US Politics, March 2023: "We want our own safe space, and we deserve it"

woke vs volk

can it be more ridiculous that the anti-wokers are among the most intentionally ignorant motherfuckers in our political world? if the culture abandons the word, well. otoh if aimless is right and the culture never really made and claimed the word, i guess nhnf.

conservatives get really hung up on words as magic spells that have immutable meanings that transcend time, culture, and language (like how they think of gender!) Basically they’re on the same spectrum as the sovereign citizens who think by uttering gibberish in court that sounds all-legal-like it will get them out of paying child support.

“Woke" feels like a rerun of "politically correct" , but with more bile and nastiness behind it; I remember conservatives (and some liberals) decrying “pc” but didn’t sense the same amount of rage behind it. It was more like handwringing or eye-rolling.

PC was code for "These hippie professors are trying to radicalize our kids"
Woke is code for the n word

tbf i think "woke" has broadened way beyond that, to become just a new shorthand for "liberals we fight in the culture war." its total vagueness in these right-wing statements and overwhelmed county-council meetings is a reflection of how it's come to cover every grievance the old guard have with every social or political change. it's therefore the perfect foil for conservatism, since the whole ethos is finding all forms of progressive change to be not merely discomforting signs of times changing, but evidence of a sinister plot by insufficiently American Americans to destroy the American Way Of Life. "society is in the gutter and these liberals are actively trying to take it there, with their abortions, their gay people, their pronouns, their political correctness, their hippie professors with stink lines. they want to take away your guns and cigarettes and Big Gulps and SUVs and lawn chemicals and racist monuments, they think America has racism in it, they welcome foreigners, they recycle, they disrespect our beautiful police and our beautiful Christmas".... etc. etc. etc.

PC was code for the n word too. No need to overthink it, woke absolutely is PC mark II, updated for the 2010s and '20s. PC lost whatever meaning and bite it ever had just thru relentless overuse — a fate I think woke is well on its way to as well. But they both always mean the same thing — Why Can't I Just Be a Hateful Bigot Any More?

Yeah, but PC wars was never really about taking rights away from people, or preventing them from being provided. It was mostly a fight over free speech and the like, at least as I remember it. So yeah, essentially the right (in theory) to say the n word. The woke war seems to be much more and much broader, about countering literally *anything* deemed liberal. Like, no one ever thought something like climate change legislation was a fight over political correctness, but it is considered by these coconut skulls as "woke."

nah, anti-PC went hand in hand with anti-environmentalism, they just didn't call it climate change yet

But were all liberal policies dismissed as political correctness? Not as I remember it.

PC just never made it that far, but that was always the end game

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/wggAAOSwu0Zf~sy~/s-l500.jpg

pc anxiety was absolutely about taking rights away from people. it was the banner waved by anti-affirmative action efforts, for a start.

I mean, PC never actually meant anything, it was a way to complain about not being able to use racial/homophobic/misogynistic slurs. It arose from pretty much the same "everyone's so sensitive these days geez" vibe as "woke." I think the biggest difference isn't between the phrases and what they signal as it is between the eras — in the '90s/'00s, the peak "anti-PC" era, we were in a bit of a narrower consensus about how far anyone would push things in either direction. Now there's less patience on the cultural left about waiting for grandma to be "comfortable" with social changes, and more openness on the cultural right about wanting to pretty much roll back an entire century of civil rights gains. But it's all the same thing, it's all the same fight.

One big difference is that "woke" was a term being used by African-Americans, whereas "politically correct" came from the New Left, (adapted from Mao) and was used there ironically to diss other leftists who were too rigid in their ideology. Very often the conservatives who were using PC as a weapon had come from the New Left and knew the origin.

Yeah, although in both cases you have the right repurposing, redefining and vilifying a word from the rhetoric of the left. I just don't think there's any real difference between how the phrases have been/are being used, they are ways to say you're against some nefarious leftist agenda without having to specify which things you're really talking about (bigotry, mostly).

well, whatever. when I hear a conservative personality spit out "Woke" with disdain, it feels the same as when white people mock hip hop lingo.

I think the way "woke" is weaponized far exceeds the scope of how PC was used.

