Hate influencer Chaya Raichik – who goes by “Libs of TikTok” online – is trying to take her show on the road, and it doesn’t appear to be going well.
Raichik gave a speech yesterday at the Indiana Memorial Union at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, alongside Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN).
During her speech, she ranted about “pornographic” books in schools and moved on to her hatred of everything “woke.”
…
Some students started laughing.
“Um, do you have a question? Is something funny?” she asked, apparently not expecting people to find her over-the-top concerns funny.
“How do you define wokeness?” someone in the back asked.
Raichik tried to respond: “Wokeness is the destruction of normalicy [sic] and… And… Um… Uh…” More students started laughing.
“… of our lives,” she said, apparently thinking she was finishing a sentence.
It’s so crazy to me that they throw this word around and they haven’t come up with a shared definition. I know the article cites that lady who stumbled with the definition last year saying “it’s hard to explain in a 15-second sound bite” but after all this time, you’d think they’d have figured out some kind of ELI5 explanation.
I also don’t accept that same person’s line of “It is sort of the understanding that we need to totally reimagine and redo society in order to create hierarchies of oppression” because I’d argue what so called “woke” media tries to do is be aware of inequalities that already exist, not create them. But I suppose if they said it that way they’d have to recognize that current systemic inequality is a real thing.
Lots of reasons to hate on the anti-woke movement but at this point, this in particular really bothers me for some reason.
They can’t because there isn’t one coherent definition that wouldn’t crumble under the most basic scrutiny. As an example, from what I can tell they seem to behave as if the definition of woke is “things I don’t like right now”, which is a ludicrously stupid idea to try to build a laws around, much less a movement.
Any conservatives that are reading this, please feel to correct my assumption of your definition of “woke” any time anyone asks y’all can’t give any sane answer that gives anything concrete to what you’re trying to communication.
I think you’re right in some cases. Maybe this woman is one of those cases.
I think that for some others “wokeness” is fairly well defined but they know that it is a dog whistle. They know that if they were to explicitly define it they would say the quiet part out lond. They would reveal that “wokeness” means “acceptance, inclusion, and celebration of fundamental differences between people”. They would reveal that being “anti-woke” is just a way to say “Hi, my name is Ron and I’m a bigot”.
If she doesn’t know it’s a dog whistle she’s a moron. That’s not to say that reasonably intelligent people can’t be duped, just that she’s one of the major faces of anti queer bigotry in America today. She’s the modern Anita Bryant with a bit of Cathy Brennan thrown in. Any ignorance she holds of the cost of her actions is willful
The word is thrown around a lot and most people do use it as they want, but from my observations of the online medium, “woke” is usually used for companies that insincerely pander to minorities with a token act of ‘kindness’ that also has discriminatory undertones.
The most common example I’ve seen to have the word used is for comic book live action adaptations or remakes in which a red-haired character otherwise known as a ginger is replaced by a black actor. The ‘woke’ meaning here is companies being intentionally racist in their malicious compliance to add minorities as a quota with the unsaid, yet implied wordplay.
For those who don’t get it, ‘Ginger’ -> ‘N…’
Edit: Of course, for some people, any race replacement for any character is ‘woke’. Also, now that I think about it, most recent movies and animations with women as leading characters get called ‘woke’ as well, often compared to Ripley or Connor from Alien and Terminator movies.
So yeah, in a sort of sense, ‘woke’ would probably be akin to saying ‘insincere pandering’, or that’s how it’s meant to be portrayed?
So your conclusion is that its racist to replace a historically red-haired (white person I assume?) character in a fictional story with a black actor? Do I have that right?
No you do not. My conclusion in that regard is that those using the word in that context do so with that meaning in mind.
My personal opinion on racism wasn’t expressed in the reply.
Apologies, I mistakenly assigned ownership to you. Let me try again:
So your conclusion is that those using that word believe it is racist to replace a historically red-haired (white person I assume?) character in a fictional story with a black actor? Do I have that right?
I believe that some of them wholeheartedly do. How many actually do so and how many just use it as an excuse, I can’t tell.
I can respect your analysis of them ,but we’re back to the original challenge. You are having to try to tease out a definition from their own inconstant behavior because they cannot define woke.
Well, that is true. It would seem that each use is subjective to an individual’s own opinion on whether the replacement or the focus is in line with their view of things.
That is an example of what people call woke, yes. Idk about it being racist but I do recall the whole little mermaid movie being called woke because they recasted with a black actress.
Not saying if I support that decision or not, just saying that to me the definition is pretty clear when it comes to race swapping of existing characters.
This is a great example of their problem then. Why can’t they just say that then? If that is “woke” to them why can’t they say:
“In a fictional story about a fictional half human/half fish creature should obviously be white skinned, and making the fictional half human/half fish character played by a black actor is not right.”
