It may seem like a minor matter, but how people use words is an important clue to their character. Take the word “woke”. Four innocent little letters now lie at the heart of the culture wars and are about to dragged out and bludgeoned to verbal death in the election campaign.
It’s already started. Winston Peters is scared at the prospect of “woke pixie dust” being scattered about. David Seymour says this country is experiencing “a reign of woke terror”. And a former Shortland Street star and current New Zealand First candidate Lee Donoghue says there is a “woke virus” spreading.
Radio New Zealand recognises the concern, headlining a report “Has National gone woke? Dunedinites on diversity in party’s caucus”. The clear implication there is that woke is something undesirable and to be concerned about. Even the August New Zealand Doctor journal has caught the bug, feeling moved recently to ask in a headline: “Using person-first language in primary care – woke or important?”. So those are your alternatives – anything woke can’t be important. Woke is just a fad.
Commentators show their political colours by the speed with which they have taken up this usage. Janet Wilson: “Political commentators declared that Chris Hipkins’ ascendence to Prime Minister was taking Labour from woke to Westie”. And Bryce Edwards: “Hipkins and Sepuloni were elected yesterday and immediately started repositioning their Government away from what might be called the affluent ‘woking class’ towards the ‘working class’”, demonstrating that, whatever its other strengths, “woke” is not conducive to making decent puns.
How did it come to this? Woke was once a decent, respectable word that could be used effectively to make a point and had a history of which it could be proud.
As the form of a verb to do with not being asleep, it dates back more than a thousand years. As an adjective meaning, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” its origins are far more recent. It began its new life as part of American Black vernacular.
A timeline of the word: (here’s one source)
1923 - Marcus Garvey … calls on his readers to “Wake up, Ethiopia! Wake up, Africa!”
1938 - A protest song by Lead Belly includes the phrase “stay woke”. The song tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931.
1962 - Black novelist William Melvin Kelley defined the word in the New York Times for the first time in print in a piece titled “If You’re Woke You Dig It.”
2008 - Erykah Badu sings “I stay woke” in her song Master Teacher, and the current usage of the word begins to spread.
2012 - Badu tweets an encouraging “Stay woke” message of support to Russian activist musicians Pussy Riot.
2014 - After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, activists from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement began employing the phrase “stay woke” to encourage vigilance and awareness regarding instances of police misconduct.
How it got from there to here is an example of the linguistic phenomenon known as pejoration, in which a positive word takes on negative meanings. Other instances are common though they may not be familiar:
Attitude – used to mean a viewpoint in general, now it implies hostile behaviour;
Crafty – used to mean skilful – good at craft – now means sneaky. Cunning has followed much the same twisty, devious path.
What happened? Nothing unusual, that’s for sure. According to Candis Watts Smith, co-author of Stay Woke: A People’s Guide To Making All Black Lives Matter: “The word ‘woke’ has long been used, especially among Black folks, to denote that a person should be aware of structural inequality, informed of the nuances of racism, and sensitive to the prevalence of anti-Black violence … As is historically typical, conservative reactions to Black political movements have sought to weaponise the words and concepts illuminated by Black and brown freedom fighters, largely in effort to undermine the efforts of social justice movements.”
The pace of change, as is well known, is only increasing. This applies to words as well as your phone’s technology or vegetable prices. In New Zealand, “woke” has leapt straight to the pejorative sense, without that balmy sojourn in the realm of positivity observed in other countries.
As we race headlong to election day, let’s remember what woke was meant to mean and ask ourselves if there is anything wrong with the concept. Of course, if you didn’t care about “structural inequality, … the nuances of racism, and … the prevalence of anti-Black violence” and other examples of prejudice in action, then feel free to misuse it.
But back to those local politicians. Before you give one of them your vote, ask yourself, if they are this cavalier with an adjective, what will they be like with your money?
