Zander's Inside Voice

I would ban the word wokeism from our vocabulary. Not woke, like how it was used prior to the right-wing politicans co-opting it to mean things they don’t like. But this weird, nebulous, almost undefinable term that politicians keep throwing around. It’s always tied to things like “we are becoming too PC!” and “CRT is destroying this country!”

What?

I’ve had kids in public school since 2008. 15 years now, I have been watching what they are learning and what they are talking about and I promise you that CRT has not been a part of their education EVER. There is no “wokeism” going on like some of these politicians would have you believe. There’s no great agenda to make your kid trans, gay, purple, or a bleeding heart liberal.

The word is just stupid.

Now woke, in the pre-right wing political rallying call world, simply means “aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues” according to the dictionary. Why would that be a bad thing? Everyone knows racist people exist and I’m guessing everyone even know actual, real racist people out in the world. So why is being aware of any of that a bad thing?

In trying to research how “wokeism” is defined, I stumbled across this page and it kinda blew my mind. In reading it, it seems like people are connecting everything they don’t want to see, hear, or read about discrimination to CRT. The definitely of CRT on this page is not as I understand it to have been originally designed, which was for law students only. There’s some kind of strange description of other terms too.

I really like Jordan Klepper and how he talks to right wing people. He just asks questions and gets them to explain themselves. Then he points out the disconnect between what they say and what they think they believe. It’s definitely comedy, but in that sad commentary on how stupid we are all becoming in this country.

I want to understand why people are so upset by discussing various levels of privilege. Why does it upset rich-born white male politicians to discuss what privilege is and how “the system” has always worked in their favor? Why do they feel like they are somehow losing something? Having privilege doesn’t mean you are a bad person or somehow didn’t work for what you have accomplished. No one is suggesting that at all. But if you are born into a family where your mother can afford to stay home and your father graduated from Harvard, your chances of getting into Harvard are much higher than a really smart Black girl from Alabama with a single mother. The connections your family has before you can even talk will open doors for you before you can even climb out of your crib. Of course you have to do your own work in college (with SOME exceptions) and law school, and win elections to be an actual politician. So no, having privilege doesn’t mean you didn’t work hard. It just means that doors were already open for you before you were aware. And no one is trying to hold you accountable for THAT. Simply acknowledging that those doors were open for you and that everyone should have the same set of open doors is all anyone wants!!