Notes on the definition of "woke"

It's not vague, but the boneheads are basically the only ones interested in it

Certain kinds of people are getting quite a kick out of this awkward moment:

Conservative author Bethany Mandel struggled to define the term “woke” on Tuesday while discussing her new book “Stolen Youth,” which accuses liberals of targeting children with “woke indoctrination.”

“So, I mean, woke is, sort of, the idea that, um,” Mandel began, after The Hill Rising’s Briahna Joy Gray asked her to define the term. The author added, after a pause, “This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral.”

“Woke is something that’s very hard to define, and we’ve spent an entire chapter defining it,” Mandel said of her and co-author Karol Markowicz. “It is sort of the understanding that we need to totally reimagine and redo society in order to create hierarchies of oppression. Sorry I, it’s hard to explain in a 15-second sound bite.”

While Gray told Mandel to “please take your time,” her fellow Rising co-host Robby Soave jumped in to offer Mandel a reprieve.

“It’s one of those things that, everybody is weighing in … against wokeness,” Soave, an editor at Reason Magazine, said. “We do some of it on this show as well. It’s definitely something you know what it is when you see it.”

Gray, who served as press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign, then asked Soave to define “wokeness.”

“I would say it’s the tendency to punish people formally or often informally for expressing ideas using language specifically that is very new, that no one would have objected to like five seconds ago,” Soave said.

“It’s easier to come up with examples, like you know punishing people for using the wrong pronouns or identifying structures of that kind,” he added.

My acquaintance with this exchange came via yesterday’s Bulwark podcast, in which Charlie Sykes’s guest was Atlantic writer Tom Nichols. They played up the awkward silence for all it was worth.

In the course of discussing it, Nichols came up with two possible definitions, one positive (a recognition of, and sensitivity toward, societal problems of race and gender) and a negative one, which he limply expressed as “obsession with social justice.”

If only those so obsessed would leave the rest of us out of their obsession, but we’ll come back to that shortly.

It was further confirmation of my view that The Bulwark has eked out a lane on the punditry spectrum that, due to the past conservative bona fides of many of its writers and editors, it deems to allow them to pose as the adults in the room.

But such a pose depends on accepting as a done deal the civilizational upheaval catalyzed by the countercultural moment sixty years ago. That’s the kind of stance for which David French (whom I still admire a great deal) came in for opprobrium. It posits that our Constitutional framework elegantly meets the interests of all the various groups in our modern pluralistic society.

So sort-of-righties such as Sykes and Nichols, as well as plenty of lefties, are having a big har-de-har over Mandel’s dead air. But what about a succinct and specific definition of “woke”?

May I offer my own contribution to that effort?

Last April, I wrote a piece for Merion West entitled “The term ‘Woke’ Is Losing its Punch.”

As is my wont, I delved into the etymology a bit:

The etymology of the term is rather interesting. The folk singer Huddie Ledbetter used it in his 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys.” The song deals with a particularly ugly racial incident and subsequent set of trials. Ledbetter cautions anyone to “best stay woke” when traveling through the area in Alabama where the incident took place. In 2008, R&B singer Eryka Badu’s song “Master Teacher” includes the refrain “stay woke.”

When the term first came into common usage in a positive sense a few years ago, it had the strong scent of self-congratulation and superiority. It was a linguistic indication that revolutionary consciousness had made “the long march through the institutions.” When enthusiasts pointed to a woke organization, the message was clearly that the organization would not be going back to old bigoted ways, that it was in the vanguard of a new day.

And what a new day it is. The notion that the human being can invent himself or herself is now codified into rules not only in private organizations but the entire federal government, per the November 2021 “Government-Wide Strategic Plan to Advance Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility in the Federal Workplace.”

