What is “Woke”?

Written by Barbara Smith,

Blogger and Social Justice Activist

https://www.facebook.com/HWdemocrats/

The term Woke has become imbued with meaning that varies according to the context. I became familiar with the term in 2020 as the nation grappled with a videotape showing unarmed, African American George Floyd murdered under the knee of a sociopathic policeman.

The Origin of the term “Woke”

According to Wikipedia, the term “Woke” originated in African-American Vernacular English meaning an awakening or awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination. The earliest modern citation of woke, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was a 1962 article, “If You’re Woke You Dig It,” written for the New York Times by the African American novelist William Melvin Kelley. (photo below)

Woke was added to the Merriam Webster dictionary in 2017 and is now defined as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),” and identified as U.S. slang. The term is sometimes used as short-hand for ideas involving concepts such as

1. gender identity
2. white privilege and
3. slavery reparations for African-Americans

Following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the term “Woke” was popularized by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists seeking to raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans. It was also used by white people to signal their support for BLM.

In my opinion, there are mainly 3 types of Americans who fit somewhere on the following spectrum –

1) far right: racist, ignorant, hatemongering, gullible Fox Lies TV watchers who are mostly white, many uneducated Trump voters or people who don’t pay any attention to news or politics except when it affects their wallet. I agree with Hillary Clinton that the word deplorable describes them, but as awful as they are we must critically evaluate effective solutions rather than turn to cults, zealots and messiahs.

2) Middle ground, trying to do better : there are people of diverse backgrounds aware that they were taught inaccurate American history, propaganda all their lives but not actively taking political action for change. Many are highly educated and prefer having diversity in social networks especially at University and work places and enjoy a self-image as a non-racist person and

3) Left, left, unreasonable Woke crusaders who view their anti-racist and anti-bigotry methods including bullying and name-calling like a religion. They ban dissent, encourage censorship, pledge to their human rights organizations, calling people with different opinions “racists”, “bigots” and “classists”. Many of these crusaders follow the cult leader of the political lobby called-the Hamilton Wenham Human Rights Coalition-Anna Siedzik, who was raised in Washington state in extreme wealth and privilege, continued her indoctrination at Yale University and moved to Hamilton to save us. She also earns income selling affordable housing units and exploits her position as an elected School Official to proselytize her message that if you don’t obey her orders then you are anti-human rights. She is NOT a savior…..

Hamilton, a predominantly White, Christian and financially upper class suburban community is currently under control by the Board of Select, Town manager and School Board that are packed with Coalition chosen officials who are afraid to stand up to Anna Siedzik. There are people from all three of these categories living in Hamilton. Some of them, like myself are a blend of number 2 and a social activist working within the confines of the established, albeit flawed Democratic party. Many people in category 3 are normally kind people mesmerized by the cult leader’s spell, enjoy the good dooby self-image they cultivated while also attacking people like myself who value free-speech, democracy and separation of church and state.

I feel so strongly that Anna Siedzik and her cult are dangerous that I quit being chair of the Hamilton Democratic Town Committee because I could not support fake Democrat, Anna-endorsed state representative candidate, Jamie Belsito. I devote all of my political energy to stopping the faith-based, political lobby called the HWHRC , their gullible followers and those in power who financially benefit from housing development regardless of global warming, water shortages, drought, traffic, destruction of open space and increased taxes on already financially strained residents. We need scientists and unbiased smart people not faith based cultists with financial incentives deciding the big decisions that impact our town.

Right Wing Crusading Against “Woke”

By 2020, parts of the right wing were using the term woke, often in a pejorative, mocking or an ironic way. It was used as an insult for various progressive or leftist movements and ideologies perceived as overzealous, performative, or insincere. By 2021, woke had become used almost exclusively as a pejorative, with most prominent usages of the word taking place in a disparaging context.^[1][2]British journalist Steven Poole comments that the term is used to mock “over righteous liberalism”.^[47] Romano says that on the American right, “‘woke’ – like its cousin ‘canceled‘ – bespeaks ‘political correctness‘ gone awry”.^[4]

Woke Backlash

Some of the worst backlash against social justice activists such as myself is seen in an extremist Supreme Court taking away rights to women’s bodily autonomy, soon-to-end marriage equality, and the attack on voting rights after years of Republican gerrymandering and lies about voting integrity. One of the most egregious attacks against Woke is seen in Florida as the hatemongering, Republican governor Ron DeSantis attempts to restrict race-based conversation and analysis in business and education.

