What is the meaning of woke? How the GOP is driving politics of fear ahead of 2024



Mabinty Quarshie, USA TODAY
Thu, March 9, 2023 

During last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, speaker after speaker attacked "woke" ideology in their speeches to conservative activists.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley decried wokeness as "a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down."

"I traveled the country calling out the woke-industrial-complex in America,” GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy bragged.

Elsewhere, Republicans have declared war on "woke capitalism” and even introduced legislation like the "Stop WOKE Act," in Florida, an acronym for Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees.

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The uptick on excoriating "woke " ideology has increased in recent years among politicians including former President Donald Trump, as Americans across the nation battle over diversity, inclusion and equity efforts in the workforce, public schools and in legislation.

But what is "woke"? And what do the GOP attacks mean for 2024?

A GOP war on 'woke'?: Most Americans view the term as a positive, USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds
What does being woke mean?

Among conservative lawmakers, there is no consensus on what it means to be woke.

Some have used it to attack trans and gay rights, critical race theory – legal theory that examines systemic racism as a part of American institutions – and the teachings of the New York Times' 1619 project in public schools.

"If you ask people what woke is, I think what they mean is they want to stand against people who are engaging in some type of advocacy for marginalized people," said Andra Gillespie, political scientist at Emory University.

"It's kind of this lumping together of anybody whose views could be construed as being progressive on issues related to identity and civil rights."

At CPAC last week, for example, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles called for the eradication of "transgenderism."

Woke capitalism: Why Republicans aren't winning over investors in war against ESG and 'woke' big business

But Black Americans have used woke since at least the early-to-mid 20th century to mean being alert to racial and social injustice. As the Black Lives Matter movement began after the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, and grew, "woke" expanded outside of Black communities into the public lexicon.
What about 'stay woke'?

"Woke" is now being appropriated in ways far from its original definition.

"To me, it's not just woke. It's 'stay woke,'" said Terri Givens, a political science professor at McGill University. "The reason we have to 'stay woke' is because of exactly what these people are doing right now, which is finding very insidious ways to undercut our rights."

Givens called the attacks on wokeism "a full-on dog whistle" and pointed to attempts to limit the right to vote, curtail reproductive and abortion rights and ban inclusive education in schools as examples of the backlash against Black and brown civil rights.

"Learning history is not about wokeism," Given said.
The backlash to wokeness

Political experts said the backlash to wokeism greatly increased after the 2020 worldwide protests against the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor's killing.

Conservatives now use the term as an attack against cancel culture, political correctness and racial justice initiatives.

"What they're trying to do is make the term a pejorative," said Kendra Cotton, chief operating officer of New Georgia Project, a progressive-leaning voting rights group.

As more marginalized groups are elected into office and exercising their voting power during elections, it can make some Americans afraid, said Cotton.

GOP wins House majority: Republicans send a message to 'woke' businesses— get out of politics

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible GOP presidential candidate, has built a persona crusading against wokeness. In addition to championing the Stop WOKE Act, he has stated that the Sunshine state is "where woke goes to die."

Tehama Lopez Bunyas, a political scientist at George Mason University and co-author of the book "Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter," said the legislation is "perhaps the most explicit way we see the co-optation of the term 'woke' today."

“Right now, we're seeing racially conservative pundits and politicians positioning themselves as adversaries of the multiracial Black Lives Matter movement," said Lopez Bunyas. "One of the rhetorical tools they are using is the maligning of a term that has been in use by Black people and in Black politics for well over a hundred years."
Have the anti-woke attacks been successful?

Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin cruised to victory in 2021 riding a wave of parental anger over teaching inclusive history in public schools.

Keneshia Grant, a political scientist at Howard University, said Youngkin's success was part of an intentional pushback against marginalized communities, which includes misunderstanding terms like woke, critical race theory, and LGBTQ rights.

"He ends up successfully using the fear that people have about teaching students Black history or American history through the guise of CRT and successfully uses that to motivate a base," Grant said. "They are doing this because they think it w

ill help them win. And we have evidence that sometimes it actually does help them win."

Americans divided on what 'woke' means

Americans are not all in agreement on what exactly woke means.

A new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll released Wednesday found that 56% of Americans said woke means "to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices."

Yet 39% of those surveyed agree with the Republican definition,"to be overly politically correct and police others' words."

The war on 'woke': Senate blocks Biden ESG investing rule, Biden vows to veto

"Racial resentment and grievance are certainly one of those things that have been very effectively used to mobilize a certain segment of the Republican population for a long time," said Gillespie.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What does 'woke' mean? Republicans bashing 'wokeness' ahead of 2024

ROFLMAO

We asked CPAC attendees what they think 'woke' means. Their answers were all over the place.

Bryan Metzger
Sat, March 4, 2023 

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville speaks on a panel about “Sacking the Woke Playbook” at CPAC on March 2, 2023.

Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

The word "woke" has quickly shot to the forefront of Republican politics in recent years.

It's been used to describe a sweeping array of topics — essentially anything Republicans don't like.

We asked CPAC attendees what they thought the word means. Their answers revealed little consensus.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — In 2023, the word "woke" seems to be at the top of conservatives' minds.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender, has declared that his state is "where woke goes to die." Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana has floated the idea of an "anti-woke" caucus in the House. And a Department of Labor rule pertaining to socially-conscious investment decisions, derided by the right as "woke," has teed up what will be the first veto of Joe Biden's presidency.

But at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — a yearly confab where the Republican Party's most die-hard activists and political hangers-on hear from conservative influencers and politicians — the precise definition of the ubiquitous word remains elusive.

"That's tough. Let me think on it. Give me like two minutes to come up with something good," said Johnny McEntee, the CEO of a right-wing dating app that explicitly declares that "other dating apps have gone woke."

The word "woke" originally emerged from African American vernacular English, signifying a general awareness of systems of injustice. But in recent years, the word has been co-opted by the right, often used as a catch-all term for progressive policies, ideas, and ways of thinking.

And among the right-wing gathering's attendees, the word seemed to encompass seemingly everything that conservatives dislike about the world.

"My opinion is: they're trying to wake up what shouldn't be woken up," said Daniel Francis, 58, who said he'd traveled from his home in Southern Colorado to promote an organization that puts on rodeos for active duty service members and veterans. "They're stirring the pot in the wrong direction."

For Francis, who said he homeschools his own children, the word "woke" invokes the idea of a system of education that's stoking divisions between groups. But it's also the driving factor behind a broader set of policy concerns — and the Republican Party, in his view, isn't doing enough to combat it.

"I think the woke side is kind of keeping the border open," he said. "I mean, that's what they want."

