“Woke” Is When White Men Aren’t The Center Of Attention
As a Black Woman in America, it has been wild to witness conservative white men take the slang term, “woke” (popularized by Black Americans) and turn it into silly made up phrases like the….. “woke mind virus” (what does that even mean?) in real time.
Record time. I mean, white people have been stealing African American slang forever.. so that’s not new, but this case is especially egregious because their definition isn’t even close to what being woke initially meant.
How did a term that initially meant to be aware of systemic inequities and covert attempts at quelling Black and other marginalized voices become a catch-all term for anything heterosexual white men deem, “too Black,” “too Queer,” and “too Feminist?”
That’s all their definition of “woke” is.
A popular new TV series having more than two Black characters?
Woke.
A company hiring its first female C.E.O.?
Woke.
A store aisle decorated with rainbow colors to celebrate Pride month?
Woke.
This “movement” isn’t fooling anyone.
Whenever you hear someone complaining that something has gone “woke,” all they’re saying is that it involves people of color, unmarried or childless (by choice) women with fulfilling high paying careers, transgender or non-binary people with dyed hair, etc.
Basically they’re anti-cool and interesting people.
In all seriousness, this anti-diversity push is just support for the return of a time where it was okay to subjugate certain people to prop up unqualified white men. A time where being white and male was the only qualification that mattered.
There’s a reason “make america great again” is a slogan that resonates with white american men who redefined and weaponize the word, “woke.”
They do NOT want things to change. They don’t want to live in a world where things can be great for everyone.
They want to go back to when things were really great. You know, when everything revolved around white guys. That was great, right?
“Woke” (the conservative white guy edition) has become the latest substitute for several derogatory terms typically used to denigrate people who are not right wing, hetero, cisgender white men.
But since the words they’d like to use aren’t socially acceptable, they’ve decided to replace them with, “woke.” or any number of phrases like:
D.E.I.
critical race theory
SJW
virtue signaling
identity politics
(I’ll make it easy for you, it ALL more or less means the N word.)
I would respect the unabashed use of slurs more than these terms they always choose to hide behind.
Think of the worst words for Queer people, Black people, and Women.
That’s “woke.”
A smokescreen for the words they really want to say but are too afraid to, publicly.
It’s cowardly, like them.
I find it so ironic that the diversity everyone hates, wouldn’t exist were it not for colonizers.
Do white men not realize that if their ancestors hadn’t brought people of color to these countries they now think are overwhelmed with forced diversity, that they’d be lily white?
You could have had the alabaster land of your dreams.
You wouldn’t have to see a single Black or Brown face, your television and streaming options would be as white as Charmin Ultra Soft, completely unstained with the colors you despise so very much.
Your kind brought “wokeness” to your land.
YOU invaded the lands inhabited by people of color, killed them, and then STOLE some other people of color from ANOTHER land, and violently forced them to build a nation for you and raise your kids in it.
The only ones to blame for a racially diverse nation… are… who, class?
Not the so called “woke” people.
Y’all could’ve left Africa alone.
You could’ve let the natives be.
You could’ve stayed in your world, with your flavorless cuisine, your rigid systems, your questionable art, your stiff dances, your boring music, your everything.
But a bigger part of white culture is theft.
So, here we are.
Let’s step away from the concept of “wokeness” as it applies to race, for a minute, because apparently many of you don’t want to see Queerness or transgender people in your utopia either.
Guess what? The world is gay. It’s Queer. Transgender people exist, non-binary people exist, they exist loudly and proudly, and they’re not going anywhere.
People who may not be a part of those communities themselves, are trying to provide a more welcoming world for them by not assuming anyone’s pronouns based on appearance alone.
Some people are trying to help normalize the truth that there are more ways of identifying than one of the two genders we’re assigned at birth, and somehow you anti-diversity pushers have a problem with that, too.
Who is that hurting? How did it become a bad thing to be inclusive?
Chronically online trolls are using “pronouns in bio” as a pejorative, but progressives are the snowflakes?
The veins in your temples are about to burst at the sight of “he/him,” but liberals are the ones who get offended by everything?
Sure, Jan.
It’s weird, petty, and ridiculous.
The culture is evolving into one that caters to more than just one group, and that angers cisgender white men to their core because they are that group.
