The Ongoing Campaign to Shame You Out of Using the Word ‘Woke’

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, March 08, 2023

 

Two weeks ago, the Washington Post published a reported-out piece on the illogic of the word “woke,” which itself was illogical. The authors posit that no one really knows what the word has come to mean, least of all the Republicans who use it as an epithet. Those who do know what it means, however, understand that it describes only good things — being socially conscious and attuned to society’s nagging inequities, for example. And, anyway, Republicans only co-opted the word with the express intention of undermining “black and liberal ideas,” according to one quoted professor.

 

As I wrote at the time, the article lacquered a pseudo-authoritative gloss onto a transparent attempt to anathematize a word that no longer serves progressives’ political interests. In the weeks since, center-left outlets such as Poynter and PolitiFact have also engaged in theatrical displays of befuddlement over what this amorphous word really means. USA Today has since lent its credibility to this progressive imperative with its sponsorship of an Ipsos poll that purports to put meat on these otherwise bare bones.

 

Their latest poll confirms that no one really knows what “woke” means, particularly when respondents aren’t provided with any accurate definitions. “Republican presidential hopefuls are vowing to wage a war on ‘woke,’” USA Today’s write-up of its survey began, “but a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word as a positive attribute, not a negative one.”

 

Hear that, Republicans? Everyone loves “woke”! Well, at least 56 percent of those surveyed endorse the word when they’re told it describes someone who is “informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.” By contrast, just 39 percent of respondents express a negative view of the word insofar as it describes someone who is “overly politically correct” and is inclined to “police others’ words.” Having deemed the Right’s obsession with “wokeness” a quixotic endeavor, USA Today bellyflops into a solipsistic reflection on how the public’s perceptions “raise questions” about the Right’s self-defeating myopia.

 

This is a prime example of journalism that works backward from a conclusion in pursuit of evidence to support it.

 

Wokeness in practice is not something so quaint as speech-policing and “political correctness.” It encapsulates an alternative theory of social organization that often enters into conflict with the Constitution. It prescribes not just otherworldly speech codes but programs of reeducation for those who decline to subscribe to them. It necessitates the redistribution of economic and social goods in the pursuit of “restorative justice” for wrongs committed by generations long passed. It redefines cosmic constants like the laws of mathematics, operating on the bigoted assumption that those laws are incomprehensible to those who were born into certain identities. “Woke” does not describe a persnickety busybody who cannot abide your verbal miscues. It describes a revolutionary.

 

A quick perusal of the polling on the issue exposes the flaw in USA Today/Ipsos’s methods.

 

When respondents are not primed with erroneous definitions and are instead asked only if they would vote for a self-described “woke” candidate, as CBS/YouGov did last October, they found that 58 percent of likely voters would be less likely to pull the lever for that candidate. That same month, a Harvard-Harris poll found that 64 percent of respondents, including a majority of Democrats, blame “the increase in crime” on “woke politicians” as opposed to “other factors.” That’s, at the very least, odd if most Americans don’t understand the word or believe it only describes a heightened social consciousness.

 

A handy 2021 Atlantic/Leger survey tested a variety of controversial statements designed to gauge voters’ “wokeness.” Their findings demonstrate a strong correlation between statements widely regarded as “woke” and voters who pulled the lever for Joe Biden in 2020. Even USA Today’s own poll finds that more respondents considered “woke” to be an insult than those who said it’s a compliment.

 

Taking these data at face value, what are we to conclude? That a significant number of Americans think “wokeness” describes high levels of empathy and social insights and reject both? That Americans are simultaneously perplexed by the word but able to both recognize it in the wild and shun it? That American adults in Ipsos’s own survey are insulted if you accuse them of being “informed” and “educated”?

 

There’s plenty of data to support the conclusion that average voters cannot necessarily reproduce a pat definition of the word “woke.” That is reasonable. “Social justice” also lacks a universal definition, even though it describes the suite of policies generally preferred by those with dispositional affinities toward “wokeness.” Voters might not know how to define it, but they know it when they see it. The preponderance of evidence suggests they don’t like what they see.