Daniel Francis, 58, said people are "trying to wake up what shouldn't be woken up."Bryan Metzger/Insider

'Political corruptness'

Wokeness was also on the lips of the conference's speakers, who used the word in a variety of contexts.

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama spoke at a panel on Thursday about "Sacking the Woke Playbook," where he made sweeping claims about a left-wing agenda to uproot existing gender and sexuality norms, declaring at one point that "they want one gender."

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and one-time US ambassador to the United Nations, declared wokeness to be a "virus more dangerous than any pandemic" in her speech on Friday, ultimately closing by urging attendees to "save our country from weakness and wokeness."

McEntee, the dating app CEO, eventually settled on "political correctness" as an apt synonym, saying that President Donald Trump — McEntee's former employer — had "opened everybody's eyes" to the issue.

"You know, we shouldn't be banning words," McEntee added. Asked for clarification on which words were being banned — and by whom — he demurred, citing the fact that he was there to promote his dating app.

"Political correctness" appeared to be the most popular short-hand among attendees.

A man wears a "stop woke indoctrination" sticker at CPAC 2023.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Nigel Farage, the erstwhile Brexit leader and former European Parliament member who could be seen walking around the conference on Friday, told Insider that wokeness meant "a level of political correctness that is totally extraordinary."

"If we don't agree with someone, we try and ban them or cancel them," he added.

James Winship, 68, a Virginia man dressed up as George Washington and holding a flag he said he carried on the mall on January 6, 2021, told Insider that "woke" was substituted for "political correctness" because the term sounded too much like "political corruptness."
'Everything's gotta be a hyphen-this, hyphen-that'

Others offered more expansive — and dark — definitions.

Joe Pinion, a Newsmax host who was the GOP nominee for Senate in New York in 2022, defined the "gospel of woke" as the notion that "all things in America are bad" while speaking at a panel about how conservatives might win young voters.

Jackson Stallings, a 21-year-old student attending the conference, said he saw wokeness as a combination of "this transgenderism thing," leftism, and critical race theory.

"I think it's all directly connected," he said.

Other attendees also homed in on gender and sexuality issues as being central to what defines "woke," including Susan Vandeberghe, 65, who was volunteering for CPAC after traveling to the conference from Michigan.

"Well, I don't have a problem with anybody being gay or anything like that," she said, adding that she had a gay nephew. She went on to name Pride Month, transgender athletes competing in sports, drag queens, and sex education in school systems as key examples of wokeness run amok.

"I'm not against anybody having those feelings, and it's more accepted now than ever before," she said. "But they're taking it to an extreme like no other."

Mary Phelps and Robyn Erickson, both 68, said wokeness is about division between groups.

Bryan Metzger/Insider

Robyn Erickson and Mary Phelps, two 68-year old volunteers with the #WalkAway movement — which purports to represent former Democrats who've become Republicans — spoke generally of what they see as division and the misuse of history.

"Everything's gotta be a hyphen-this, hyphen-that," said Phelps, arguing that America should be a "melting pot" and that people are "hyper-focused on certain facets and using them to start conflict."

Erickson, a chef who noted that her company "tries to remind us of diversity, inclusion" on a weekly basis, made a culinary analogy.

"Like, when you make spaghetti sauce or chili, it's better the second day," she said. "Because it's all blended. It's come together."

We asked conservatives at CPAC what ‘woke’ means. Their replies were revealing

Eric Garcia

THE INDEPENDENT
Fri, March 3, 2023 

A man in a booth selling hats at CPAC 2023, at the National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Maryland (AP)

The fact is that conservatives don’t like the concept of “woke” these days.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the potential Republican presidential candidate, has repeatedly said that his state is where “woke goes to die”. Former president Donald Trump has talked about generals being too “woke”.

Mr DeSantis did not attend the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington this week. But plenty of others focused on “wokeness”.

Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley said that “I’m running for president to renew an America that’s proud and strong, not weak and woke.” Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama held a talk on the first full day of the conference entitled “Sacking the Woke Playbook”.

“Today, they are being indoctrinated with all this woke — transgender athletes, CRT, 1619,” Mr Tuberville said in reference to allowing transgender athletes; critical race theory, the niche legal theory that many conservatives have used as a catch-all to describe education about Black history and racism; and the 1619 Project, the project by The New York Times led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones that chronicles the impact of slavery in the founding and present day of the United States.

Black Americans largely adopted the term “woke” going back as late as the 1940s as a phrase meant to be aware of racism around them and became a staple of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). But plenty of activists at CPAC had a different definition.

Marleen Laska, a conservative activist from Pennsylvania who attended the conference, has a broad definition of what “woke” meant.

“That’s a loaded question,” she said. “It covers so many things. It incorporated all the stupidity that is going on with the country.”

She specifically cited environmental and social governance investing practices.

“The children and in the schools and trying to make the transgender, and it came to so many things ... which is wrong in this country,” she told The Independent, also criticising including rainbow pride flags in classrooms.

“To me the word ‘woke’ is the antithesis of everything that America was founded on,” Marie Rogerson, an executive director of program development at Moms for Liberty based in Florida, told The Independent. “It’s anything for me that’s anti-American, anti-common sense, anti-really in the sense of education, what education was meant to do.”

Ms Rogerson said Mr DeSantis’s war on the concept of “woke” was necessary to help the state thrive.

“Killing ‘woke’ means, it’s like a garden, you’re getting rid of the weeds so that the things you actually want to grow, can,” she said. “In the instance of Florida, he’s talking about industry and our economics and our education. And all those things that we want to thrive can actually thrive because we’ve choked the weeds.”

Ms Rogerson said people did not need to use the word “woke” to discuss racism.

““I think there’s a better way to say it,” she said. “Racism exists. I don’t think it’s a, you know, depending on the area and what we’re talking about, it could be a major problem, it could be a minor problem. I don’t think it’s necessary to say ‘stay woke’ to be concerned about any racism that exists in America. Woke means more than just racism.”

Ms Rogerson’s colleague Sheila Armstrong, who works with the group’s Philadelphia chapter, had a slightly different definition.

““So the word ‘woke’ is, they’re using it wrong. To be woke is when you recognize that maybe what you was doing was wrong,” she told The Independent. “Me being a Black woman, a lot of this slang and terminology they try to use is coming out of our community. But they use the terminology wrong. So for a person to be woke, that means you recognizing what you do is wrong. Just because you’re woke is right. That’s where the confusion is.”

Angelo Veltri, northeast regional director for Young Americans for Liberty, had a similarly vague description for what the word meant.