PC was used to complain that everyone was "too sensitive and easily offended", but largely focused on minorities and women, which does put it in the same class as "woke", sure. It was definitely an attempt to get maligned groups to "know their place".

But this came up in water cooler conversations, terrible opinion columns, and stand-up bits more than anywhere else. It also wasn't used quite the same by everyone, as some people used it to refer to offensive media that conservative church-going blue hairs didn't like (not really the RIGHT definition, no, but one used by a decent amount of people)

I remember posting something like "whining about PCism is basically asking for the right to be a dick with impunity" and getting a lot of pushback from all sides - even self-professed liberal minded people.

And there was also the curious (wrong) undercurrent that minorities themselves didn't care about the offensive things people said, that it was white people being unnecessarily performative.

When people use "Woke" pejoratively, it does capture much of what these same assholes referred to when they said PC, but it has a much nastier, more destructive tint to it. Like they're using it to mean like, an actual cultural civil war, that these "Woke" people seek to destroy our privileged way of life.

It's more than just "everybody's too sensitive", it's been weaponized as "Woke people think the flag, the country, white people are "evil" and are seeking to replace us. This is a fight for our country ".

As such, the term has had much more destructive tendencies. Not that "PC" was harmless. People who whined about PC culture became politicians who created legislation that hurt marginalized groups (or became voters that would vote for them). There was also less pushback against it as well - so harmful ideas spread without resistance.

But "Woke" has literally become legislation. DeSantis administration quite literally passed the "Stop WOKE Act", in an attempt to fight back against progressive politics, and his state legislature is chasing it with other measures to curtail the freedoms of so-called "Woke people", and has attempted to essentially create state-run education.

The scope of the destruction has much more terrifying potential because "Woke" is meant to essentially identify enemies of the state to a heavily armed, angry populace

Sorry for saying literally so much.

on a tangent here, something that does bother me is when some comedy video that's racially insensitive (but still pretty funny) makes the rounds and the top 200 comments are all shit like "lets see the snowflakes get offended about this" or "I'm black and I find this hilarious" or "screw the wokes, funny is funny" despite there being basically ZERO people actually finding the content offensive. us snowflakes are never as triggered as they want us to be.

us snowflakes are never as triggered as they want us to be.

TBF, this is exactly how I feel when people talk about how "shocking" a death metal album is. Shocking to whom? Your grandma's never gonna hear it; it's music by knuckle-walkers, for knuckle-walkers. (Me included.)

antifa metal is the only subversive metal atm imo

I agree, the right "repurposing, redefining and vilifying a word from the rhetoric of the left" (a thing they are really good at btw) when "politically correct" was the term in question seemed more eye-rolly and "get over yourselves" like, say, tree-hugger, compared to the weaponization of "woke." They are definitely amping up the "enemy of the state" rhetoric now.

Pantifa: Vulger Display of Woke

Yeah, but again, the difference isn't between the terms "PC" and "woke," it's between the overall tone and aims of the right-wing culture war. It doesn't matter what word they use to delegitimize and marginalize minority groups and the liberal worldview, what's different in 2023 vs. 1993 is 30 years of right-wing media saturation that has radicalized a big portion of white America. Combined with an emboldened progressive movement or movements, for sure, the actual gains in gay rights (and, of course, electing a Black president) have stoked a more strident backlash.

But none of that is inherent to the terms PC or woke, they're both right-wing code for "broadly liberal shit we don't like, especially as it pertains to race and gender."

A lot of stuff people call woke now is the exact same stuff they were calling PC 20-30 years ago, the field has just broadened.

i agree but i also agree w President Keyes that there is a nastier edge to weaponizing a word from popular black culture than from academia

Sure, in keeping with a much nastier, edgier right-wing mainstream.

