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Growing up in the small town of Delaware City, one of the first lessons I learned, playing in the dirt street in front of our house, was: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
It’s so true. It’s such a powerful lesson it’s hard to believe most Republicans today haven’t yet learned it. Instead, following their demented leader Donald Trump, they seem to delight in name-calling — as if it makes them smarter or more clever. It just makes them look more desperate.
As a progressive, I’ve been called many names over the years, including pinko, leftie, commie, and bleeding heart liberal. But today, it appears, I’m something worse. I’m also “woke.”
For Republicans today, there’s nothing worse and more un-American than being woke. Right up there with deporting anybody who entered this country illegally, they believe it’s their divine mission to rid this country of anybody woke. And nobody takes that job more seriously than the self-appointed Anti-Woke Master, Florida Gov.Ron DeSantis.
“We have respected our taxpayers and we reject woke ideology,” he declared upon winning re-election last month. “We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”
DeSantis got me thinking. Other than the fact that I was, indeed “woke,” as in “awake,” and not asleep, I had no idea what he was talking about. I bet none of his wildly-applauding supporters knew either.
So, I checked. I discovered that, no matter what DeSantis thinks it means, being woke is not something to be ashamed of. It’s something to be proud of.
“Woke” first emerged as an African-American slang word for someone who gets it, someone who understands discrimination faced by Blacks. It was famously used by the folk singer Lead Belly at the end of his 1938 song “Scottsboro Boys,” about nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women. “I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there,” Lead Belly warned. “Best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”
Beginning in 2014, its use became more widespread as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. And in 2017, Merriam-Webster actually added it to the dictionary, defining woke as “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” Now, I ask you, what’s wrong with that?
In other words, if I believe systemic racism has permeated every aspect of American endeavor — health care, transportation, hiring practices, Hollywood, television, corporate boardrooms, etc. — then, I’m “woke.”
If I believe young Blacks are more likely to get longer prison sentences for drug possession than whites, that police are more likely to pull over Black teenagers for traffic offenses, or that efforts by many red states today to cut the number of polling places, ban early voting, or require photo ID are efforts to suppress the Black vote — then, I’m “woke.”
If I don’t believe the “white replacement theory” — that there’s a deliberate plot, organized mainly by Jews, to promote mass non-white immigration, abortion, miscegenation, and interracial marriage in order to overtake America’s white majority and destroy white culture — then, I’m “woke.”
Or if I believe that a former president of the United States should not be sitting down for dinner with an avowed white supremacist and a Holocaust denier — then, I’m “woke.”
I see nothing wrong with that. I believe we not only have to accept the reality of America’s systemic racism, we have to do everything we can to end it. As Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-Calif., advises: “We have a moral obligation to “stay woke.”
Ron DeSantis can call me “woke” as many times as he wants. I wear it as a badge of honor.
Tribune Content Agency
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