"Woke" was originally an AAVE term, popular in the midcentury civil rights era and beyond. Literally meaning "awake [to what's happening to you and your community]," as opposed to being ignorant and asleep. Not really a statement about your own behavior so much as an acknowledgement of what other people are doing to you—it just meant you're well-informed.
Perhaps not a coincidence that reactionaries have now co-opted black slang to mean "things minorities do that I don't like."
Generally the reaction is not to minorities(non-white, is what I am assuming you mean) but to people from outside of a group trying to tell a group what words to use i.e. LatinX.
An aside: If someone who is white is talking to the Spanish speaking community, would they be considered a minority? If so, then the parent premise would hold true.
Latinx is a great example of the overreaction. Some people use this term. It was briefly catching on among groups with power, but ultimately never did. But it is spoken about like Harris was saying "latinx" in all of her campaign videos and that people are being fired for using "latino" or "latina" or even "latin."
Ultimately, I think it is important that groups are able to try things and then later determine that they weren't the best idea. Shouldn't this be ceelbrated?
It would indeed be nice if these things were introduced as “let’s try a new thing and then choose to accept or reject it later, based on results”, rather than “we have determined there is only one correct way of thinking about this topic, and if you don’t like it, you’re a Nazi”.
Isn't it interesting that your response here is questioning and perhaps dismissive?
If a minority were sharing their perspective about whatever their lived experience was with regards to racism, would you respond this way?
I'll answer that: no, you wouldn't.
Which very quickly lifts the curtain. The movement is not about empathy or understanding. It's about empathy and understanding for people you deem worthy of receiving it.
> If a minority were sharing their perspective about whatever their lived experience was with regards to racism, would you respond this way?
If a small group of people told me they actually experienced flight under only human power, no mechanical assistance. Would it be right to take that claim at face value?
I'll answer that: no, it wouldn't.
If you're going to ignore plausibility entirely, then yeah I suppose all statements deserve equal consideration.
However... If it is the case that some stamens are more plausible than others maybe it's an effective heuristic to be skeptical of implausible claims.
“Latinx” is presented uncritically as “inclusive”, and the people who don’t like it are smeared as “queerphobic”.
This is academia at its most tone-deaf and ignorant. If he actually spoke to some Latino people he would quickly discover that the reasons for the backlash have approximately zero to do with “queerphobia”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx
That's an egregious misrepresentation. The authors of that paper surveyed Latinos, found that those who disliked the term 'latinx' had moved toward voting for Trump between 2020 and 2024, and that those most likely to move were also most likely to express antipathy toward LGBT people.
You say the academics should have talked to some Latino people, and they did - n = ~2000. Are you saying that they should not have reported their results because you dislike what they imply?
I’m saying that he shouldn’t have presented use of “Latinx” as an unalloyed good, and uncritically “inclusive” (a massive assumption which is highly debatable, particularly amongst Latinos), and that his survey questions are very weak at controlling for the explanations that Latinos generally give for disliking the term (pronunciation, erasure of diversity, trendiness, imperial/colonial attitude to language, elitism…).
Concluding that there is no problem with the term and the real problem is “queerphobia” is textbook academic myopia.
Because the finding is more accurately described like "Latinos[0] moved towards Trump". If that's related to the latinx thing, it might be something like "... in part because they generally resent having this 'latinx' thing pushed on them".
[0] Here in Canada, as far as I can tell "Hispanic" is the accepted term - but it's rare for people to identify that way generically (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_origins_of_people_in_Ca...). People here far more often attribute their ethnicity to a specific country of origin rather than to some generic grouping.
Can you please bridge how your comment "and if you don’t like it, you’re a Nazi" is in any way connected to this tweet about a researcher saying the usage of the phrase "latinx" reduced latino support for Democrats?
Another person is asking basically "why are people so quick to dismiss claims of aggressive wokeness policing" and this is why. Because it is always so much exaggeration about the topic coming from these claims.
