Why is it so wrong to be "woke"?

Question

Woke just originated as meaning being aware of racial and social injustice. Now radical right wingers throw it around as an insult for anyone they don't agree with. So why is it so wrong to call out injustice where you see it?

I personally believe the reason people are so opposed to it is that they are scared they will lose their power over others. It's the same arguments they made when women fought for equal rights and the same stuff when different minorities fought for theirs.

Be civil, or I will remove comments.

NamerOfStars · Accepted Answer

Because it's a euphemism for "bigoted". It's an assumption that blatant racism and sexism are acceptable, no long as they're done in the "correct" direction. Likewise, openly incorrect information- even in matters of cold hard fact- is equally valid so long as it comes from the "right kind" of people. You can see that in the word itself- "woke" is the past tense of "wake"; it's a verb, not an adjective. The adjective would be "awakened". Why, then, use an incorrect form of the word that makes you look, frankly, stupid? Because the movement arose from people who apparently were followed home from school and beaten up by correct grammar. But since those people have the "correct" skin color, it's seen as just fine.

Bigotry is an ugly thing, and it does not become less ugly simply because it's your bigotry. "Alternative facts" and "my truth" are just two names for the same idea: that lying is okay when *I* do it.

To make matters worse, this idea is just perpetuating the social and economic imbalances it's allegedly trying to fix. I'm of Irish extraction, myself, and I knew the two of my great-grandparents who came here from Ireland. Today, in the US, the Irish are just a subtype of white people; at the time, we were (in the eyes of American society) albino niggers. I know that sounds incredibly harsh, and it is, but it's also true- nearly every stereotype you hear about black people today- hell, that you heard about black people sixty years ago- you heard about us a century back. Uneducated? Violent thugs? Gathering together in tenement slums where crime is so bad that police refuse to enter them? Cooking that smells terrible? Amazing music? Check, check, check, check, and check.

All that was over with long before I was born, but it wasn't ended by discrimination in our favor; it was ended by building our communities into something better, and leading the charge- very often literally- in the labor movement, and labor wars (I have ancestors who fought at Blair Mountain). Training people to sit back and expect to be rewarded because their ancestors were made to suffer at the hands of powerful inhuman monsters isn't going to make them stronger; it's going to make them dependent on you, and unable to stand on their own. Good for certain politicians' reelection campaigns; lousy for society as a whole.

And that's just the racial side of the equation; the gender one is even worse. The idea that women are legally discriminated against because certain states say that "consent to sex is consent to parenthood" (which it isn't when adoption still exists) sounds rich indeed when 41 states have laws or court rulings saying that, for men, possession of functioning genitals is consent to parenthood. Do women have problems? Of course. Do they have problems that arise specifically from their being women? Yes. But hearing claims of oppression from a class so privileged that they have an entire category of rights afforded to them specifically by dint of the very trait they claim is a cause of oppression is beyond ludicrous; asking why people object is like asking why the inhabitants of a homeless shelter don't like the billionaires who stop by to gripe about hikes in capital gains taxes.

The root of this is what you yourself have pointed out, though apparently not recognized- hypoagency and the presumption of power. I am straight, I am white, and I am male, and the movement consequently assumes I have more power than others. The time I spent living out of my car and literally scrounging by the side of the road to find dropped change so I could avoid starvation; the day when I woke up to find a half-dozen cockroaches crawling over my hand and nearly wept for joy at the thought of free protein; the jobs I've been denied because of the color of skin and the shape of my genitals; these are not experiences in the life of a powerful person.

There's nothing whatsoever wrong with pointing out injustice where you see it- but that's exactly what criticism of "woke" is. It's wrong. It gets criticized. And people like you reflexively assume it's about fear of losing power, as opposed to actually being fair.

normalice · Accepted Answer

Because right wing billionaires have spent lots of money creating a media atmosphere that makes it feel wrong. The problem is no one buys republican policies so they have to sell us culture wars, instead..

menina · Accepted Answer

Thank you so much for asking this question. There's ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with being WOKE. Bigots say it's wrong because they want to keep controlling certain groups of the population. They want people to think certain ways about certain human beings. They don't want to be challenged, they see it as a provocation. They're afraid of having their "perfect" world "destroyed".

