The culture-war fight over wokeness--both its cultural meaning and the word itself--has obscured the word's roots...in music. Rick Millward is a singer, songwriter, and music producer living in Southern Oregon. He reminds us of the early history of the word.
Guest Post by Rick Millward
“...best stay woke, keep their eyes open"
The fact that Regressives are all in a tizzy over "woke," as are some otherwise Progressives as well, indicates that we have in this, a word, something that triggers a defensiveness far out of proportion to its meaning.
Millward
So what is “woke"?
Let’s start with Webster:
“woke : aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice.)”
I was surprised to learn the term has been around for a while, notably back in the early days of the civil rights movement. From VOX:
". . . later, the phrase “stay woke” turned up as part of a spoken afterword in the 1938 song Scottsboro Boys, a protest song by Blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly. The song describes the 1931 saga of a group of nine Black teenagers in Scottsboro, Arkansas, who were accused of raping two White women. Lead Belly says at the end of an archival recording of the song that he’d met with the Scottsboro defendants’ lawyer who introduced him to the men themselves. “I made this little song about down there,” Lead Belly says. “So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open."
Predictably, It was a musician who creatively brought the term into the vernacular and now the list of songs that include woke in their lyrics is long and growing. In that sense woke is in the same class as “hip” and “cool," words whose popular meaning transcends their dictionary entry. More recently the term #staywoke started appearing in social media as a catchall for being alert, or simply awake in a boring situation and then came into wider usage after the BLM protests as a rallying cry. The context shifted to one of social justice and specifically the policing of African Americans. This is about where Regressives started feeling uncomfortable with it.
(Sidebar: If you’re wondering what is meant by Regressive in this context I’d suggest to ask Mr. Google, but here’s a quick definition: "One who is so conservative, they wish to move things backward in time instead of merely keeping things the same/progressing forward.” Examples abound, for instance book banning, though I should point out these efforts balk at actual book burning so I guess that’s progress in a way.)
In the intervening time woke has morphed to include meaning a heightened awareness of the circumstances of other marginalized groups, one might say all marginalized groups. Progressives have been acutely aware of social justice inequities going back the early days of suffrage and the civil rights struggles that followed. Regressives now throw the term back with contempt, asserting that it unfairly targets them as being guilty of past racism and bigotry. It’s not that, it’s simply pointing out that many Americans are living in a dream, one that conveniently puts those unlike themselves, lacking their advantages, not the least of which is skin color, on the sidelines of society, and in fact, history. For example they chafe against, for them, new and confusing restrictions on speech and behaviors that imply insensitivity.
The elevation of woke as a controversial term certainly illustrates the power of words to evoke emotion. It scares right wing types over the suggestion that the horrors of slavery, Jim Crow and the subsequent marginalization of African Americans have yet to be corrected, as are those against Native Americans, women, and the LGBTQ community. Woke suggests that the America they cherish as White, Christian and prosperous may not be quite the utopia of their dreams.
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Rick Millward was part of the Music City songwriter community, collaborating with other artists and producing over 30 projects including two EMMY nominated soundtracks. His new record “Loveland” is available on Spotify and other streaming platforms and his new album, “Astronomy”, will be released soon.
It's amazing how conservatives manage to turn positive words into negative epithets: liberal, progressive, green, expert, empathy, etc. I don't know how they manage it. I mean, I see them do it; put air quotes around a word or phrase, say it dripping with sarcasm, and, with just a bit of repetition, gold is rendered dross. I see it, but I still don't understand it.
And it's not just the word that is denigrated; it's the entire concept (as with "woke"; or the value of empathy in a Supreme Court Justice, or, hell, the concept of government itself).
I mean, these people go to war against a plastic potato toy and a fictional Mouse, and they are still taken seriously, and, too often, win.
It's amazing how conservatives manage to turn positive words into negative epithets: liberal, progressive, green, expert, empathy, etc. I don't know how they manage it. I mean, I see them do it; put air quotes around a word or phrase, say it dripping with sarcasm, and, with just a bit of repetition, gold is rendered dross. I see it, but I still don't understand it.
And it's not just the word that is denigrated; it's the entire concept (as with "woke"; or the value of empathy in a Supreme Court Justice, or, hell, the concept of government itself).
I mean, these people go to war against a plastic potato toy and a fictional Mouse, and they are still taken seriously, and, too often, win.
Anyway: thank you!