I then mention what I consider to be one of the most important books of the twenty-first century so far:

As the academic Carl R. Trueman points out, this notion is a relatively new phenomenon. In his 2020 book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution, Trueman traces how this all came about, from the thought of Rousseau through the Romantic poets to Darwin, Marx, and Freud and on up to Hugh Hefner putting the sheen of sophistication over the commercialization of erotic arousal.

Then I look at how the term “community” has been weaponized:

We now speak of a “community,” the members of which are bound by an embrace of dimensions of sexuality that were not even dreamt of 30 years ago at the outside. This is uncharted territory indeed.

In the rush to put as many supposedly aggrieved demographics under the identity-politics umbrella as possible, some have conflated racial concerns with those focused on human sexuality. This has not worked out seamlessly, as evidenced by the position and work of the Coalition of African American Pastors. That group has been vocal in opposing same-sex marriage and, more recently, the participation of trans people in women’s sports.

Progressives have become more adept at coining terms that provide them cover when previously used terms become unpopular. When “critical race theory” obtained a stigma, the Left continued with that same agenda under the brand of “culturally relevant pedagogy.”

This gives me the opportunity to make the distinction between Trumpism and conservatism, something I feel is important to do whenever possible:

At this point, the term woke is mainly bandied about by adherents of Trumpism, who have lamentably succeeded in confusing the general public about what conservatism is and is not. Granted, Trumpism shares conservatism’s concern about the stunning pace at which identity politics has inserted itself into the core of our social and cultural fabric, but it is in the means used to address this that the distinctions become clear. “Exhibit A” of the Trumpist response can be found in the way Florida’s legislature and that state’s governor have dealt with the decidedly woke Disney corporation. On the other hand, the preferable conservative response to Disney announcing its intent to work to repeal the education law would have been to say, “Good luck electing a legislature to get that accomplished in a state such as ours” and beyond that leaving it to local school boards and cultural influencers.

I conclude with a question that is still pertinent eleven months later:

Does the apparently not-far-off obsolescence of the term woke indicate that the woke agenda is a done deal, or is the struggle between that agenda and a more historically-rooted understanding of human nature entering a new phase?

That is not presently clear. What is clear is that that conversation is far from over.

As things presently stand, each side (Trumpists and progressives) get to dig in their heels, up the vitriol level, pass laws and, in response, fill state legislative chambers with screaming hordes of the indignant, and formulate fantasies of how wonderful society will be once one’s own side has stomped the other into the dust. Precipice readers will recall that I sketched out my thoughts on this last month in a post called “And Then What?”

I almost sound like I’m embracing the David French position here, don’t I?

Let me clarify the distinction. Conservatism - actual conservatism - is on the correct side of the standoff over woke-ism. Conservatism, after all, is about upholding what history shows us to be workable, and what Scripture shows us to be right. Yes, there have been atheist conservatives who have made valuable contributions to the fleshing-out of that worldview, but they operated in a milieu in which men being men and women being women and marriage being defined as the union of one man and one woman was taken for granted. And that’s because societies of the West, and the world generally, have paid heed to history’s lessons.

And the titters of Sykes and Nichols notwithstanding, woke-ism has inflicted massive damage on our society’s basic institutions and assumptions. In the above-cited “And Then What?” piece, I cite some recent examples. As you know, examples abound indicating its pervasiveness. There’s not a sector that’s unaffected: education fields ranging from the humanities to medicine, the corporate world, journalism (as exemplified by local network affiliate newscasters using the term “pregnant people”), arts and entertainment, of course, government, and institutional Christianity.

To be woke is to ignore all the human history, and the lessons to be derived therefrom, that occurred before one’s own lifetime. To be woke is to establish categories of human beings based on people’s feelings. To be woke is to have no use for any idea of a transcendent order to the universe - that is, to embrace nihilism.

Which leads to a question we ought to ask of all the ha-ha-Bethany-Mandel-sure-did-step-in-it types: Just what do you see as the purpose of human existence?

I’m just afraid that in all too many cases, the reply would be, “That’s for each of us to decide.”