The Rise of Ibram X Kendi

According to the New York Post, Ibram X Kendi’s popularity was swift and significant. He published a bestselling book, “Stamped from the Beginning,” in 2016. After the death of George Floyd in 2020, Kendi’s next book, “How to Be An Antiracist,” began selling an astonishing number of copies, including institutional sales to public schools, government agencies and professional groups, all seeking to understand the ongoing racial unrest; he was a campus and media fixture at the height of the crisis.

I enjoyed reading the latter influential work since it was packed with insight and tips on actions that white people may consider taking to promote equity. I never considered him a prophet, as others supposedly have. However, some organizations with a faith-based tendency such as the HWHRC, treated Kendi’s words as simple truth, like a religion and if one did not follow his words they might call you out as a racist, bigot, classist or TERF.

I usually do NOT agree with everything an author writes, but take away what I deem as valuable. I am not concerned that Kendi earns a great deal of money selling books and giving speeches to both government and corporate venues. However, there is a problem when cults like the HWHRC take his every word as gospel and their zealotry in an agenda that pushes concepts such as

1. white people must admit that they have white privilege
2. white people are obligated to do the anti-racism work and if you don’t, then you are a racist
3. racism is the cause of every racial disparity. I believe that an uneven playing field is often at fault, but racism is not the cause of every single problem ranging from poor school grades to high incarceration rates.
4. Only an anti-racist or anti-bigotry program in schools starting with young children can solve racism. I believe that children should be taught true American history that includes the painful story of enslavement, the Civil War, the failure of reconstruction, Jim Crow, lynching, social justice movements and laws that have redressed inequities in areas of voting, school integration, employment, housing, policing and so on. Children empowered with facts presented in a developmentally appropriate manner allow them to learn how to be critical thinkers and future political activists.

None of the above offends me. I’m happy that America is becoming demographically majority non-white and I recognize why I don’t fear for my life when stopped by the police. I just accept anti-racist literature as opinion and suggestion, not the gospel and I believe that people like Anna Siedzik, indoctrinated in so-called Woke values at Yale do NOT have the moral authority to tell every one else what to think, say and how to act in order to avoid being called out as a racist, bigot, classist or TERF.

Woke Racism by John McWhorter

John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics, an African American author of several books including Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America. He considers the current woke self-righteous zealotry of leaders such as Anna Siedzik a form of religion. McWhorter created a label to describe people who “say they are pursuing social justice”, thus telling the rest of us that we are resisting social justice. Don’t get tripped up. They are using the term to refer to their very specific and questionable sense of what social justice is, and as such, to ask us whether we are “against social justice” qualifies as a dirty trick along the lines of being asked if you still beat your spouse” (page 18). McWhorter came up with the term “Elect” to refer to people who are mostly nice people but have become inquisitors. The following is an excerpt that explains his view of this religious movement.

“SOMETHING MUST BE UNDERSTOOD: I do not mean that these people’s ideology is “like” a religion. I seek no rhetorical snap in the comparison. I mean that it actually is a religion. An anthropologist would see no difference in type between Pentecostalism and this new form of antiracism. Language is always imprecise, and thus we have traditionally restricted the word religion to certain ideologies founded in creation myths, guided by ancient texts, and requiring that one subscribe to certain beliefs beyond the reach of empirical evidence. This, however, is an accident, just as it is that we call tomatoes vegetables rather than fruits. If we rolled the tape again, the word religion could easily apply as well to more recently emerged ways of thinking within which there is no explicit requirement to subscribe to unempirical beliefs, even if the school of thought does reveal itself to entail such beliefs upon analysis. One of them is this extremist version of antiracism today. ” (page 24)

McWhorter examines the ways in “which their new religion so closely parallels older ones. It makes what can seem like a mess of weird opinions and attitudes into something quite coherent. “

