorry about that.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 24 Apr 22 - 06:42 AM

According to today's Sunday Telegraph, Google predictive text is now going to include an inclusive language function which suggests alternatives to those words which are not considered inclusive enough. This includes "stay-at-home spouse" for "housewife" and objects to the term "motherboard" for electronic circuits.

"Woke", as in definition #2 above, seems to me to be appropriate to describe this over-zealous policing of the written word. It is intrusive and patronising.

Will Mudcat have to change the various MOAB threads to "the Parent of all BS"?

DC

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 24 Apr 22 - 06:54 AM

"Stay-at-home spouse" excludes unmarried people, of whatever gender, who maintain a home as part of a stable, family relationship.

DC

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 24 Apr 22 - 06:58 AM

I'm struggling to glean anything that could be remotely pejorative about "motherboard..."

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 24 Apr 22 - 09:23 AM

Motherboard: mum when she was fed up. (from a tea towel)

Mind you, I'd need to verify anything from the Torygraph. They never seemed to fact-check Alexander B**** de Pfeffel's articles. Disengage rant mode.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 02 May 22 - 02:11 PM

Why Critics of Angry Woke College Kids Are Missing the Point an interview with Wendy Brown from the New York Times

Orient them how? Or, put another way, where’s the most common disagreement between student views on free speech and those of you and your colleagues?

Certainly we have had for some time a debate about whether hate speech is free speech or ought to be covered by free speech, and if not, what qualifies as hate speech. There are excellent — I can’t believe I’m about to use this term — critical race theorists who have written volumes on the question of whether hate speech can be specified, what it means to specify it and whether it can be categorized as an exception to free speech. That’s an important zone and a difficult one. Many students today go quickly to the position that there is such a thing as hate speech, that they know it when they see it that and it ought to be outlawed. For me that’s a topic to teach, not to simply honor or denounce. I’m revealing myself here as a person whose chords and arpeggios and scales are always the history of political thought: John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” is the place to start. He says that the line between your freedom and its end is where it impacts on another’s freedom. That’s the question with hate speech: When does it do that? I’ll also mention Charles Murray. That’s tricky, because his science has been discredited by his peers, and his conclusions are understood by many as a form of hate speech, because he makes an argument about the racial inferiority of Black people in their capacity to learn and to succeed in this society. It feels terrible to give him a podium and a bunch of students who would sit and imbibe that as the truth. I think if Murray is invited to campus, you can picket him, you can leaflet him, but I don’t think it should be canceled. The important thing is for students to be educated and educate others about the bad science, the discrediting of his position, and then ask, Why does he survive in the academy, and why does that bad science keep getting resuscitated? Those are important questions for students to ask and then learn how to answer. That’s what’s going to equip them in this political world.

And this (the important "follow the money" message):

Questions about what’s happening on college campuses keep turning into questions about politics, which happens a lot these days but which maybe also conflates various things. A debate over cancel culture on campus, for example, is a different thing from legislators’ enacting laws limiting what can be taught in schools. So where are the useful connections and what are the unhelpful conflations as far as politics and on-campus issues?

Here I think it’s time to talk about the very serious right-wing effort to use free speech and freedom more generally as a flag for a political, social and moral project. On campus, for example, the constant harangues about cancel culture and wokeness on the left that you get from the right keep us from seeing enormous amounts of foundation money and use of the state to try to control what is taught, to build institutes and curriculums that comport with a right-wing engine. Guilford College, this little Quaker school in North Carolina takes half a million dollars from a foundation in love with Ayn Rand. Every econ and business major in the college for the next 10 years had to be given a copy of “Atlas Shrugged,” and at the center of the curriculum there had to be a course in which “Atlas Shrugged” was the required textbook. This story has been repeated over and over. Then you have colleges and universities not so desperate but nonetheless willing to take large amounts of Koch and other right-wing-foundation money to set up institutes, even hire faculty. All of this is under the aegis of free speech, organized as correcting for wokeness and cancel culture. The right is also mobilizing the state. Not just to cancel math textbooks in Florida but the “Don’t Say Gay” bills, the C.R.T. bills. It’s important that we have our eyes wide open about that. Little episodes about cancel culture make great tidbits in newspapers and talk shows, but they don’t represent this larger and deeper project of the right of mobilizing state power and corporations for their agenda in schools. They also don’t represent the deeper problem with which we began: the confusions and the loss of boundaries between something like academic freedom and free speech. That boundary is just totally messed up.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Rain Dog
Date: 02 May 22 - 02:42 PM

"Before "woke", we had "political correctness gone mad". It is the "gone mad" bit that turns it from a positive to a negative attribute."

A couple of weeks ago an acquaintance in the pub told me he was fed up with political correctness. He said he felt he had to be careful talking in public, in case somebody overheard and got upset.

I asked him if he ever swore in front of his parents. Turns out that he had not. I sighed and shook my head. That political correctness gets everywhere.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: meself
Date: 02 May 22 - 04:05 PM

Was the term 'political correctness' ever used in a 'positive' way?

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 May 22 - 06:47 PM

It's an expression used pejoratively for something that's generally a good thing.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Donuel
Date: 08 May 22 - 07:36 PM

Wokism is the disease that white nationalists say that only liberals have.

Woke is the opposite of awake for those who believe in the American dream because you have to be asleep to have a nightmare.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: PHJim
Date: 13 May 22 - 09:59 PM

RE: political correctness:

I'm glad that the "N-word" has gone out of acceptable use. Score one for political correctness.
I do, however, think that "person hole cover" is taking it too far.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Donuel
Date: 14 May 22 - 12:58 PM

Man hole covers were condoms.

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 May 22 - 07:16 PM

"Person hole cover." I bloody love that and from now on I'm adopting it! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Senoufou
Date: 15 May 22 - 01:46 AM

My favourite little black pony at the riding school, which I rode every Saturday 60 years ago, was called ...er...(the 'N' word). And my father always wore jumpers of a colour known as 'n..... brown'. Nobody was aware this might be offensive, it was just a word in those days.
I read that St John's Ambulance volunteers have been given a very long list of 'woke' pronouns for use with prospective patients/casualties.
And Norfolk Police have been instructed sternly about which pronouns they can/can't use while going about their duties. God help us!

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 May 22 - 05:55 AM

Interesting how much "nigger" was used in one of my favourite films, Blazing Saddles. To very good effect in m'humble!

Subject: RE: BS: What Is Woke?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 15 May 22 - 05:29 PM

I wouldn't regard it as too great a compliment.
"Woke" carries the imputation of self righteousness, intolerance - and the tendency to point out the speck of dust in one's neighbour's eye, whilst ignoring the plank in one's own.

If the cap fits - keep relishing the compliment.