What Is ‘Woke,’ and What Is So Terrible About It?

At its simplest, ‘woke’ means being awake to the facts of history and biology and life in the United States from colonial days to the present. 

 

‘Woke’ means learning not only that Africans were brought to our shores in chains but that they were considered property here for two centuries, often treated worse than livestock. It means learning that each black human body was counted as 2/3 of a person—not given the vote, you understand, but just counted so as to give Southern states greater representation in Congress. Woke is realizing that the Emancipation Proclamation was just that, a proclamation, and that enslaved people were not freed until long afterward—and then, after an all-too-brief period when their rights were protected by U.S. troops, once more treated as subhuman by white men in power. 

 

‘Woke’ means knowing the history of the indigenous peoples of North America, the litany of broken treaties, slaughter of Native women and children by the United States military, slaughter also of the buffalo so that the people would starve, leaving their land open for railroads and homesteaders. It means learning about boarding schools where Native languages were prohibited, abuse was rampant, and where many children died and were buried in unmarked graves. Native American adults were not allowed to vote in U.S. elections until 1924, but the Snyder Act passed that year left it up to states to decide eligibility, so Native peoples were still frequently barred from participation in American democracy, and even today people on reservations without street addresses have difficulty registering to vote.

 

‘Woke’ means learning that until 1870 in the United States, only white men were allowed to vote. In 1870, black adult males were supposedly eligible to vote, but poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, etc. kept the ballot from most men. Women were not “given” the vote until 1920, with passage of the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution. Native Americans had to wait until 1924 and, as noted above, still have trouble registering today in many places, though in 1964 poll taxes were outlawed by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment, and in 1965 the Voting Rights Act officially secured the vote for all adult Americans.

 

But ‘woke’ also means awareness that there is more to equality than voting rights. It means recognition of ways that discrimination persisted in laws and social customs, such as insurance and real estate practices, etc., that intergenerational trauma has been passed down through families and communities, affecting health and longevity, and ways in which privilege enjoyed by white Americans by virtue of their skin color is unearned and exceptional. 

 

About one percent (1%, or 1 in 100) of human beings are born gender-nonbinary, or intersex (having both male and female sex organs), with a mismatch between visible sex organs and sex hormones that activate at puberty, or with some other variation from a clear male or female identity. ‘Woke’ means recognition of this minority and respecting each individual’s way of dealing with the binary world.

 

‘Woke’ means, basically, being politically and socially aware, having an awareness that rests on thorough knowledge of history, along with recognition of privilege and its absence. The antonym is ignorance. 

 

A number of Republicans use ‘woke’ as a pejorative term and proudly declare themselves ‘anti-woke.’ In this context, the term ‘woke’ is carelessly thrown around to inhibit open inquiry and discussion. 

Ron DeSantis, for instance, calls it the belief that there exist systemic injustices in American society that need to be addressed. Does he think this is a false belief? Does he not see examples of injustice? Does he see them but want them left unaddressed? What he would have, rather than asking God to mend our country’s flaws, is that we insist that our country is flawless. Book bans and exclusion of “sensitive” topics in history are the result of anti-woke campaigns. 

 

As to the matter of gender terms, the current administration in Washington has declared, with unintentional humor, that the government will now recognize only two sexes, those fixed at conception. This is humorous because sex organs of embryos are not yet developed as male or female. And who is there at conception to conduct a sex test? 

 

As a white female American, I have known unearned privilege. I certainly did not earn the parents to whom I was born. And yet, as an adult in certain situations in company with a white male adult, I have been ignored while the man was recognized. In situations with an African woman friend, however, I was the one recognized while she was ignored, and when shopping with an elderly white woman, again I was the one recognized while the older woman was ignored. Women, people of color, people with foreign accents, old people, the disabled, the mentally ill—all experience discrimination. It’s a fact, and pretending it doesn’t exist, being indifferent to it, is downright callous.