I mean any kind of minority, although I would generally say "marginalized group" instead of "minority." But this is HN, so trying to stick to more commonly-known terminology :P
I also think the "latinx" thing is overblown and generally used as an "anti-woke" shibboleth by people who want to get mad at something. Literally never seen an Anglophone yelling at a Spanish speaker about it before, only queer Spanish speakers who use it to refer to themselves.
Also worth noting that there have been other variations that predate "latinx" and have seen more widespread usage. There's "latine," and "latin@", although the former is both easier to write and to pronounce.
> Literally never seen an Anglophone yelling at a Spanish speaker about it before, only queer Spanish speakers who use it to refer to themselves.
You and I move in different circles. I was definitely running into "normal" Spanish speakers for the past few years who's awakening experience with "wokeness" was seeing the word "Latinx" on some HR form and being told that the reason was "for Hispanic comfort" ... which every single one of them found gaslighting in the extreme (since none of them liked it, even a little bit).
Ah, HR... and here I thought we were talking about real people! ;)
I've been condescended by (generally well-meaning) corporate diversity initiatives on many occasions, but I think it's hard to take that as a statement about progressive movements in general. Corporate shit tends to be toothless and cringey across the board.
> I think it's hard to take that as a statement about progressive movements in general
True, but remember that many people's experience of any movement will be through an interface that is both lossy and hostile (whether it be government, corporate, clan leadership, what have you). "The effects that this had were well beyond the scope of what we intended" is so old it's in the Old Testament (but there as an answer-in-advance):
> These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.
Yes, very common in job application forms. I don't find it offensive per se, but it makes me wonder if this is the kind of company where bullshit reigns in the workplace.
> "Woke" was originally an AAVE term, popular in the midcentury civil rights era and beyond. Literally meaning "awake [to what's happening to you and your community]," as opposed to being ignorant and asleep.
This is distorted history. "Woke" is just the word in a bunch of black dialects for "awake." We just say "are you woke?" instead of "are you awake?"
What happened is at some point some white woman somewhere had a black person explaining their political beliefs to her. It was likely a black person who was working for her (doing her nails, washing her clothes, or serving her food) who she had a faux friendship with and considered a spiritual guru and a connection to the real world and real suffering, in that way white people do (magical negro.) She carried these pearls of wisdom to her white friends, or to her students at the university, or to the nonprofit that she worked at, and it entered into the white lexicon as a magic word.
If a white hippie, in the middle of a righteous rant, said "you've got to stay awake, man..." as many have, it wouldn't have been so exotic and interesting to tell their white friends. Or as useful to get yourself a job as a consultant.
At that point, it became a thing that white people would use to abuse other white people as racists. The sin wasn't calling white people racists, it's that a certain self-selected white elect declared themselves to be not racist, or even anti-racist, in order to attack other white people. And they decided this gave them the right to control how other white people speak. And a government who hates the way people can talk to each other on the internet about what the government is lying about supported them whole-heartedly. Woke policing was an excellent way to use legal means to keep people asleep.
And black people got blamed, as always. Because America is racist. Black people didn't benefit an iota from any of this. Approximately 0.0% of DEI managers are black men. Black people got poorer during the entire period. Now the anti-woke are going to unleash their revenge on black people, and the ex-woke are going to resent black people for not recognizing their sainthood.
> Perhaps not a coincidence that reactionaries have now co-opted black slang to mean "things minorities do that I don't like."
Meanwhile, the first step of wokeness was to erase black people altogether and replace them with "minorities" and "people of color," as if the only thing important to note about black people is their lack of whiteness. Or, since sexual minorities are included in "minorities", black people now have no problems that can be distinguished from the desires of white upper-middle class transwomen. Wokeness erased slavery and Jim Crow, and all that money that white people inherit, just as much as anti-wokeness did. Now the real crime was that white people weren't feeling the right things, and weren't saying the right things. Complete Caucasian auto-fixation.