• THE ELECT HAVE SUPERSTITION . It is inherent to a religion that, amid various other tenets and commitments, one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief. Certain questions are are not to be asked or, if asked, only politely. For the Elect , battling racism is to be questioned only in ways that reinforce the idea that the Elect are correct- even at the cost of basic sense. This is superstition. It is no accident that many of the white Elect spontaneously put their hands above their heads as an indication that they understand that they bear “white privilege”. Think of this type, asserting “Oh, I know I’m privileged!” while holding their hand up, palm out, like a Pentecostal. (pages 25-27)
• THE ELECT HAVE CLERGY. For example, that’s why Ta-Nehisi Coate’s essay “The Case for Reparations” was received so very rapturously. People loved Coate’s article not as politics. Quite simply, almost no one thinks reparations are actually going to happen in a way that would leave its advocates actually satisfied. It was received rather as a sermon. Whites flock and even pay to listen to Robin D’Angelo teach them the counterintuitive lesson that they are racist cogs in a racist machine, with societal change possible only when they admit this and shed their racism (which will make poor black people less poor how and when, exactly?) She is teaching a religious thought, she is a traveling celebrity preacher. (pages 28-30)
• THE ELECT HAVE ORIGINAL SIN. Under Elect creed, the sin is “white privilege.” To anticipate a question, yes, I do believe that to be white in America is to automatically harbor certain unstated privileges in terms of one’s sense of belonging. Figures of authority are the same color as you. You are thought of as the default category. You are not subject to stereotypes. Although these days, you actually are subject to one- that of the menacing, anal “whiteness” monster that the Elect tar you as-but we shall not quibble. But the issue here is not whether I or anyone else thinks white privilege is real, but what we consider the proper response to it. The Elect are to ritually “acknowledge” that they possess white privilege, with a response that they can never be absolved of it. Classes, seminars, and teach-ins are devoted to corralling whites into this approach to the matter. The Elect seek to inculcate white kids with their responsibility to acknowledge their privilege from as early an age as possible as I write this, religion is being preached in one school after another nationwide, even to children who aren’t even reading chapter books yet. In other words, the Elect are founding the equivalent of Sunday school-except that, because they have penetrated actual schools, they get to preach at our children five days a week. The proper response to original sin is to embrace the teachings of Jesus, although one will remain always a sinner nevertheless. The proper response to white privilege is to embrace the teachings of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram Kendi and Robin DiAngelo (and other surely other prophet-priests by the time you read this and beyond), with the understanding that you will always harbor the privilege stain nevertheless. We see this especially clearly in white people as they lustily pump their fists and do high fives with like-minded pals over the writings of a Coates who says that he is surprised that white people- i.e. they- are interested enough in black people and racism to even bother reading his work, and who saw the white firefighters who died on 9/11 as getting their just deserts. These same readers’ friends, in 2020 were often seen posting photos of themselves on social media, holding a copy of White Fragility, showing their comrades that they were “doing the work”….. Coates and DiAngelo are calling these people sinners. Yet the sinners eagerly drink in the charge, revering their accusers, and come away from this self-mortification feeling energized. Cleansed. This is worship by people embracing the self-mortification of the inveterate sinner, stained by the original sin of white privilege. (pages 30-33)
• THE ELECT ARE EVANGELICAL. To wit: Do we wonder why fundamentalist Christians do not see their beliefs as just one of many valid opinions? They see themselves as bearers of a Good News that, if all people would simply open up and see it, would create a perfect world. To be Elect is to think in exactly the same way. Key to being Elect is a sense that there is always a flock of unconverted heathen. (pages 34-35)
• THE ELECT ARE APOCALYPTIC. Elect scripture stipulates a judgment day; the great day when America “owns up to” or “comes to terms with” racism and finally fixes it. Apparently this will happen through the long term effects of psychological self-mortification combined with the transformational political activism that whites will be moved to effect upon being morally shamed and verbally muzzled. (pages 35-42)
• THE ELECT BAN THE HERETIC. The Elect consider it imperative to not only critique those who disagree with their creed, but to seek their punishment and elimination to whatever degree real-life conditions can accommodate. There is an overriding sense that unbelievers must be not just spoken out against, but called out, isolated, and banned. The reality is that what the Elect call problematic is what a Christian means by blasphemous. The Elect do not ban people out of temper, they do it calmly, between sips of coffee as they surf Twitter, because they consider it a higher wisdom to burn witches. Not literally, but the sentiment is the same. The Elect are members of a religion of a kind within which the dissenter is not just someone in disagreement but is a kind of environmental pollution. They are not to be among us. Why can’t they allow other views? Remember, this is religion, not political science, and specifically a religion eerily akin to devout Christianity. To the Elect, racism is the equivalent of Satan. If I deign to walk by Satan with the idea that we can just let him be, I am missing the point. I am “wrong.” Nominally secular institutions have openly advocated religious orientation toward race issues as if they were the divinity schools that all universities once essentially were. (pages 43-50)
• THIS IS A RELIGIOUS FAITH. A new religion in the guise of world progress is not an advance; it is a detour. It is not altruism; it is self-help….. There is nothing correct about the essence of American though and culture being transplanted into the soil of a religious faith. Some will go as far as to own up to it being a religion and wonder why we can’t just accept it as our new national creed. The problem is that on matters of societal procedure and priorities, the adherents of this religion-true to the very nature of religion-cannot be reasoned with. (pages 57-59)