The group everyone else treated with kid gloves and worshipped.
The -commits a crime and gets a “tsk tsk tsk, boys will be boys” slap on the wrist -group.
Now society is focusing on some other groups and they’re flipping out because if society isn’t centering them, what’s the point?
It’s sickening. It’s childish.
It’s fragile, and they need to grow up.
We learn how to share in preschool, and you’re all full grown adults still struggling with making space for others.
But it isn’t even that they’re struggling with it. They just don’t want to share. They want to claim oppression out loud while enjoying their privilege behind closed doors.
It don’t work like that, guys. You’re either the “superior race” or the victims. You can’t be both.
We got one Black president and y’all took to the streets with tiki torches talking about, “we will not be replaced.”
Show me where the replacing is happening.
As far as presidents go, we’ve had one half Black one, and y’all have had how many white ones?
But again… WE’RE the snowflakes.
And I’m giving white men a lot of criticism, but even people from underserved communities are guilty of falling for what they’re calling “anti-woke ideology”
Some examples:
A rise in cisgender white women promoting anti-trans rhetoric and calling themselves TERFS, (There’s nothing radical about your hatred of trans women)
Black People still dealing with homophobia/transphobia. (rampant toxic masculinity is a major issue contributing to this in our community,) And fellow cisgender Black Women, you realize that society still doesn’t see us as “real” women, right? See the treatment of popular figures like Serena Williams, Ciara, and Michelle Obama.
Gay people wanting to eliminate the T from LGBTQ,
Asian kids helping to get rid of affirmative action because they think a couple of Black kids got Ivy League spots that should’ve been theirs.
Come on.
It’s heinous to see oppressed people oppress others, because we know directly what it’s like.
But it’s better to be a “model minority” than a victim “playing the race card,” right?
There can be such comfort in feeling close to the oppressor.
Keep tap dancing. I promise the second you’ve helped massa wipe out the group beneath you, you’re next.
Because guess what? They don’t like you either.
Claiming to “not see color” or “care about gender” as a minority isn’t going to save you.
It just gives you a few more seconds of air before they snatch your raft away and you start to drown with the rest of us.
But, I’ll save that for another post. Back to the common threat.
What the MAGA, incel, white nationalist, “christian” crowd is calling woke is just bigotry.
Plain and simple.
It’s nothing more than that.
There is no intelligent definition or real meaning rooted in any logic. It is simply a group of people getting mad because other groups are finally getting a little attention.
If you hear the word, “woke” used unironically, know that it has no basis in anything valid or worthy of figuring out or studying.
This is simply the new name they have given to the long lasting hatred of progress within minority groups.
“Woke” is NEVER used when a straight white man is involved in something.
White men being involved is just considered normal. That’s how the world should be, to them.
You ask people who claim to be anti-woke what that actually means, and their answers never fully align, because it’s just the bigotry du jour.
Which oppressed group have you decided to make the scapegoat for your mediocrity today? is the question you’re asking when you ask those people what their definition of “woke” is.
As a woke person, I’ll tell you what the anti-woke movement REALLY is:
What Is Woke?
(It feels so stupid to even type that out)
What Is The New Definition Of Woke?
The new definition of woke is when Black, gay, trans, and female voices become too loud for fragile straight white male ears.
The new definition of woke is when white men can’t use racial slurs without consequences.
the new definition of woke is when women don’t dress or perform for the male gaze.
The new definition of woke is when genders other than cis man and cis woman exist.
I want to make this super clear to anyone still fuzzy on what the white male conservative definition of “woke” is.
When those people say they’re anti-woke, what they’re really saying is that they’re:
anti-Black,
anti-Feminist,
anti-Trans,
anti-Gay, etc.
One, two, or all of the above. I don’t care what they tell you they mean, what I’ve listed above is what they actually mean.
Basically, if you are someone who would’ve been lynched in the 1950s for being yourself, you’re what white male conservatives would call, “woke” in 2025.
And america’s most recent attempt at eradicating “wokeness?”
Making a treasonous felon its president. And a white South African nazi immigrant his key advisor.
But, hey… at least they’re not “woke” like Kamala, right?
I hope you all get the “anti-woke” america you want. You truly deserve it.
- Hayley Armstrong
