How woke is the creative industry…
Our group has been debating whether to post this, but then we would have defeated the point of debate, asking the uncomfortable questions and expecting the harsh response. We wonder if Plato experienced this in his great philosophical debates…
A word weaponised in the culture wars, a reflection of our times... How did the world wake up? By Xavier Bardom.
As I write this, I am looking at a fashion magazine with the coverline "Woke bespoke". The newspaper supplement next to it includes a dating diary about the search for "Mr Woke". On my desktop is a guide to a "woke Christmas," and in the adjacent tab is a web rant demanding people and publishers leave all writing about wokeness to black writers. Another tab contains an article lamenting the "great awakening" of American politics. On British television, royal correspondents and pundits debate whether Meghan and Harry, two of the royal family's most polarising members, have become too woke.
What does it mean to be "woke"? According to most online dictionaries, it refers to an awareness of racial inequality and injustice. Some describe the term as describing people who are just "in it" - like the cool kids you knew at university. Many now use it to denigrate those who are slaves to identity politics as a pejorative term. Is it possible that all three are the same? There is a sensibility, a quality, a state of being, a feeling backed up by a set of actions, sometimes all of these things at once.
To be woke is to long for a day when one doesn’t have to stay woke
"Wake" reflects the era better than any other word. There are several factors that contribute to its relative newness (it was born alongside social media), its popularity as a hashtag, and its political implications and activist orientation. In addition, it's a product of the connection between black culture and the internet and mainstream media. The present moment is characterized by all of these characteristics.
My confession: I dislike the word (especially since MTV declared it the new "on fleek" in 2016. Ironic, considering I am textbook woke. Despite identifying with what it was, I cringe at what it has become and bristle at the way the word is now weaponized. I am compelled to question the term and its evolution because of the disparity. In "Notes on 'Camp'", which inspired this essay, Susan Sontag writes, "no one who fully shares a sensibility can analyse it; he can only exhibit it.". identifying a sensibility requires sympathy tempered by revulsion, so let's examine what it is.
1. 'Woke' encompasses discussions about art, politics, economics, class, gender inequality, trans rights, and environmental issues. However, woke in its original form rests on activism and blackness.
2. Being woke is all about awareness. The question is what to do with the newly discovered information (a pay gap, systemic racism, unchecked privilege, etc). Depending on who you ask, the answer changes. Whatever the case may be, you've awoken, pushed yourself out of bed, and now you're listening.
3. It is essential to understand James Baldwin’s declaration: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” Being perpetually attuned to discrimination leads to a unique kind of exhaustion. Weary and wary is what it means. To be woke is to long for a day when one doesn’t have to stay woke.
4. Some trace woke's origins to Erykah Badu's 2008 album New Amerykah's anthemic political medley "Master Teacher." In the song, Badu sings: "I am known to stay awake / (A beautiful world I'm trying to find)". The word recalls Spike Lee’s famous cry to “Wake uuuuuuuuup!In the seminal film School Daze, he depicts a student at a historically black university who demands his light-skin-praising, good-hair-seeking, sex-addicted peers wake up from self-hatred and materialism and become aware of injustices in their community and, ideally, take action.
5. In the chorus of Childish Gambino's 2016 single "Redbone," a funkadelic-esque R&B song that warns: "You better believe in something," you will find a pocket guide to the essence of woke. Equal parts lustful slow jam and cautionary social commentary, it encourages listeners to resist complacency and ignorance or pay the price: "Don’t close your eyes now." It’s an idea that Jordan Peele expanded on in his horror film Get Out, which uses the song in its opening scene. Because as the movie makes clear – its protagonist slowly becoming aware of an elaborate plot to co-opt his body and trap his mind in an abyss called the sunken place – the consequences of sleeping are indeed horrific. These examples solidified woke as the mood of a new era, rising in the aftermath of the modern-day horror story that was the EU referendum and election of Donald Trump, a time when our freedoms can feel like they are on the line. Stay woke. Don’t get caught. Don’t get hypnotised. Don’t close your eyes.