Anti-PC rhetoric was viciously ableist ime. I feel like that might have shifted a little / become too taboo / hits too close to home ... or something? Idk maybe I'm just not seeing the right (wrong) content, or maybe the eugenics impulse that drives that stuff has been mostly directed in racist and transphobic directions

You have to remember that the ADA had just been passed in 1990, so ableism and bias against disabled people was very high among people who didn’t want to retrofit their business or stop using the “r” slur

(Shout out to the late, great Judy Heumann, for anyone that missed her passing.)

xp
ah right, that's a good point

rob & tabes otm - I remember being on an NFL message board, basically 'ground zero' if you want to familiarize yourself with what the scummiest people in America think, and there was an entire thread lambasting the existence of handicapped parking spaces and disability payments, and how that was leeching off of the government, and using the r-word to define these folks. this was early 2000s.

same thing w/ constantly seeing people parking in handicapped spots illegally and whining "y'all get more spots than us" (false - even nowadays)

just yesterday I heard someone use the line "and yet if you don't have a job, and don't want to work, the government will give you everything you need" and I wanted to be like "hold up a second" but then "nahh you really don't wanna hear where this is going"

tipsy and Neanderthal otm about how the right is using "woke," and the ways it's frightening as married to a fascist governance/activist agenda with a huge base that's been propagandized to for almost two generations at this point.

Also ironic lol at Desantis' office defining woke as "“slang term for activism… progressive activism” as if the right has no activism going on.

they use the word "woke" because it makes the ideology of the american left seem scary, alien, and not just a continuation of the broader liberal tradition (i.e., the expansion of rights and opportunities to more people).

kinda think the way to fight this stuff is to make them define 'woke' every time they use it

And to do it in a way that puts all the onus on them. "I'm not sure I understand. What do you mean?"

the humorous thing is you want to talk 'performative', go to any church

and talk to the people who go there at the church, then hang out with them later in the week outside of church, and compare the conversations you have

Also ironic lol at Desantis' office defining woke as "“slang term for activism… progressive activism” as if the right has no activism going on.

i don't know, i think this makes sense. they know that their own activists are based on hatred and the desire to promote their own preferred group (white straight christians) at the expense of everyone else. they assume that the left has a mirror version that is also based on the same kind of hatred. so much of the whole movement, maga-era but long before, is a battle against their own projected counterparts

I think the news and social media cycle resulted in a quick explosion of "anti-woke" sentiment but "politically correct" was absolutely weaponized and mocked. The attention concentrated on academics and anyone reactionaries deemed as too strident in their wording? Same deal.

And the institutionalization by organizations that codified some word choices while making minimal strides in actual behavior that followed so-called "politically correct" efforts are now mirrored in some diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

The conflation of all of the things that draw ire -- those institutional changes that seem like little more than window dressing and jargon, and concentrating on the individuals that draw the most ire instead of analyzing the actual underlying goals and stances -- makes "woke" or "politically correct" or whatever the next thing is into a dumping ground for cultural conservatives.
You also end up with a handful of disaffected people who aren't necessarily that conservative just tiring of the dialogue and using the phrase as a punchline.

I think the thing I've learned with age is that the people who get called angry, strident, shrill, etc. probably have very specific reasons why they appear that way to others, and it often has a lot more to do with the listener not understanding than it does the speaker being "angry"

organizations that codified some word choices while making minimal strides in actual behavior

I've a sad, sinking feeling that the movement pushing for reparations for slavery and segregation will only lead to some formalized breast-beating language similar to the land acknowledgment rituals being propagated by white liberal institutions and nothing more substantial. Even the tattered remnants of affirmative action amount to more than that.

the smartest thing to do is keep fanning the flames of Trump v DeSantis until both stab each other during the first caucus

I'd prefer something likelier to be fatal.

xxp have you actually attended a meeting or event where there was a land acknowledgment ritual or is this a thing you've heard happens that you're viewing as performative and social fluff?

I think the latter happens, but there are some intersectional groups where it has a meaning, especially when it comes to water/land rights and specifically protests about oil or carbon pipelines that run right through indigenous land

The restoration of water/land rights as legally established in dozens of treaties the government has unilaterally abrogated would be a substantial outcome. The land acknowledgement rituals are not different from liberal support for reparations and while this support is meaningful it doesn't constitute a meaningful stopping place for BIPOC people, as when 'organizations codify some word choices while making minimal strides in actual behavior'.

I don't hear anyone right wing or rightist-adjacent relatives using "politically correct" on, say, Facebook anymore. I don't see them use "woke" either tbh. Maybe they're aware of who might be reading and thus show a modicum of decency.