“‘Woke’ to me means that you are basing your reality off of fiction and your feelings rather than actual facts,” he told The Independent. “‘Woke’ is more of the sense of like, if you feel a certain way, then you must be true, and they typically adhere to their truths rather than the truth as a whole. And it’s leading toward this woke postmodernism in a sense. Woke communism, where they’re trying to take over based on people’s feelings rather than actual factual evidence.”

Kate Ng contributed to this report

Ron DeSantis and the GOP fight 'woke' because hating a word is easier that hating people


Rex Huppke, USA TODAY
Sun, January 29, 2023 

Like many Americans in this age of stupid things, I face an existential question: Am I woke?

I assume not, because Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t tried to ban me, as he recently did an AP high school course on African-American studies.

But who knows? Maybe I’m stealth-woke. Maybe my very presence in society indoctrinates America’s youth with…well, I guess I don’t really know the specific content of woke indoctrination, since nobody stoking fear about it has ever explained what the heck they’re talking about.
Oh no! Queer people exist? Please don't tell my children

In giving his reasons for blocking the AP course, DeSantis whined that it contained a section on “queer theory.” As he spoke those two words he sounded like someone was holding a cat turd under his nose. Apparently, anything “queer” is woke, because it might suggest to impressionable youth that queer people exist. I guess.

OH THE IRONY

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addresses the crowd before publicly signing the Stop Woke bill in April 2022.

The bottom line is DeSantis and other Quixotic clodhoppers in the perma-fabulist world of the Republican Party have made “woke” a ubiquitous slur, attacking everyone from leaders of The Walt Disney Co. to teachers to M&Ms. Why? Apparently because the “wokies” are trying to destroy America by engaging in radical behavior like “promoting understanding,” “thinking about others” and “making the world a slightly less awful place for people who historically haven’t had much say in how things work.”

DeSantis shows who he is: DeSantis blocks an AP African American studies course – and reveals his true colors

'Woke' never seems to apply to things that help straight, white people

“Woke” is an umbrella term on the right. Sometimes it refers to students learning about things like gender identity or slavery, sometimes it deals with the kind of shoes a cartoon M&M is wearing, sometimes it involves climate change.

But there’s one consistent element: It always gets applied to things that make certain straight, white people uncomfortable. I’ve never heard someone on Fox News bemoan the wokeness of a young-adult novel featuring the wedding of a white man and a white woman. They don’t holler things like:

 “THAT’S WOKE BECAUSE IT’S INDOCTRINATING MY CHILD WITH HETEROSEXUALITY!”

Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill passed in March 2022 is aimed at restricting speech on sexual orientation and gender identity in public school classrooms.

No, it’s always, “THAT BOOK IS WOKE BECAUSE IT SUGGESTS THAT BEING GAY AND LOVING SOMEONE IS A THING THAT HAPPENS!!” Or more sober reflections like, “We must ban this course because it might make my white child feel bad that slavery happened and, worse yet, that racism still exists in America, harumph.”

Does it stand for something else? Is it W.O.K.E.?

Maybe “WOKE” is an acronym for “White people Obfuscating to remain Keenly Entitled.” Or “Weirdos Opposed to Kids’ Education.”

I dunno. I can’t make sense of the whole thing.

'Woke' or joke?: DeSantis is trying to keep straight, white men like me perpetually angry.

Microsoft recently had the temerity to announce it was updating Xbox game consoles to be more energy efficient and help cut down on carbon emissions, prompting the fury fetishists at Fox News to lose their minds and say the company is “going woke because of climate change.”

Fox News host Jimmy Failla said: “They’re trying to recruit your kids into climate politics at an earlier age.”
How dare a woke Xbox distract us from gender fluid M&Ms!

This was such a serious threat to the country it distracted the warriors-against-woke from their previous battle against what Tucker Carlson called “obese and distinctly frumpy lesbian M&Ms” or some other such nonsense.

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson, presumably troubled over the wokeness of M&Ms.

Making matters dumber, I heard Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus on Fox Business the other day complaining about the “woke generation” and its focus on climate change, saying: “We've already overspent. And if anything, climate control has caused most of the problems we have today.”

But then I read Home Depot is installing solar panels across the rooftops of 25 of its stores in California, part of the company’s plan to “produce or procure 100% renewable electricity equivalent to the electricity needs for all Home Depot facilities by 2030.”

All right, anti-woke crusaders, make up your darn minds

So concern about climate change is woke and problematic but also part of the environmentally conscious plan the company — whose co-founder hates wokeness — is touting?

PICK A LANE, PEOPLE, YOU’RE NOT MAKING SENSE!

In Congress, lawmakers are wrestling over raising the debt ceiling, which should be a simple step to avoid a global financial crisis. But Republicans have dug their heels in, and one budgetary proposal getting attention comes from the right-wing Center for Renewing America. It’s called “A Commitment to End Woke and Weaponized Government.”

Critical race theory

In 90 pages of text, the word “woke” appears 77 times, but never once with anything approaching a definition of the word itself. It could just as effectively have been called “A Commitment to End Flarpgasms and Weaponized Government.” The word is irrelevant — its only intent is to spark a visceral “the libs are gonna make it so I’m not at the top of the power structure” response in people who, deep down or right on the surface, feel they have a right to remain at the top of the power structure.

What are debt ceiling 'extraordinary measures'?: GOP bake sale and selling Biden's Corvette.

We must rid our school of FLARPGASM!

DeSantis could hold a press conference in Florida and decry the “flarpgasm” of an AP African American studies course, and his supporters would cheer and wink and nod and be proud they live in a state whose motto is, “Where Flarpgasm Goes to Die!”

Woke is, at the risk of rhyming, a joke, albeit an insidious one. It’s hard for a person or politician to stand up and say, “I’m not comfortable with people who are transgender or queer or gay or lesbian, and I don’t want to better understand Black people's historical experience in America.”

Rally against teaching critical race theory at the Loudoun County Government center in Leesburg, Virginia on June 12, 2021.

But it’s easy for them to stand up and say, “I HATE WOKE!” It’s easy to push back against a meaningless word, and it gets the message across to fellow travelers just fine.

What it misses is this: The rest of us are smart enough to see through the charade. It’s too cute by half.

We aren’t sleeping through your woke-centric babbling, folks. Quite the contrary.

We’re woke indeed.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk, or contact him at rhuppke@usatoday.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: From CRT to M&M's, DeSantis and GOP's war on 'woke' speaks volumes

RIGHT WING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
'Woke mind virus'? 'Corporate wokeness'? Why red America has declared war on corporate America


Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY
Thu, January 5, 2023 

Elon Musk, the billionaire CEO of Twitter and Tesla, calls it "woke mind virus." Populist Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis call it "corporate wokeness."

