I appreciate the neutral and factual explanation of the term, as a reader from Europe, with English as third language. And I do not understand the downvotes, both to your explanation or to the equally neutral question.
The definition of "woke" is like the definition of "hipster". Whatever these words might originally have meant in some narrow context, they are now used as vague condescending insults for a broad range of people the person speaking doesn’t like.
Find 10 people opposed to “woke” and you’ll get 12 or 13 distinct explanations/criteria for the term.
If you substitute “poopyhead” for “woke” across the internet it won’t substantively change the meaning of anything you read.
That's not right. Woke is an adjective form of SJW (Social Justice Warrior) and almost exclusively used by people who disparage people interested in social justice in a sneering way. It is meant to be insulting but it does have meaning.
It’s not that these words have no meaning. The problem is that the meaning is vague and changes depending on the speaker and context, so that to the reader/listener it is generally impossible to tell quite what meaning is intended. The word says more about the identity politics of the user than it does about the target.
“Woke” is in practice a vague pejorative that people use to redirect a conversation from critical thinking to tribal thinking.
It is used to elide facts and specifics, like measurable and persistent racial disparities in social outcomes including education. Instead we are invited to consider whether a given person or policy is “woke”, which is not objectively measurable in any way.
If there are specific complaints about a policy, we can consider those directly. No need to apply a reductive label. The top comment was quite specific.
All policies represent agendas and have implications for groups within society, including policies implemented in the past that we live under today. To different perspectives, any given policy will have different upsides and downsides. Moving forward is about finding balance, consensus, or compromise among these perspectives.
Applying a simple label like “woke” is an invitation to ignore this complexity in favor of binary (“is this woke or not”) or linear (“how woke is this”) modes of thought. It’s also an invitation to prejudge the merit based on a sense of whether an idea comes from inside or outside the tribe.
It’s like trying to troubleshoot a space station by focusing on whether solutions seem “cool” or not.
The downvotes are because this person is unfairly presenting a single perspective on what the "woke" term means. If you aren't willing to present other perspectives and engage with them in good faith, then you're a propagandist.
It is much better to read a single factual and accurate explanation, than to read two biased perspectives from two shitheads on the opposite sides of political spectrum.
Example of 'Woke', non race, non class issue: Relative Age Effect.
If you are born in November you have almost no chance of becoming a star athlete, if you are born in January your chances are triple.
Noone designed the system to be unjust, but noone throught about ensuring it's fair either, and for decades noone questioned it.
That's what 'Woke' people claim to 'detect'. Sometines it's right, sometimes it's wrong.
Results matter as much as Intent does - communists had great intent, and where did it get them. Neoliberals have great intent and volumes of theory, all they have to show for it is a stangnant economy and rising inequality.