 

Years ago members of my undergraduate department had not participated in graduation and wanted to make up for my disappointment (it took me 20 years to earn a B.A.) by taking me to lunch. One of the late arrivals at lunch was the university president, who sat across the narrow table from me and never once made eye contact or acknowledged my existence. Later I compared notes with another employee in the college where I worked. She, a black woman with a Ph.D., had had a similar experience with the president and thought it was because of her race, while I’d thought it was because I was a new and very lowly B.A. We concluded, perhaps too easily, that the president’s problem was with women. It took years for me to consider that his antipathy towards women did not rule out a racist attitude. He could easily have been biased on both counts. Perhaps also fixed on academic status, I think now.

 

Much earlier in life, I was called to babysit for a couple with two young boys and a new baby. Before they left for the evening, I was given instructions about what to do “if ‘it’ [the baby] wakes up.” It? They did not use a name for the baby, which I found very strange. Later, when the baby cried and needed a diaper change, I was shocked and confused about what I was seeing, and it took years for me to sort it out. Whatever happened to that baby? How did the parents raise their nonbinary child? I was not called to babysit at that house again (had only gone once when their regular sitter was unavailable) and never talked about the baby with anyone, my parents or my friends. My parents were never comfortable talking to my sisters and me about anything to do with sex, so we were not comfortable asking them questions. I’m glad to say they did better with questions of race and religion and taught us to respect people of different backgrounds and faiths. 

 

The questions remains, why are people so afraid to wake up? Why do they fear history? Why do they fear nonconforming genders? Realizing where our country falls short is the only way we will ever make it better, so teaching history honestly is our only chance. As for gender issues, the fear no doubt arises from confusion and shock, but that can be overcome. Human beings come in many variations, a very wide range of skin colors and in a wider gender range than is generally acknowledged. 

What’s strange can be frightening. But it doesn’t have to be. We don’t have to stay stuck in fear and let it turn to hate.

Are you brave enough to explore learning? The Revolutionary Love Project is not about hating yourself if you have had privilege: You can't love anyone else if you hate yourself. Check it out. Be brave. 

What Would Bruce Catton Have to Say?

After reading Bruce Catton’s Michigan: A Centennial History and his memoir, Waiting for the Morning Train (several times), I long ago decided that he had a tragic view of our history (the history of Americans whose culture brings change faster than we can adapt to it), so when a little paperback, Catton’s last book, Reflections on the Civil War, came into my hands, I did something I never do with fiction and turned right away to the last pages. What did the famous historian from northern Michigan have to tell us as he reflected on everything he had learned from our country’s bloody, brother-against-brother conflict?

 

Reflections on the Civil War was edited by John Leekley, much of the text a collaborative effort undertaken with the author himself from transcripts of audiotapes. Leekley’s father, Richard, a dealer in rare books, had bequeathed to his son the Civil War sketchbook of John Geyser, a Civil War soldier, and that book formed the basis for many conversations between John Leekley and Bruce Catton, creating what the former called a “shared vision.” – But as I say, I am beginning at the end….

 

Bruce Catton (1890-1978) began his research into the Civil War because he wanted to make young again in his mind the old veterans he had known. As his research proceeded, other questions came to his mind. What motivated men on both sides, not only to enter the conflict but to continue fighting? What kept them from running back home? And finally, he asked himself if he thought the war had been worthwhile. In the end he concluded that it did, after all, accomplish something. 

 

…It gave us a political unity in the sense that it kept the country from fragmenting into a number of separate, independent nations. The North American continent was not Balkanized; the geographic unit that made possible the wealth and the prosperity of later days was preserved. Beyond that, the country made a commitment during that war; a commitment to a broader freedom, a broader citizenship. We can no longer be content with anything less than complete liberty, complete equality before law for all of our peopleregardless of their color, their race, their religion, their national origins; regardless of anything. We are fated to continue the experiment in peaceful democracy, and I don’t think any people were ever committed to a nobler experiment than this one [my emphasis added]. 