'Woke' – a watchword long embraced by the Black community – has been co-opted by GOP activists, officials and lawmakers as a culture-war rallying cry against progressive activism. And conservatives across red America are using it to score political points as they try to stop corporations from taking public positions on political issues and social causes from abortion to immigration.

“We will never surrender to the woke mob," DeSantis said during the inaugural address for his second term this week. "Florida is where woke goes to die.”

Republicans say they're fighting back against the unchecked influence of liberal activists in executive suites and boardrooms.

Grievances include Delta Air Lines opposing Georgia’s restrictive voting laws and Citigroup paying for Texas employees to travel out of state for abortions. Companies suspending campaign donations to Republicans who denied the result of the 2020 presidential election following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack worsened tensions.

GOP has a message for big business: GOP wins house majority, tells 'woke' businesses to get out of politics

What is ESG investing?: Why Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republicans are fighting 'woke' ESG investing

“None of this has anything to do with running their companies,” said Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union. “Is it really the job of a corporate CEO to be the head of the DNC, the head of the AFL-CIO or the head of Planned Parenthood?”
Why conservatives are fighting 'woke' corporations

In a report prepared for the National Center for Public Policy Research, “Balancing the Boardroom: How conservatives can combat corporate wokeness,” the movement lays out its reasoning: “American corporations, hyper-politicized and corrupt as many may be, are among the few public institutions where there’s still a fighting chance to reverse course.”

Corporations have emerged as an important force in American life, says David Primo, a professor of political science and business administration at the University of Rochester.

“They are doing this because they believe the corporate voice matters,” Primo said. “If they didn’t think the corporate voice mattered, nobody would be pressuring corporations.”

Republican campaigns target CRT and ESG

The two largest conservative campaigns have gone after racial justice and sustainable investing.

Republicans appropriated the term critical race theory, or CRT, to take aim at how racism is taught, not just in schools but in private companies.

The GOP is also going after ESG, short for environmental, social, governance principles, claiming that the nation's top money managers – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – are pursuing an ideological agenda at the expense of financial returns.

These campaigns are expected to grow with Republicans in control of the House and most state legislatures and DeSantis emerging as a probable 2024 presidential candidate.

DeSantis is chief ‘woke’ warrior in GOP

DeSantis has built his brand, in part, on attacking corporate America, from punishing Walt Disney for criticizing a state law limiting education about gender identity and sexual orientation in public classrooms to passing a law that restricts what kind of diversity training corporations can offer employees (legislation he dubbed the “Stop WOKE” Act.)

Also, Florida has pulled billions of state assets managed by BlackRock in a standoff with the world’s largest money manager over its ESG investment policies.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis addresses the crowd before publicly signing HB7, "individual freedom," also dubbed the "Stop Woke" bill in April.

When DeSantis won reelection in November, he devoted part of his victory speech to "wokeism."

“We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations," he said.

How DeSantis defines ‘woke’

The term “woke” dates back to the early 20th century. Traditionally, it was a call to Black people around the world to “wake up” to anti-Blackness and racial oppression.

Greater vigilance was again urged after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

What does it mean to be 'woke'?: And why does Florida Governor Ron DeSantis want to stop it?

DeSantis has been among the most prominent conservatives to co-opt the term and change its meaning.

Gray Rohrer of the news outlet Florida Politics was in the courtroom recently when DeSantis staffers answered that question.

Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’ communications director, said “woke” was a “slang term” for “progressive activism.”

Ryan Newman, DeSantis’ general counsel, said it was “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”

Newman said that DeSantis doesn’t believe there are systemic injustices in the U.S.

Congressional hearings to grill ‘woke’ executives

Corporations are bracing for 2023 to be a year of red-hot partisan rhetoric.

GOP scrutiny is expected to intensify with the Republican-controlled House planning congressional hearings.

“Corporations still have employees asking for more not less, so I think they will have to do this dance, where in-house they talk about inclusivity and how they treat their employees and about what kind of philanthropy they engage in and so forth," said Abhinav Gupta, associate professor of management at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. "But staying out of the political news cycle is something they definitely want to do.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ron DeSantis, Republicans are at war with 'woke' business: This is why

In fighting woke, the right became woke, but a truly ugly version

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead 

1 November, 2025 
Right-Wing Watch

Left Foot Forward

When Piers Morgan insists that ‘woke is dead,’ he proves only that he’s part of a new kind of woke, one that preaches freedom while policing it and transforming freedom into coercion.

This week, Piers Morgan launched his new book, ‘Woke Is Dead: How Common Sense Prevailed.’ True to form, he takes aim at familiar targets – the gender divide, the perceived erosion of free speech, and, naturally, anyone who prefers not to eat meat. The veteran broadcaster even claims he can pinpoint the exact day ‘woke died,’ during last year’s US presidential election, when one Trump campaign ad, in his view, outshone all others.

“‘Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you’ was the single most powerful and effective advert in modern American political history,” he argues.

It’s quite a turnaround. Back in 2020, Morgan published ‘Wake Up,’ warning the ‘liberal war on free speech’ was even more dangerous than Covid-19. Its blurb thundered: “If, like me, you’re sick and tired of being told how to think, speak, eat and behave, then this book is for you.”

So, what’s changed in five years? Something has, but not what Morgan thinks. ‘Woke’ hasn’t died, it’s migrated. It’s the right now telling us how to think, speak, and behave but inevitably as is always the way with the right, in a thoroughly repressive form.

Piers Morgan hasn’t killed woke. He’s joined it.

Many of us have long known the right never truly believed in ‘free speech.’ Now we have proof, and plenty of it – on both sides of the Atlantic.

The woke right in the US

The clearest example came after the killing of Charlie Kirk, when Trump and the MAGA movement embraced the very ‘cancel culture’ and suppression of speech they once claimed to oppose.

Jimmy Kimmel, one of America’s leading late-night hosts, was pulled off the air ‘indefinitely,’ after suggesting conservatives were exploiting Kirk’s death for political gain. The right’s outrage over his remarks sparked a counter-backlash, as hundreds of celebrities, including Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep, rallied to defend “our constitutionally protected rights.”

The push to punish those who’ve criticised Kirk, even when they cite his own slurs against Black, gay, and Muslim people, is, for some observers, a textbook case of the ‘woke right’ at work.

Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution argues that these crackdowns reflect a growing effort by conservatives to control public discourse. “What they’ve learned from the left,” he says, “is that if you can control what people say, if you can make them afraid of being cancelled, you can make the minority view look like the majority view.” I’m not sure that I would accept Rauch’s view that the left’s sensitivity to the social nature of words was ever about ‘control’, but the point about minority views presenting themselves as that of the majority, is well made.