The only thing racial about black people's problems is that white people used race as the criterion to enslave. Slavery and Jim Crow were the point, and all of the freebies handed from government to people's white ancestors that weren't given to slaves and ex-slaves, and all of the labor and torture visited on slaves and ex-slaves turned into profit that went into the pockets of white people and was taxed into government coffers. There were blond-haired blue-eyed slaves; the "race" stuff is a white invention, not something they get to act like is an imposition from their ex-property. And that experience is not something that everybody non-white or non-straight gets to steal.
It's not "racially gated," lol. It's a word that was popularized and primarily used by black activists, just like how "bikeshed" as a verb was invented by and mainly used by software engineers.
Your comment boils down to "it's a black word appropriated by whites to use against minorities". Did I misunderstand? No? Then you are absolutely racially gating it.
As an aside, can you tell me a "white" word?
All language, through the history of humanity, morphs and changes over time. Just three decades ago we had this episode on must-see-TV night-
"Woke" was a word invented by black activists in the context of civil rights activism and is now being used disparagingly by people who are against modern forms of progressive activism. (I didn't use the word "white" once in the comments you're replying to, and you can CTRL+F me on that.)
I also think it's telling that a lot of people like to die on the hill of "retarded used to be a clinical term!" but far fewer people are willing to die on the hill of "mongoloid used to be a clinical term!", despite both being true in roughly the same context.
What is it telling you? I feel like there is some big aha here that I am missing.
They both literally demonstrate the same thing -- the evolution of language -- albeit in different eras. "Mongoloid" had reverted to being considered disparaging if not clinically nonsensical by the late 70s. Retarded, literally meaning slowed, continued through to the 90s before the great cultural cancelling occurred. But both saw mainstream use that shifted to being cancelled (although everyone still chuckles when an Airbus implores the pilot to retard the plane), in the former case because it's nonsensical, and in the latter because we thought it just sounded too mean. That if we just impugned a word everything would be better.
No one is dying on a hill about that, and what a ridiculous way to frame it.
I love that people are busy running around down-arrowing every one of my comments, and hysterically clicking flag. Just yesterday I saw the same from the fanatical right. Get a grip.
> There are a lot of words that were utterly benign a few decades ago and now are capital offences.
It's funny, I can't think of one. I think that might have to do with a difference in what the existentialists would call facticity.
> Turning this into a racial grievance is incredible, really, and is very woke in the sense that PG is citing. The overwhelming use of woke as a pejorative is targeting whites, particularly the endless offended "ally" sort. And of course, in no universe are females a minority if that is your argument (51.1% of the US). And I mean, worldwide white males are one of the smallest minorities, yet somehow they are the target of almost all actions and rhetoric.
I think this is one of the divides -- so in the interest of open conversation: As you see it, it's probably true that woke is referring to some imagined pink haired middle manager, living in Seattle or Portland, who is really into land acknowledgments.
But when I look at the broader right-wing ecosystem, that's not what it means. Woke is when a city like Baltimore has a black mayor. Woke is when the fire department is headed by a lesbian. Woke is when female video game characters don't have a large enough cup size. Woke is when activists suggest that maybe we have a negative police culture in America. Woke is when there are too many POC in a given incoming college class.
And it's not surprising that people would be against that definition.
Dwarf, midget, retarded, idiot, oriental, cripple, gypsy are just a start. Facticity doesn't actually seem to be on your side.
>As you see it
Woke to me is when people are doing performative moralizing that benefits absolutely no one, all to achieve moral supremacy, and often to the ends of white shame (only ever targeting whites, particularly white males). The "cargo cult" article that might still be on the front page is the perfect example.
It's is absolutely true that there are right wing groups that think a woman existing in media is "woke". A woman not having adequately large breasts in a video game is "woke". But on the flip side, there was a "woke" push that meant that every lead character everywhere had to be female, even better a minority female, even better a lesbian minority female, maybe with a handicap. Every commercial had to feature a mixed race or same sex couple, etc. When that becomes obvious and apparent to everyone, people do naturally start to suspect and see ghosts everywhere. It is an incredibly obvious outcome of pushing something to the points of parody.