Perhaps because their claim is indefensible? Mermaids are fake. There’s no reason the human half of the character is white. Even the white author the fairy tale is based upon never described the mermaids hair or skin color:
“In Andersen’s fairy tale, the Little Mermaid is described as follows: “her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose-leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea.” And if you’re wondering if Andersen’s Little Mermaid had that signature bright red hair that has become synonymous with mermaids, the answer is unclear.” source
So its not even violating the original story to cast a black actor.
This is where I go back my statement in my original post that they can’t define “woke”. I’ll quote myself from the prior post:
This is basic scrutiny, and their claims crumble.
I wouldn’t say that’s indefensible. It’s making a decision that says it’s better to have an actress with X colored skin instead of Y colored skin, even though it doesn’t add anything to the story.
I don’t expect you to agree, but to me that ruins a movie. It should only be done if it adds to the story, like in house of the dragon where the race swap made the strong boys stand out way more.
Again, I don’t expect you to agree, but please note that just because most conservatives that hold this viewpoint are an idiot doesn’t mean all arguments about this point is idiotic.
Please defend it then. Why does a white skinned actor on a fictional person/beast make it a better movie in any capacity? Or perhaps, why does having a black actor subtract from the story?
Even if your answer is subjective, you should be able to explain your reasoning for it.
As I explained, it doesn’t, which is exactly what my point is. If changing a race of a fictional character doesn’t add to the story, then why would you change it? Why not keep the character the way the fans have come to know them? As in there is more value to keeping true to the original character, regardless of their race.
Changing it sends the message that there is something better/worse about certain races (in general or in the specific story). I don’t support that (unless it adds to the story). Maybe that’s not the message you get when you see race swaps, but I usually question motives behind decisions.
Idk why your getting downvoted, OP asked for a definition and you gave one.
Maybe they disagree with it or maybe they disagree with the word having one at all. Doesn’t really matter, it’s just casual chatter.
It’s probably cause of the last line you wrote before the edit.
Maybe. But I wrote it because understanding is a rare commodity and someone would’ve asked. Someone usually does.
What I’ve found based on my experience in lemmy is that people sometimes can take words and phrases at face value unfortunately. So you got to kind of translate things a little.
Can’t say I know how. My own limited understanding prevents me from acquiring a verbal lingo that gets a point across entirely.
Sometimes I read replies to my own comments and just stare at them just asking myself “What?”. And the longer the conversation, the easier i lose the original thread and just go off-track, probably confusing the other side even further. Even when writing a longer comment, I just jump from thought to thought. So at times, the first sentence and the last end up being in different dimensions, which may come across as jarring to a reader. Can’t say I’ve managed to fix that over the years.
That’s actually kind of the point. It’s like how they use the words “communism” and “socialism.” It’s a word they’ve made wholly synonymous with “unquestionably bad,” and it’s defined by what it isn’t rather than what it is so it can be whatever they point at when they say it. Keeping the meaning vague and amorphous is a way to self-police their own thoughts, and short circuit any meaningful discussion or debate before it even starts. It creates a boundaryless field of discomfort they only experience as a gut feeling. As soon as a conversation starts to stray into the territory of acknowledging that people who are different than them might nevertheless be full human beings they get that bad feeling in their gut and say, “I don’t know… That sounds kinda woke.” And everyone knows that anything “woke” is unquestionably bad. Ta-dah!: uncomfortable thought successfully avoided. Thought that may have led to a change of the status quo successfully avoided.
Even when we’re talking about the thought influencers on the Right who are consciously aware of the above, they can’t be seen to define it publicly because that would mean they would have to be honest about the seed of hatefulness they’re dancing around when they use euphemisms like this. When someone asks them how they define “woke,” they can’t answer, “You know… N*gger stuff.” That would instantly discredit them in the eyes of just about everybody, and they wouldn’t be able to pretend to be a serious person making a serious point anymore.
Also, by pinning its meaning down with a definition it would lose much of its power as a propaganda tool. It would lose its universality. It would mean something specific rather than whatever that thing is that you don’t like.
Omg, your so right about that.
Cause then all you have to do is find something that you don’t believe that is obviously wrong. You can call that socialism, and then do guilty by association from there.
It’s simpler than that. Being “woke” means being self aware, to look at the world critically. For example, it means that when a politician tells you “the economy is better than ever”, you look around and determine if your economic circumstances are better than they used to be. Maybe they’re correct and you are an outlier, maybe they’re using metrics that don’t accurately reflect your life - you don’t internalize what you’re told blindly, you look at everything you’re told critically
And it’s not a big step from looking at the system critically to realize “hey, our system is absurdly stupid, on a fundamental level. It could definitely be changed for the better”. That’s not what being woke is - that’s just a natural realization when you stop accepting what is and think about what could be
So the “war on woke” could be seen as a war on people who don’t blindly accept what they’re told. The term is mostly used correctly, most people just don’t know what it actually means
Yesterday I came across the exact same article, but it was in a French newspaper about a French right-wing politician. Her definition was that if you ban books you’re woke, so I guess De Santis is woke now?
Anyway, I’m pretty sure they don’t really want to define it, it’s better to have a vague concept to rage against.