Conservatives deny culture cancelling, of course. Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw insists, “I don’t think cancel culture applies here.” Defending the right’s support for Kirk, he insisted, “That’s a little bit different than ‘cancelling’ someone for glorifying the assassination of a family man.”

The instinct to silence dissent didn’t stop with the Kirk affair. It took an even more repressive form, in the battle over the American flag itself.

Flag flying

In August, Trump signed an executive order directing prosecutors to pursue charges against anyone who burns the US flag during protests. It effectively sought to bypass the Supreme Court’s 1989 Texas v. Johnson ruling, which affirmed flag burning as protected political expression under the First Amendment.

“They [the court] called it freedom of speech,” Trump complained as he signed the order. “You burn a flag, you get one year in jail.”

The order contained no such penalty, but the message was unmistakable, the self-proclaimed defenders of free expression were now enforcing the exact opposite.

Flag flying in Britain

Since the summer, Union Jacks and St. George’s flags have been everywhere, draped from lampposts, hung from windows, fluttering over pubs and village greens.

What seems forgotten is that ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ began in the suburbs of Birmingham, after a handful of flags were removed by the city council during the installation of new LED streetlights. But for hard-right online provocateurs, it was enough to ignite a culture war. Within hours, social media was ablaze with claims that ‘woke local bureaucrats’ were erasing national pride and denying people their British identity.

That narrative quickly snowballed. Reform’s Lee Anderson declared that any elected official who supports removing a flag “should be removed from office for betraying the very country they serve.”

Pure woke right, it could be argued, is a movement that wraps itself in patriotism while policing who is insufficiently patriotic.

While supporters insist the campaign is about pride, not prejudice, its Facebook page tells a different story, littered with posts glorifying Donald Trump’s crusade against ‘illegal immigrants,’ protests outside asylum hotels, and endorsements of Tommy Robinson’s ‘free speech’ rally.

In my own village in the High Peak, Derbyshire, a cultural battleground is raging. A small bakery flies the Union Jack flag to celebrate British heritage.’ Many locals cheer the café on, buoyed, no doubt, by sympathetic coverage from the local press. “Derbyshire café defiantly declares ‘the flag will be staying’ as it refuses to take down Union Jack,” ran a headline in the Manchester Evening News this week.



Yet few seem willing to see how this flag-flying frenzy, like much of the woke right itself, has become less about love of country, and more about deciding who belongs in it.

From flags to governance

This mindset now stretches beyond village greens and Facebook groups, reaching deep into public institutions.
In Derbyshire, where the county council is run by Reform, the party’s ideology is being tested in governance. In September, council leader Alan Graves claimed the authority “20% overstaffed,” promising to make it “lean and mean” by axing around 2,000 jobs.

The unions were unimpressed. Dave Ratchford of Unison dismissed the claims as “flat Earth theory” without evidence.

Typical Reform, austerity disguised as efficiency, and public-sector resentment repackaged as common sense.

This week, Reform MP Danny Kruger unveiled plans to slash the civil service and close government offices if the party wins the next election. He vowed to treat the “whole DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) woke agenda that has infected so much of Whitehall” as a breach of the civil service code, banning ‘socially controversial, political positions.’ In other words, the woke right now condemns ‘ideological conformity’ by enforcing its own.

The irony of the ‘woke right’

The irony is astounding. As Reform poses as a party of moral integrity, five councillors from its ‘flagship’ Kent council were expelled for ‘dishonest and deceptive behaviour’ after a leaked, expletive-laden video meeting. Proof, perhaps, that while moral panic is easy to preach, consistently ethical behaviour in public office can be challenging.

That same irony runs through the broader woke right, a movement that claims to defend freedom while quietly dismantling it.

Take, for instance, the slow but deliberate erosion of the right to protest, a cornerstone of any democratic society.

Under successive Tory governments, protest has been steadily criminalised. First came the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Act 2022, followed by the Public Order Act 2023. These laws were introduced in direct response to the civil disobedience of Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter.

The punishment for participating in such protests has also intensified, making peaceful civil disobedience an increasingly risky act.

What makes this all the more disquieting is Labour’s complicity. The anti-protest legislation that the party once opposed, with David Lammy as shadow justice secretary, condemning it as an attack on “the fundamental freedoms of protest that the British public hold dear,” has not been rolled back. Instead, with Labour in government, those restrictions have been further tightened.

The recent proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation, which has led to hundreds of arrests of peaceful demonstrators, has been condemned by civil liberties groups and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who called it “at odds with the UK’s obligations under international human rights law.”

And the tightening continues. Just last month, the government announced plans to grant police new powers to curb ‘repeat protests,’ including the authority to ban them outright. Home secretary Shabana Mahmood argued that officers should be able to consider the ‘cumulative impact’ of protest activity when restricting when and where demonstrations can occur.

Critics argue that such restrictions mark a dangerous turn away from democratic accountability. Dr David J. Bailey, associate professor of politics at the University of Birmingham, warned that the government’s position on repeat protests poses a grave threat to democratic rights. “Sustained campaigns are widely considered necessary for democracies to function. Successful attempts by the public to influence politicians are often the direct result of repeated actions seeking to hold the powerful to account through protest,” he wrote in the Conversation.

Once again, the woke right’s obsession with moral order and national unity exposes its true purpose: not to protect freedom, but to police it. Behind the guise of patriotism and public safety lies hostility to dissent, or at least the wrong kind of dissent, and a willingness to sacrifice the very liberties they claim to defend.

But the crucial difference between the woke right and the woke left is that the right isn’t truly woke at all. The term woke originated in African American communities, first emerging in 1938, when blues musician Lead Belly used the phrase ‘stay woke’ as a warning to stay alert to racial injustice. In its true sense, being woke means caring about the wellbeing and dignity of all people, regardless of race, religion, sexuality, or background. The so-called woke right, however, wants the censorship without the compassion, the control without the conscience.

So, when Piers Morgan insists that ‘woke is dead,’ he proves only that he’s part of a new kind of woke, one that preaches freedom while policing it and transforming freedom into coercion.


Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

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How progressives lost the 'woke' narrative – and what they can do to reclaim it from the right-wing

Joshua Adams
June 11, 2022

Donald Trump Speaks at CPAC Orlando, Fla. 2022 (CHANDAN KHANNA AFP)



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The first novel in recorded history was published in Japan. It was called The Tale of Genji. It was completed in the early 11th-century by a woman who was later given the name of Murasaki Shikibu. A few years ago, I found out that printing existed in Asia hundreds of years before Johannes Gutenberg assembled his printing press in Europe.