 

Catton’s Reflections first appeared after his death in 1981 – that is, over forty years ago. He believed and wrote that the Civil War had been “worth its cost,” although he added:

 

…We have not yet reached the goal we set ourselves at the time, and I’m not sure we ever will be satisfied with our progress. But at least we keep going.

 

He notes that civil wars, in general, are “most likely to leave angry feelings” but says, “That did not happen in this country.” The very idea of the “Lost Cause,” he believes, is that it was recognized as lost:

 

It is part of American legend…. It moves men mightily, to this day, but it does not move them in the direction of picking up their guns and going at it again. We have had national peace since the war ended, and we will always have it….

 

What, I wonder, would Catton think of the “state of the union” today, were he to return to us? 

The night before his assassination, Catton tells us, Abraham Lincoln dreamed he was on a boat, moving toward a “dark and indefinite shore,” and we are still moving toward that dark, indefinite shore, Catton wrote at the end of his own life, “toward a destiny bigger than we can understand.

 

Maybe we will get there some day if we live up to what the great men of the past won for us. And when we get there, it is fair to suppose that instead of being dark and indefinite, that unknown continent will be lit with sunlight.

 

Have we lost our way at present? What would Bruce Catton say? What do you say?

 

Electability

Could a Catholic ever be elected president in the United States of America? Not until John Kennedy.

Could a divorced man win the U.S. presidency? Not until Ronald Reagan.

Could a black man become president of our country? Not until Barack Obama won -- two consecutive terms!

When a woman wins the presidency, we will have a woman president. Nothing, it seems, is possible until it happens -- and then, clearly, it happened because it could.

Book Review: VIRGIN SOUL (or, “What Were the Sixties Really Like?”)

“What were the Sixties really like?” When a younger friend asked me this question, in a moment I suddenly felt many years older, realizing that was “just yesterday” to me was a historical period to my youthful friend. But how to answer her question? I’ve been thinking about it for years now (haunted by the question still, obviously), as another two decades have slipped past. Here's an overview from Wikipedia to get you started, if you were "born too late" to be one of us, but --

There can be no single answer to what the Sixties were like, because they were different for everyone who lived through them, even if only American experience is considered. How old were you in the Sixties, for starters? A little child, a college student, part of the workforce, or someone “over 30,” one of those the young were told not to trust? Male or female, black or white or yellow or red or brown? Living in San Francisco or Chicago; Selma, Alabama; Aberdeen, South Dakota; or in the wilds of Maine? Rich or poor or in-between?

Student, lawyer, secretary, grocery store cashier, factory line worker, teacher, or Peace Corps volunteer? A draftee in Vietnam, conscientious objector in El Paso, refugee in Toronto, or a protestor at Berkeley? Singing and playing in a rock-and-roll band? Member of the Black Panthers or Students for a Democratic Society, or Young Republicans, or the Country Club?

There were peaceful demonstrations, and there was violence, and there was the undeclared war, and there were drugs, and there was also the continuation of American suburban life, with big weddings and brides in white. Towards the end of the Sixties there was the Pill, but all along there were pregnancies (planned and unplanned) abortions, and young families, some hippies, others mainstream. And for those in their ‘teens and 20s, there was exciting music, poetry everywhere, plenty of available sex and drugs, a lot of lofty ideals, and a minefield of dangerous pitfalls.

That's why I say there is no telling what the decade was “really like,” except in terms of individual lives, but if you weren't there and want a close-up view I just read a new novel that presents a convincing picture through one particular window.

Virgin Soul

by Judy Juanita

NY: Viking, 2013

$26.95

We meet the novel's protagonist, Geniece Hightower, in Oakland, California, in the summer of 1964. Just out of high school, she enrolls in Oakland City College, “City,”

. . . a raggedy, in-the-flatlands, couldn’t-pass-the-earthquake-code, stimulating, politically popping repository of blacks who couldn’t get to college any other way, whites who had flunked out of the University of California, and anybody else shrewd enough to go for free for two years and transfer to Berkeley, prereqs zapped.

