Ever since Bethany Mandel, a conservative and co-author of a book that devotes a chapter to defining "woke," was unable to define it herself during an interview on The Hill’s online program called Rising, the left has been scoffing and conservatives have been coming up with their own definitions.
The problem with defining the word as it's used today is that "woke" is like "pornography." As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964, he may not be able to define it but "I know it when I see it."
One of the criticisms of Mandel is that anyone who writes a book about something ought to be able to define it, but tens of thousands of biology books have been written on the subject of "life" yet no biologist can define what it is. Should they be mocked for writing about something they can't define?
An irony of folks on the left snickering at a conservative who struggled to define "woke" is that progressives like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, like many progressives, is unable to define what a "woman" is.
It would seem that defining "woman" would be a far easier task than defining a protean concept like "woke," but the left seemed unfazed by Judge Jackson's consternation at being asked to explain in her confirmation hearing what is meant by the word.
The word "woke" gained currency among African Americans during the Civil Rights era when it was used in reference to the need for people to "wake up" to racial injustice. Those who were alert to the social and political situation were said to be "woke."
Earlier in this century it took on a broader meaning, encompassing a set of attitudes that combine
progressive/left positions on race, climate, LGBTQ+, transgenderism, feminism, diversity, identity politics, etc. Conservatives latched onto the word as a term of derision for both the policies and the people who promoted them.
The conservative critique of "wokeism" focuses not only on the destructive and sometimes ridiculous nature of the policies themselves (e.g. allowing men to compete in women's sports, allowing them to enter private female spaces, insisting that men can become pregnant, paying millions of dollars in "reparations" to people who were never enslaved, and so on), but also on the behavior of those at whom the pejorative "woke" is directed.
For example, those who are so labeled are often closed-minded to arguments with which they disagree. They're often intolerant of dissent, preferring to shut down discussion by calling the dissenter a racist or homophobe, or just shouting the hapless dissenter into silence. Indeed, the "woke" often see every political statement with which they disagree as "code" for racism or a "dog-whistle" for racists.
Moreover, a lot of dissenters have lost their jobs because they disagree with the positions held by their "woke" colleagues or employers. "Cancel culture," the attempt to destroy a person's livelihood and/or their reputation because the person refuses to conform to progressive orthodoxy, is a phenomenon associated with the "woke."
When progressive orthodoxies are transgressed there's usually no forgiveness, no grace, but sometimes if the offenders are obsequious enough, if they debase themselves and grovel at the feet of their "woke" superiors in abject repentance they may be granted a tentative absolution.
Finally, "wokeness" is often characterized by embarrassing efforts at virtue-signaling - attempts to demonstrate to the wider public that the wokester is a morally superior human being and eager to flaunt his moral superiority at every opportunity so that everyone will stand in awe and admiration of the wokester's sheer goodness.
This moral preening manifests itself in universities and government institutions which trip over each other in their zeal to demonstrate that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is part of their institutional lifeblood.
Nor is our military exempt from "woke" virtue-signaling. While China is building a military to fight successful wars against us, our military is funding seminars to train recruits in proper pronoun usage.
Corporations are investing enormous amounts of money promoting "stakeholder" interests in causes like climate change that have nothing to do with giving shareholders a return on their investment.
Professional sports teams sanctimoniously signal their racial righteousness with messages in their stadiums, on the playing field and on their uniforms that display their piety for all the world to see and esteem.
Television shows and commercials take extraordinary pains to feature representatives of every racial and LGBTQ+ group - even featuring plus-size women in exercise clothing - in order to ensure that the viewer not miss the point that the advertisers are on the cutting edge of "woke" moral excellence. They don't though, seem to feel the need to feature positive portrayals of diversity in either religion or political ideology.
The super woke, in order to demonstrate that they are Olympian caliber moral athletes, are going beyond the concerns of their more pedestrian brethren and are throwing themselves into the struggle to secure legal rights for fish, insects and even rivers. It's remarkably noble of them, but one can't help wonder why their concern for rights usually stops short of rights for unborn humans.
I guess even the most virtuous of the "woke" saints have to draw the line somewhere.