These are facts I never learned in college, let alone K-12. All tended to focus on the Gutenberg story when the history of reading and printing came up. If I suggested that we should teach this in school, many today would call me “woke.” And it wouldn’t only be folks on the right

Many on the left who embrace it’s-class-not-race politics, and who say they value historicism and material reality, would assert that merely broaching these facts (whether true or not) can only be, in essence, about representation, “political correctness” and “identity politic

It’s interesting how these folks say woke, often with a scoff.

Though without the right’s disgust, the overlap on the left is “this argument is unserious and you don’t have to engage with it.”

In an article for The Nation, I explained the Black communal origin of woke in a time before it became a catchall anti-progressive buzzword:

“Woke” was used in the Black community to convey the need to be socially aware of anti-Black oppressive systems, ideas, etc. in order to at least safely navigate through them — and at most dismantle them. A simple analogy would be the code in The Matrix — just knowing it’s there can help a character survive. Woke could range from James Baldwin in “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?” or Laurence Fishburne’s character yelling Wake up! in Spike Lee’s School Daze, or Georgia Anne Muldrow saying “Woke is definitely a Black experience.”

Black people have also used woke in (often, but not exclusively) Afro-centric spiritual, cosmological or metaphysical discourse. The topics could be anything from “opening your third eye,” staying attuned to the energy of the people around you, or more charged discussions like not praying to white Jesus or what is the “correct” religion for pan-African people to have.

Now woke can mean anything.

Calling a person by their chosen pronouns? Woke.


A history teacher teaching the truth about slavery? Woke.

Critical of Dave Chappelle’s comedy or Joe Rogan’s podcast? Woke.

An interracial couple in a Pepsi commercial? Woke.

A Black character in Jurassic Park? Woke.

Asking why you can’t make a Black character in Elden Ring? Woke.

According to US Senator Ron Johnson, wokeness is responsible for the Uvalde massacre. This absurdity comes from the right, but some on the left have been just as reactionary toward “wokeness.”

Many on the right and left argue that progressives have been poisoned by the ideology of group essentialism. They say progressive are rejecting individualism and forcing identity politics on the masses.

A more sophisticated leftist critique argues that “wokeness” is another formulation of consumer capitalism preventing class solidarity.

You’d think the anti-woke left would spot the right’s game. You’d think they’d have the tools to disentangle what is good faith and bad faith.

The right often reduces everything on the left to “Marxism.” I hope most folks know that’s silly. However, when the right says everything progressive is “woke,” many on the left, who argue against reductionism and essentialism, end up becoming reductionist and essentialist.

There’s a part of the left that offhandedly dismisses the historical processes and material reality that spur people to galvanize democratic political power through groups that are not solely based on class.


When it comes to politics, there are good reasons why groups (for example African Americans) have had to wield power collectively. When it comes to education, this part of the left often reduces progressive historicism to feeble diversity and inclusion initiatives.

In doing this, they dismiss the possibility that to a teacher (progressive or otherwise), the operating principle underlying the best teaching is teaching the best obtainable version of the truth — something well in keeping with the left’s propensity to historicize and contextualize.

Progressivism has excesses. It can become akin to a cultural bureaucracy. The phrase “cancel culture” makes me want to sigh for an hour. But to the extent that it exists, progressives have their share of responsibility.

But in an effort to distance themselves from “liberals” and “progressives,” too many of the left uncritically accept the right’s castigation of “wokeness” and are often blind to the reactionary logic they would disavow in a different context.

Few complained of ‘woke’ classes at Florida universities. Still, DeSantis pushed new bans

2023/04/26

ORWELLIAN SLOGAN

Ron DeSantis signed HB 7, known as the "Stop WOKE bill," in Hialeah Gardens. 

- Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald/TNS

The way Gov. Ron DeSantis tells it, Florida’s public universities are bloated bureaucracies run by liberal elites who discriminate against conservative and white students while professors indoctrinate the rest with the “woke” idea that racism, sexism and oppression are baked into U.S. history and institutions.

“We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” DeSantis said when he introduced the Stop WOKE Act, which became law in 2022 and restricted campus programming on subjects like privilege, oppression and racism.

But in the four and a half months that the law was enforced at public universities — before it was blocked by a preliminary injunction last November — only seven people reported potential violations of Stop WOKE across the 12 campuses, according to records obtained by the Herald through public records requests. All of the complaints were dismissed as unfounded, records show.

Kara Gross, legislative director and senior policy council of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, said the scarcity of complaints proves what critics have suspected all along — “woke” indoctrination is not a widespread concern.

“These are made-up issues by the governor to deflect and distract from the real issues that are facing Floridians,” Gross said. The ACLU sued Florida over Stop WOKE for allegedly violating constitutional protections on free speech and academic freedom at universities, ultimately resulting in a preliminary injunction last November.

Even unfounded complaints have a chilling effect and waste university resources, Gross said. Records show investigations into the seven complaints sometimes took up to a month to complete. In some cases, university compliance officers questioned the professors and department chairs before ultimately deciding to dismiss the complaint.

DeSantis and Florida Republicans are now advancing a higher education reform package that critics say doubles down on Stop WOKE and expands state control over universities by giving political appointees direct oversight over curriculum, campus programming and more control over the hiring and firing of faculty. Despite the injunction, the two higher education bills currently moving through the House and Senate (HB999 and SB266) explicitly reference Stop WOKE, all but guaranteeing another round of costly, taxpayer-funded court appearances should either become law.

“It is encouraging to see the Legislature taking up this important topic and joining the conversation that the governor began with his legislative proposals for higher-education reform in Florida,” said the governor’s deputy press secretary, Jeremy Redfern.

Redfern said the governor looks forward to signing a final form of the proposed legislation. He did not respond to questions regarding the few Stop WOKE complaints last year or whether more had been made to the governor’s office that were not passed on to universities.

Between July 1 and Nov. 17, 2022, Stop WOKE — later re-dubbed the Individual Freedom Act — prohibited university training or instruction promoting or compelling students to believe one of eight concepts, including the idea that someone might be oppressed due solely to their race or sex, or anything that makes anyone feel guilt due to the past actions of someone with a shared identity.

In a ruling granting the temporary injunction in November, Chief United States District Judge Mark Walker wrote that the Stop WOKE Act sought to give political appointees “unfettered authority to muzzle (Florida’s) its professors in the name of ‘freedom’” — an effort he called “positively dystopian.” The injunction was recently upheld by an appeals court pending the outcomes of the lawsuits brought by the ACLU and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free-speech advocacy group focused on education, on behalf of several students and faculty members at universities across the state.