Geniece is a journalism major. Right away meets Huey Newton. Right away she loves sitting on the campus lawn, listening to the “black intellectuals and the white boys from the W.E.B. Du Bois Club talk.” Quickly she learns that light-skinned black students (“yellow, high yellow, sandy yellow, mellow yellow, sandy mariney, light brown, peach, or caramel skin; the line stopped there”) had one hangout, darker-skinned blacks like herself another. She lives at the Y (10 p.m. curfew) and works 20 hours a week at the county welfare department in Oakland. She’s launched into life but still has her aunt and uncle’s warning in her head:

“We want you to be a virgin until you graduate from college. If you’re not a virgin, you won’t graduate. Once you have sex, you can’t think about anything else.”

Judy Juanita’s novel is divided into four main sections, one for each of Geniece’s four years of college. Sophomore year she is introduced to Black Muslims and has her hair cut into a natural: “Sleek, short, very African.” She wonders what “being in love” feels like and if she is in love. No longer living at the Y, she allows a boyfriend to hold political education classes in her apartment, and she cleans and cooks for those who attend.

I knew I was becoming militant. I just didn’t know if I wanted to become a militant. Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, the protesters, the sit-in demonstrators down south were my heroes. I loved them from a distance and on paper. But the militants I met, mostly the guys on the soapbox on Grove Street, were harsh and abrasive and condescending to everyone, not just white people. And they made people do things. . . . I didn’t want that kind of power over people. I just wanted it over myself.

Huey Newton isn’t the only real person readers encounter in the pages of this work of fiction. Bobby Seale is there, and Stokeley Carmichael, too. The war in Vietnam is audible always in the background.

Junior year is a turning point for Geniece, as one black group goes one way and the Black Panther Party (BPP) for Self-Defense another. She enrolls at State and lands a work-study job in Admissions, date-stamping application entries from all over the world.

Lives came out of the words: how little money one’s father made; the off-the-wall place one had traveled to; family crises; serious illness defeated; political activity noted like a badge of honor – “I belong to the W. E. B. Du Bois Club.” They weren’t afraid: “I participated in the freedom rides.” Stuff I never mentioned: “The protest changed my whole life.” State was a destination for radical students: “I’m a child of a union family.” Dissidents. The streets of Berkeley were the pull for people bucking the system. Nonconformists. State was pulling people like me. I was not an in-between. I was a junior facing a cast of thousands wanting to be right where I was, a part of something big, essential, swimming in the big ocean.

In the course of her college career, it is not until her junior year that Geniece sees herself at the center of social change taking place across the country. Before that she felt like “an in-between”; now she is, as people said in the Sixties, “where it’s at.” But she is not yet where she will be at the end of her senior year. . . .

I don’t want to give away too many details of this story, because it’s the details that make the central character’s life a real one and make that time period come alive. Her social and sexual and romantic relationships are important to her development as an adult. Her feelings for journalism wax and wane, but editing the Panthers’ newspaper is an important job she takes very seriously. Also with the BPP, she confronts the question of guns for self-defense, and a volunteer job through the Tutorial Center introduces her to two young, self-sufficient black girls neglected by their battered mother. Education is not limited to the classroom. (It never should be.)

But Geniece Hightower is determined to graduate in four years, so she wisely avoids serious involvement with drugs. While music is part of her life, it also remains, like Vietnam, in the background. Race, class, and gender relationships – politics within and beyond the university – the future she will have as a Black American woman – this young woman maintains ties to her family at the same time she is finding her own way in the world.

Personal, political – political, personal – yes, this was the Sixties. Judy Juanita gives readers a very real look at that exciting and turbulent time through the eyes of her strong, questing protagonist. There are pages when the prose lifts into lyricism, so it should be no surprise that the author’s writing has for years encompassed poetry as well as reporting. This is her first novel. I’m glad she wrote it and hope it won’t be her last.