There is a great deal in McWhorter’s book that I disagree with. The author is critical of Black Lives Matter, but I credit them with changing police culture and I am proud to have marched with them and hang my BLM sign.

However, Professor McWhorter’s articulates many of my fears as I watch a religious cult take over Hamilton and Wenham. There is a modern day witch hunt to

1. demonize anyone with a different opinion ( hence calling the Board of Select Members who did not obey Anna Siedzik- racists and bigots),
2. HWHRC followers who mindlessly raise their arms and nod their heads with religious fervor to anything messiah Anna Siedzik tells them to believe.
3. Voices of dissent on University campuses get fired, uninvited to speak and at times violently attacked. Independent thinkers such as myself get banned from the HWHRC and hw community or residents Facebook pages.
4. Religions and cults are big on symbols including religious flags (soon coming to Hamilton), land acknowledgement proclamations before meetings (as if that helps native Americans get their land back!), candidates pledging to a political, faith-based lobby, teaching pronoun usage to children so young that they cannot even read yet, and then demanding that everyone use them or else they get called a bigot.

Solutions

First of all, recognize leaders such as Anna Siedzik for what they are- products of a runaway, extremist indoctrination with strong religious influence from local Christian colleges and her own gullibility. She is a control freak, zealot and believes that only she has the answers. She is not holy. She is not a messiah. She is not our savior. She is merely confused, misguided and seems to have a problem with narcissism. Many other leaders in the HWHRC have similar challenges.

Read lots of books about racism, bigotry, social justice and how to create positive change (as I do) . People who, for whatever reason, are not interested in “the work” should never be judged, labeled, bullied, or called names such as ” racists”, “commies”, or “witches”. Speak out against the return of McCarthyism.

Human Rights and Atheists

Do not expect or even try to change Trump supporters and their racist, misogynistic, ignorant ilk as the Coalition cult feels obligated to do. It can become physically dangerous to interact with them in a heated argument and presumptuous to assume that you are right and they are wrong. Instead, work to elect Democrats. The Democratic party is all that stands between Democracy and a fascist dictatorship controlled by Fox Fake News.

Support Free Speech

Support free speech by writing letters, blogging, do not be afraid of Anna Siedzik and her followers. I will not be sued for sharing truth as she threatens me. The police will not shut me down when she complains to them. Speak out NOW while Americans still have the right to do so without being arrested.

Fight for separation of church and state and that includes organized religion such as Christianity, as well as the woke religion that Professor McWhorter describes.

Write to local newspapers such as the Salem News and Boston Globe when Anna Siedzik is presented as the voice of authority. She is NOT! By the way, she financially benefits from her position of power on the School Board, leader of the HWHRC and promoter of Affordable housing development. There is a conflict of interest and she should either resign from her elected office or her job working at Harborlight.

Tell your local NAACP CHAPTER to stop supporting anti-free speech cults. The following post explains why I left my local chapter.

Why I left the North Shore NAACP

References and relevant blog posts and videos

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-are-crusading-against-woke-n1264811

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/woke-meaning-origin

https://nypost.com/2021/07/22/ibram-x-kendi-is-the-false-prophet-of-a-dangerous-and-lucrative-faith/

Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, by John McWhorter, Random House, 2021.

Hamilton Select Board Wants Religious Flags

Anna hates the United States Constitution

How Dare I Disagree with the Hamilton Wenham Human Rights Coalition Leaders!

Mind Control in Process

Protecting Atheists and Human Rights

The Impact of Flags, Pledges and and Name-Calling on Democracy

Whether or not you agree with Professor McWhorter that today’s left wing has melded into a Woke religion…..

one must question the oversized influence of religion on the HWHRC much of it a result of local Christian colleges producing graduates who remained in Hamilton and Wenham to evangelize and run governments.