The Herald requested records from all 12 of Florida’s public universities related to potential violations of Stop WOKE and any subsequent investigations. Despite the law being enforceable for most of the 2022 summer and fall semesters, only three universities received complaints of potential Stop WOKE violations. The nine others reported having no records of any complaints or investigations.

Records show the three complaints made to Miami-Dade’s Florida International University were all immediately closed. Two were anonymous complaints about courses that the university quickly determined could not have violated the law because the class in question wasn’t offered at the time the law was in effect.

The other was made by an FIU professor who complained that a cyber security training had promoted the idea that one race or sex might be morally superior to another, which was illegal under the act. The university found no such themes in the training and the professor did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.

The remaining four complaints were divided equally between the University of Florida in Gainesville, and the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

Tipsters included an anonymous person who took issue with a UF class he or she claimed to have learned about over the internet, a woman who saw a blog post from the Young America’s Foundation, founded by the late conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., and two mothers of UNF students. One mother complained that a professor in the UNF sports management department was presenting “woke” opinions as fact. The other said a reading assignment in the elementary education program titled “So You Want To Talk About Race” made her daughter feel bad for being white.

In each case, sometimes after lengthy review processes, the university provosts found no violation, noting the subjects of race and identity had come up as part of class discussions, which was permitted under the law so long as professors had not endorsed or promoted certain perspectives.

“The mission of UNF is not now and has never been to tell our students what to think,” wrote Karen Cousins, associate vice provost at UNF, in a written response to one mother. “Instead, UNF strives to teach our students how to think critically about a range of issues and topics and form their own well-reasoned opinions.”

Despite finding no violation of the law, UNF administrators noted the reading assignment about race — which was already voluntary — would no longer be included in the class.

It’s unclear how similar complaints would be handled under the latest proposed legislation for higher education reform, which critics say goes a step further than Stop WOKE in targeting curriculum.

Both the Senate and House bills would give a wide range of powers to the Board of Governors — the state university system’s governing body with the majority of members appointed by the governor — including the power to eliminate academic programs based on values that would also be determined by the board.

The bills would also have the board review university programming and general education courses for curriculum that violates Stop WOKE or that is “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”

Meera Sitharam, professor of computer science and mathematics at UF, said the proposed legislation is unconstitutional and already has faculty self-censoring to avoid winding up the subject of a lengthy investigation.

Sitharam — who is also a chief negotiator for the UF faculty union — said she is most concerned that the Senate bill would empower university presidents, handpicked by political appointees, to hire and fire faculty, regardless of tenure, based on criteria she said measures “obedience” rather than job performance or expertise.

“That’s where they really slid the knife in,” Sitharam said. The bill would also prevent faculty from appealing their removal, she said, in direct violation of the current faculty union contract.

In a statement to the Herald, Katie Betta, the Senate president’s deputy chief of staff for communications, said that Republican lawmakers are confident that the Senate bill and past laws are constitutional and will ultimately be upheld in court.

“The bill does not ban discussions,” Betta said in the statement about SB266. “It authorizes the Board of Governors to provide guidance to universities on [their] curriculum, to protect taxpayer funds from discriminatory programs, and to specify that courses with certain content may not be appropriate as a general education course.”
DEI bans provide backdoor for Stop WOKE

After the Stop WOKE Act bogged down in legal challenges late last year, Gov. DeSantis quickly pivoted, introducing a new legislative proposal to ban university and college programs and activities related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Critical Race Theory — often referred to as DEI and CRT.

Under orders from the governor, universities scrambled to produce a list of DEI- and CRT-related programs — search terms so broad and undefined that one university data administrator described DeSantis’ request as “rather ominous” in an email to his peers.

Left on their own to interpret the terms, universities used terms like “race” and “diversity” to search the course catalog, producing a haphazard roster of programs and classes, including everything from homeless outreach programs to a course on classical dance, emails show.

While complicating administrative efforts to identify such programs, the broad, ill-defined terms have allowed Republicans to use the proposed DEI/CRT bans as a backdoor for reintroducing key elements of the Stop WOKE Act and expanding state control of higher education during the 2023 legislative session.

“When they say critical race theory they mean the eight concepts in the Stop WOKE Act. They’re using them as stand-ins,” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with FIRE.

In a February statement to the Herald, Bryan Griffin, press secretary for Desantis, confirmed the governor’s office considers Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Critical Race Theory to be synonymous with concepts banned under Stop WOKE.

“DEI, CRT, and other similar ideological agendas are racial harassment and discriminatory, and we propose that they are defined in this proposed legislation by tracking the definitions in Florida’s anti-discrimination laws, Stat. 1000.05(4)(a),” Griffin said, citing the specific Stop WOKE statute currently barred from enforcement at public universities.

A rewrite of SB266 in mid-April removed all mentions of DEI and CRT after lawmakers worried federal funding and accreditation could be effected by such a sweeping ban. Betta, the spokesperson for Senate leadership, said the bill largely remained the same but “simply provides guidance on the harmful philosophy behind those titles.”

The references to the Stop WOKE statute remain in the text.

“Just removing the words is not fooling anyone,” said Andrew Gothard, president of the United Faculty of Florida. “What’s clear is the real purpose of this bill is to stop students and faculty from discussing the history of the United States.”

A subsequent revision of the amended bill reintroduced a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion and also seeks restrictions on programs or activities engaged in social and political activism.

Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director at FIRE, said that regardless of recent semantic changes made in committee, the Senate bill remains unconstitutional because it could be used to determine what concepts and ideas are taught in the classroom, which speakers can be brought to campus, and which student organizations might be allowed to exist.

“That doesn’t pass muster in higher ed, where you’re dealing with adults and not minors, where faculty are not just mouthpieces for the state but have their own academic freedom,” Cohn said.

Should either of the 2023 bills be signed into law, Cohn said that FIRE and other organizations would have to return to court to ensure the injunction was also applied to the new law. Ultimately, he warned that going to court for a second time over something that was already successfully blocked would come at huge cost to Florida taxpayers.

“If they insist on learning their lesson through litigation, they should rename the bill ‘The FIRE and ACLU’s Legal Fees Act of 2023,’” Cohn said.
Complaints from the outside

As with school boards besieged by activists objecting to individual books, records show many who complained about “wokeness” in the university system were not students or faculty. On Sept. 6, 2022, a self-described “private citizen” named Tracey Coker reported a potential violation of Stop WOKE to the governor’s chief inspector general.

Coker had read a post on the website of the Young America’s Foundation titled “Florida Professor Tells White Students They Must ‘Examine Their Privilege’” and was concerned that a summer class in the UF education department had focused on “systemic discrimination of various minority groups by the American education system,” according the complaint obtained by the Herald. Coker did not respond to questions sent to the email listed in the complaint.