6. The goal is to wake up and then stay that way. As in, be on guard, ready to recognise, call out and actively resist the biases, fake news and inequalities as they come, as members of the Black Lives Matter movement do, posting smartphone footage of unlawful killings, assaults and arrests, sometimes with the hashtag #StayWoke, and campaigning for legislative change. Woke is serious business. Often said aloud with a raised closed fist reminiscent of the famous black power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Games.
7. Despite its changeable nature and twistable journey, woke is inextricably linked with the rise of black consciousness, which has never ever really gone away but rather has had surges and swells. But can you be woke and not black?
8. If you believe BuzzFeed, woke is also the much needed awakening of the privileged to all manner of societal ills and the willingness to call them out – usually in the form of a white, cisgender, heteronormative man recognising that others who are not white, cisgender, heteronormative and male are often denied equal rights, treatment and pay. See the website’s love letter to Orange Is the New Black star Matt McGorry, a self-proclaimed feminist and BLM supporter: “Can We Talk About How Woke Matt McGorry Was in 2015?”
9. Woke is also actor Anne Hathaway speaking out against the killing of black teenager Nia Wilson and challenging white people to check their privilege and recognise: “Black people fear for their lives daily in America.”
10. Woke is also Tarana Burke making the hashtag #MeToo go viral and inspiring hundreds of thousands of women to recognise and voice their experiences of sexual assault.
11. Woke is also a punchline. The wink of an ending to an online joke making fun of the perceived worthy righteousness of woke culture. The stuff of satire, usually said aloud with accompanying gestured air quotes.
12. Woke is often the result of cultural appropriation – which is tragically ironic, given this is one of the very things the act of staying woke would be on high alert against. See woke’s journey from black political circles to white internet slang via headlines in mainstream media. Also see the Evening Standard’s “woke-ometer”, which measured people on a scale of “asleep” (Theresa May) to “woke” (JK Rowling) … and included no people of colour.
13. Not only is woke a political state of mind – it has been commodified. When Nike featured Colin Kaepernick, the NFL star who protested against police brutality by refusing to stand for the national anthem during his nationally televised games, many accused the brand of woke-washing, the act of cashing in on social justice.
14. But woke is at its most powerful, and valuable, when it is lived and not mentioned. When it’s not viewed as a quality to be smug about. Martin Luther King Jr, Steve Biko and Angela Davis didn’t declare themselves activists – they didn’t have to, their actions defined them. Woke people know not to, and need not, describe themselves as woke.
15. Woke has been weaponised, used in conservative media circles as an insult, often placed within quotation marks, to mean rigid, uptight and socially and politically puritanical. When the Duke and Duchess of Sussex decided to step away from their roles, the Daily Mail complained that Harry went from “fun loving bloke to the Prince of Woke”.
Dropping 'woke' into conversation is an easy way to determine where someone sits on the political spectrum
16. One must always distinguish between woke as an earnest state of mind and woke as satire. The latter almost always pokes fun at the former. The latter is also the most grating due to its smugness. Example: “Maroon is just navy red. #staywoke.”
17. Dropping the word “woke” into conversation among strangers in a social setting is a pretty easy way to determine where someone sits on the political spectrum without having to invest too much time in uncomfortable debates. Just watch for the nods, stiffened smiles or eye rolls.
18. Some have attempted to reclaim woke away from internet misuse, punchlines and clickbait in the spirit of black consciousness.
19. Wokeness is often twinned with youthful indignation and optimism. See the scores of students who took part in the People’s Vote march against Brexit in the UK last year, or the March for Our Lives against gun violence in the US the year before. Also witness the record number of young people who have entered politics in recent years, from Mhairi Black to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
20. Ultimately, wokeness is rooted in love – of self, family, humanity – just as injustice is rooted in hate.