The word “woke” gets a lot of attention these days, but what does it really mean? I think it means whatever the speaker intends it to mean, which can be almost anything. When Ron DeSantis uses the word “woke,” he means something very different from what I mean.
It’s true that we both use the word in a derogatory way. I don’t like “woke” any more than he does. But his definition is a lot more expansive than mine. He would include, for example, LGBTQ rights as part of wokeness. I would not. LGBTQ rights are human rights. The only people against them, as far as I can tell, are religious bigots, who hide behind their Christianity in order to justify and indulge their hatred. So I utterly reject DeSantis’s definition of woke. Along the same lines, I reject his book banning, which is disgusting and nazi-esque.
But what do I mean by woke? Pretty much this: whenever people abuse the police and suggest we don’t need them, that’s woke. When people talk about defunding the police, that’s woke. When people talk about giving Black criminals a break because they’re the victims of “structural racism,” that’s woke. We know who talks like that: people like Madame D.A., Carroll Fife, Cat Brooks, Nikki Bas, Dan Kalb, Sheng Thao. I sometimes don’t believe that they themselves believe in what they’re saying. I imagine that Sheng Thao has a little more common sense than to blame crime on racism, but she has to pander to the woke mob that elected her—by fewer than 700 votes, by the way. She has to pretend she buys into the same bull crap, even though I’ll bet you Thao herself would hesitate to walk on International Boulevard at night. She knows how dangerous it is, and she knows how grateful people are when they see a couple of cops on the street. But that’s woke, too, pretending to believe in woke even though you don’t.
Woke is particularly present in Oakland’s so-called “anti-violence” efforts. Everybody knows that the Department of Violence Prevention is a joke. Nobody knows what it does. Nobody knows how much money is sunk into it. Nobody knows where the money goes, or who’s accountable. Nobody even knows who runs it. But that, too, is woke—believing that some P.R. stunt called “violence prevention” or “MACRO” is a legitimate activity for a city to invest its taxpayer’s money in. It is not legitimate, but that, too, is woke: pretending that something works to stop crime when it doesn’t.
I also think it’s woke when people single out Black people for special treatment. That could be through affirmative action, or the “free money” ($500/month) that Oakland sends to low-income families of color, simply because they’re Black. It could be why a woke social media site, nextdoor.com, welcomes posts about Black Lives Matter, but will expel someone who writes that All Lives Matter. It’s why the San Francisco Chronicle capitalizes the word “Black” but not the word “white.” You don’t get much more woke than that: it’s special treatment. And by the way, Reparations are the sine qua non of special treatment for Black people. That is wokeness run amok.
Woke is Carroll Fife allegedly saying she doesn’t talk to White men. Woke is Cat Brooks tweeting in ebonics, but God forbid a White person should do that: they’d get their White ass kicked out of town, and that too is woke. Woke is some misguided loser scrawling “All Cops Are Bastards” on a downtown sidewalk. Woke is every city department having some kind of “equity” bureau to enforce racial quotas. Woke is Pamela Price giving favored treatment to Black murderers.
It’s important to make this distinction between DeSantis’s version of woke and my own, because the defenders of woke love to accuse us of being rightwing Republicans. My definition of woke is fair and objective. His is insane, hateful and incendiary. My version promotes justice, sanity, peace and conciliation, while his promotes violence and intolerance.
So please, don’t confuse us with those rightwing anti-woke fanatics. We’re simply calling for race-free politics—a government that honors its responsibility to uphold law and order, and that supports its police by any means necessary.
Steve Heimoff