The governor’s office passed Coker’s complaint on to the university, which spent the next month investigating. Records show investigators reviewed screenshots from the online course — which included activities asking students to think about how their personal identity and community might shape the way they teach — and determined the professor had not endorsed any banned concepts.

“Instead, the students are asked to consider and critically think about their positionality, which is not restricted to race, color, sex and national origin, and reach their own conclusions,” university administrators wrote in a close-out memo dated Oct. 5, 2022.

The online course also included a page where students were encouraged to “share resources that can help uplift Black humanity and promote anti-racist education.” The blog post described the page as riddled with links soliciting donations for Black Lives Matter, and arguing that “white students have avoided critical discussions of race their whole lives before college.”

Again the university noted the posted material was used for discussions, as was permitted under the law. And while everyone teaching in the department was reminded not to use their platforms to raise money for any cause, the existence of the link alone on a group page was not evidence the professor had violated those rules, administrators wrote.

Ultimately, the university determined there were no violations of the law and, according to the close-out memo, investigators found “no evidence that white students were singled out and ‘told to examine their privilege’ as alleged in the title of the article.”

The professor was a graduate student and no longer works at the university, the memo noted.

A group of Florida International University students, staff and community members participated in the "Fight for Florida Students and Workers" protest on Thursday Feb. 23, 2023. - Pedro Portal/Miami Herald/TNS

© Miami Herald

Bethany Mandel’s ‘woke’ stumble exposes the right’s gaslighting

Why the conservative commentator stumbled in trying to define the term.

Briahna Joy Gray, left, interviews Bethany Mandel on The Hill’s online program “Rising.” Video screen grab

March 21, 2023

By 

Andre Henry

(RNS) — As soon as the words tumbled out of her mouth, conservative author Bethany Mandel was visibly overcome with the terrifying realization that she was about to become a viral sensation and a target of scathing anti-racist critique.

When asked by political commentator Briahna Joy Gray, on The Hill’s online program “Rising,” how she defines “woke” in a new book, Mandel answered as smoothly as skipping vinyl:

So, I mean, woke is–w–sort of–the idea that–um. I mean, woke is something that’s very hard to define, and we’ve spent an entire chapter defining it. It is sort of the understanding that we need to totally reimagine and reduce society in order to create hierarchies of oppression. Um, sorry, I — it’s hard to explain in a 15-second sound bite.

Mandel is either incorrect or insincere, because “woke” isn’t hard to define. It’s just advantageous for conservatives to continue to occupy the term like stolen land if they keep the definition as broad as possible.

I say woke isn’t hard to define because the term has been clear to Black Americans since its first utterance in Lead Belly’s 1938 blues protest song “Scottsboro Boys.”

The song tells the story of nine teenagers who were accused in Alabama of sexually assaulting two white women. The racist stereotype that Black men were inherently rapacious, and therefore a threat to white women, was often used in post-slavery America to justify various forms of anti-Black violence. Lead Belly wrote “Scottsboro Boys” to remind Black Americans about the dangers of navigating a world structured by the violence such stereotypes justify.

“I made this little song about down there,” Lead Belly is recorded saying about the song. “So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.” 

Up until the heyday of the Black Lives Matter movement, when national outrage about the killing of Michael Brown leaked our code word into popular discourse, the meaning of “woke” had remained safe within the confines of Black barbershops, pulpits, patio tables where wrinkled brown fingers slam down dominos, and other safe places where Black people congregate and talk about life in this anti-Black world. It was virtually uncontested as shorthand for political and social awareness, and landed on our ears, I imagine, something like the Mosaic refrain “Remember and do not forget” must’ve fallen on the ears of those listening to Torah being sung in ancient Israelite temples.

Remember and do not forget: We live in a world built on anti-Black hostility. Remember and do not forget: The cops are not here to protect you. Remember and do not forget: They put Jesus’ name — that same one you be prayin’ to — on the side of one of the first slave ships. Be alert. Be wise. Stay woke.

“Woke” is not “hard” to define if we take America’s history of imperial violence and its attempts to sanitize that history seriously. It’s also not hard to define if we just accept it on its own terms, by which I mean its historic usage in the Black community. 

If the meaning of “woke” isn’t difficult to understand, accepting it is another matter. The term doesn’t serve white interests, which are aimed not at truth but power. If white conservatives were interested in understanding Black America’s perspective and in genuinely transformative communication, it would be necessary to clarify or agree on our terms. But conversation in good faith is not what white conservatives are after. As Yale philosopher Jason Stanley points out in his 2018 book “How Fascism Works,” fascists aren’t served by the truth, as they draw power from maintaining a state of unreality. Fascists construct powerful myths to move the populace toward their ends.

Part of the white supremacist myth is revealed in what Mandel did manage to say in her bumbling definition: that marginalized people allegedly aim to “create hierarchies of oppression” through “woke ideology” (as conservatives love to call it).

That myth is meant to maintain white anxiety about racial takeover, so they’ll keep supporting anti-democratic policies and voting for anti-democratic politicians such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump. At the 1922 Fascist Congress, Benito Mussolini said: “We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality.” That rings true today for white America and its distortions of history and how we talk about it.

To preserve their power, the champions of white racism don’t need to define woke, only to create an experience around it. It should feel like a shark in the water only news pundits and politicians can see, leaving Americans vulnerable to manipulation.

Mandel says she stumbled over her words because she was thrown off balance just before the cameras started rolling. Fox News reports: Briahna Joy Gray “made a disparaging remark about parents on a hot mic before the interview began, effectively throwing [Mandel] off her game.”

That’s plausible. Presenting one’s ideas in front of a global audience can be nerve-wracking. However, a look at the entire interview with Mandel makes me doubt her defense. She’d been verbally cruising before being asked to define “woke,” explaining that “only 7% of Americans consider themselves to be very liberal and probably fewer of them consider themselves to be woke.” She also mentioned that she and her co-author, Karol Markowicz, wrote an entire chapter on the term.

From a viewer’s perspective, it seems more likely that Mandel was simply unprepared for that question. She was put on the spot to soundbite a definition. She didn’t know how to condense it into a clean, 15-second definition, but she knew she had to be careful not to say the wrong thing. 

And though I believe, were she given the opportunity, Mandel could probably give us an elevator speech version of a definition for woke today (she’s probably been practicing it in her head for her next interview), the fact that she didn’t think she needed a clear and tight definition of the word to begin with seems emblematic of what has made “woke” such a versatile weapon for white conservatives. In their mouths it can mean whatever they need it to mean in the moment. To them it means nothing in particular. It’s merely a lullaby meant to keep more Americans from waking up.