> Dwarf, midget, retarded, idiot, oriental, cripple, gypsy are just a start. Facticity doesn't actually seem to be on your side.
That's not quite what facticity means in the existential sense. It's a reference to "intractable conditions of human existence", or those things about yourself that you're born into and cannot change, like race, class, gender. They shape your worldview and position in life. Existentialists account for this because the rest of the philosophy is concerned with what one can do for themselves, for society, through their own actions. Anyways, case in point: of the words you've listed, they were quite literally all offensive to someone before the 80s and 90s. You just weren't privy to the cultures where that was the case. Leftist politics haven't actually changed that much, its just gotten massively more popular as our societal conditions have declined and the percentage of minorities increase. In a way, the rise of "woke" is a response in the dialectical sense.
> But on the flip side, there was a "woke" push that meant that every lead character everywhere had to be female, even better a minority female, even better a lesbian minority female, maybe with a handicap. Every commercial had to feature a mixed race or same sex couple, etc. When that becomes obvious and apparent to everyone, people do naturally start to suspect and see ghosts everywhere.
There was never a point in time where every commercial or every lead character was female, or a minority, or whatever else. It's simply that more are now than was the case in the 80s or 90s or whenever you feel that things were better. The question is: why does that matter? If there is a conspiracy, how does it affect you? What are you actually taking offense to? Any time I dig into this with people who hold your positions, I can never get to something substantive that doesn't essentially boil down to wanting to see less representation.. to no apparent end.
> If we forbid words that offend someone, somewhere, we would be left with no language.
And yet, according to you, we've banned all sorts of words based on offense and society is still standing.
I think it's interesting that you're simultaneously insisting that there is no conspiracy, and yet you're describing something that is demonstrably not true, and not out in the open. There has been no elimination of white families from the mainstream. The overwhelming majority of all positions of power globally are held by white people. Where is the real-world harm? Overzealous models? A commercial with a lesbian couple in it? What you don't realize is that you've recreated so-called "woke panic" -- you're just doing a right wing version of it whatever your stated beliefs.
And your last graf displays this really well:
> I despise Trump, Musk, MAGA, and conservatism in general. Gamergate was largely a bunch of incels attacking any women who dared to be in gaming or game journalism. Yet I have the awareness of the world enough to see that the "woke" nonsense, particularly woke racism/sexism, has been massively destructive to progressivism and leftist causes. It's literally why the world is going to have four dangerous years of Trump.
You're blaming Kamala Harris' disastrous campaign on woke. Why did her campaign start so late? Why wasn't she nominated to that position in the primary? Because the Democratic party chose to elevate the feelings of Joseph Biden, a literal segregationist and misogynist, over even winning elections. They had no chance at all once they did that. But you can't even look at reality as it is because you're fixated on your imaginary witch hunt. I can't help you with that.
> You seem to have some trouble following along if this is your ridiculous take on what has been discussed. Some words went from being benign to being cancelled as language evolved. Saying someone somewhere was offended at some point in the past to dismiss this absolute reality is just noisy No True Scotsman nonsense.
I mean.. you're the one who said it was unworkable? Be more exact in your language? What language is acceptable in a given society is a function of ideology and power. There has never never been this halycon period of free speech. Just speech amenable to whatever your ideology is.
> How much of leadership of China is white? India? Japan? Vietnam? Nigeria? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? Do they have governments that represent modern audiences?
It's actually hilarious, because all of the countries you're mentioning were previously colonized. They literally all engaged in armed revolution to overthrow white overlords.
> To fix this they put in a dictum that all promotions beyond a certain level could be anything but white male outside of a great exception policy. This was, again, not conspiracy but an open DEI policy. Now, that's great that they're righting their own wrongs, so to speak, but for the thousands of white males in this company it instantly put a giant concrete ceiling over them. I was already on my way out so to me it was hilarious, but this sort of "now we right those wrongs!" rightly cause enormous grievances.
You shouldn't be posting about this on HN. Just sue them! It's the perfect time. Post about the suit on HN if you need to. That policy is broadly illegal. But I don't think you will, because it didn't happen.
> Ah yes, the old "if only they were more "woke" they would totally have won the election against a literal rapist felon charity-stealing smooth-brain.
Again, you're shoehorning wokeness into a conversation where it doesn't exist. You've stared into the Palantir for too long lol. The Democrats didn't need to be woke, they just needed to run as a competent party! They didn't do that in service of wokeness, they did it in service of a hyper-conservative status quo and importantly, against the interests of minorities. Kamala Harris then campaigned on deporting immigrants and having the strongest military in the world. She had corrupt police on stage at the DNC and kicked Palestinian activists out. She was a prosecutor for gods sake, she's not woke. So why do you continue to insist that her performance was about wokeness?
Literally never said unworkable. Are you just trolling? Further, never did I harken to a "halcyon of free speech", or even say those words should be allowed. You seem to be arguing with ghosts in your head. My language has been painfully clear, again and again. Are you just inventing conversations in your head?
Language evolves. Your retorts were ignorant and wrong.
>because all of the countries you're mentioning were previously colonized
Indeed, history has included countless colonization efforts by various powers. China had various tribes/groups overrun and subjugate/annihilate each other. As did India. And of course the Middle East has just been an unending sea of conquests, including the whole Ottoman empire conquests most recently. The Americas were many disparate groups engaged in what archeologists believe was endless warfare, with many tribes practicing slavery and subjugation, mass rapes and exterminations, etc.
Oh, right, you think colonize only applies when white people do it. Right. The woke mind worms are devastating.
>That policy is broadly illegal. But I don't think you will, because it didn't happen.
It is 100% legal. Again you seem to know nothing about what you're talking about. Canada's charter explicitly proscribes (Section 15(2)) and allows "affirmative action", which was precisely what I described. The very government of this country engages in this at this very moment. But good attempt at calling me a liar when you are clueless about this.
>You said we’d have no language if something that you claim is happening, happened
My god. I claimed some some benign words have become offensive as language evolved. You said they were never benign because someone, somewhere didn't like them, despite being almost universally accepted and used directly by the people for whom they are now offensive. Etc.
If you're going to keep erecting strawmen, keep up with your own ridiculous noise. You are arguing ad absurdum and I wonder if you think it's effective.
>But it is hilarious that your attempt to list institutions that are not ruled by people of European descent
Ah yes, the "a European guy ruled over that area a hundred years ago, so too bad poor Appalachian white male you suffer the payment" argument. It is super convincing and not at all racist trash.
>Employment Equity Act
The employment act specifically does not protect white males. It is not a designated group, which are-
-women
-Indigenous peoples
-persons with disabilities
-members of visible minorities
Affirmative actions -- precisely what I described -- is overtly, 100% legal in Canada. You are absolutely wrong, and completely committed to your ignorance.
And yes, these acts were created long before the woke panic, when they were largely harmless. They were racist, sexist, and grossly indefensible at the time, but they didn't have much of an impact. More recently firms, under the woke brigades gaze, started actually putting them into effect. Firms like RBC openly boast about their diversity efforts (where diversity means hiring 80% Indians).
At this point you simply must be trolling because there is no case where a human could be so profoundly ill informed or dense. Erect some more ridiculous strawmen and get your last word, as I am absolutely done with your nonsense.
You have done no such thing. You have repeatedly made up quotes and words that I never used, and argued a position that no on here held.
>You’re just caught up in a race panic
You and every other prig just cannot fathom or tolerate alternate beliefs, so you constantly have to pigeonhole in this simpleminded, strawman way (hilariously when discussing opposition to a race panic. When the woke, like you, see everything through the lens of sex, sexuality and race, accusing others of doing it might not be as convincing as you think).
> When you wake up and discover that Indians or woke or whatever
One day you'll realize that white males aren't the reason you're so unhappy. Probably not.
> I hope you’re open minded enough to change.
I hope you stop wasting people's time online with such absolute drivel.
Perhaps not a coincidence that reactionaries have now co-opted black slang to mean "things minorities do that I don't like."