Basically they believe that the world is theirs, so everything has to be like they want to.

Agape93 · Accepted Answer

Nowadays it's people who ignore reality in favor of a comfortable delusion, at the expense of those who disagree. Like msc545, as an example, doesn't understand that sometimes people need to hunt to feed themselves, and thought that beating animals to death was more fair because it meant neither me or the animal had a gun.

So on

KostasKouvalis · Answer

Don't blame the right for this, because it was the LEFT who redefined that term just like they redefined "White Supremacy". "Being aware of racial and social injustice that actually EXIST." There, I fixed that for ya. I don't see any alleged conspiracy to genocide black people, as they claim. Also, they only care about social injustices of SPECIFIC groups. They don't seem to care about the Jews, Russians and Christians that are being persecuted solely because of their ethnicity/religion. Also, it used to be that they were fighting for EQUAL rights, but now they're fighting for SPECIAL rights. The woke movement is an absolutely joke now, and definitely not what it was originally.

I think Bill Burr explains it pretty well, though the first part of what he said about the "Guchi booted feet", applies more to feminists, but the other stuff he said about White women is 100% spot on...

https://www.youtube.com/embed/AdO9X7Lxzvs

_piotr · Answer

As an avid hater of wokeness, I can tell you why.

Because being woke includes:

1) Racism towards white people,
2) Believing that one can change sex,
3) Radical men-hating feminism,
4) Culture of death - abortion and euthanasia,
5) Atheism
6) Totalitarian ruled society, in which you must obey or be canceled; strong propaganda,
7) Rejection of objective truth, historical truth, logic, etc...,
8 ) Glorification of disabilities, victimisation, fatness, mediocrity and so on instead of positive values, hard work and virtues, rejection of beauty and aesthetics,
9) Deep socialism,
10) Forced unification (everything needs to include mixed races, mixed cultures) and destruction of real diversity in the world,
11) Rejection of any moral authorities (including teachers and parents for children).
12) Promotion of egoism
13) Sexualization of children; inclusion of sex in entertainment, and many others aspects of life.
15) Inclusion of artificial problems like "cultural appropriation","racism towards orcs" in RPG fantasy games and so on,
16) Social "justice". Injustice based on premise that some people can be discriminated freely based on the grounds of their richness, skills, power, etc... If you are white men you can be discriminated because you are considered an enemy of the system. (REMEMBER: ""Justice and social justice are as similar to each other like a comfy armchair to an electric chair." Janusz Korwin-Mikke)
17) Exaggerated ecology and promotion of its bad conclusions: ordering the extermination of cattle, prohibiting meat, dairy and egg industries, shutting down production, forcing (not promoting) people to use things like electric cars, neglecting the pollution from China and other non Eoropean/USA parts of the world.
The list can go on...

goaded · Answer

There's nothing wrong with it. They just love to co-opt words or phrases and use them as insults (SJW, anyone?) or twist them into meaning "everything we don't like" to create a moral panic.

Remember Critical Race Theory? I haven't seen that for quite some time.

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it took about 7 years for the first 500 edits, the same for the next 500, then, in 2020/2021, 500 edits happened every six months or so, now traffic's getting back to normal again.

Fake News? That was literally made up crap dressed up as news until Trump claimed it meant anything critical of him.

Syntosi · Answer

It was an organized attack on that term. In other words, they were afraid of what it represented and wanted to snuff it out before it gained any more widespread appeal by tainting the word itself. I would care more if their actions were not as transparent as they are. The recent string of culture wars waged by the right wing such as against "wokism" is just not worth bothering about, especially when they will forget all about it themselves in a reasonably short timeframe like they do with all the other things they attacked previously.

Still-alive · Answer

it turns out being 'woke' means you aren't a racist, homophobe, transphobe, are generally more inclusive of diversity and overall a more empathetic person. so yeah not only is it not 'wrong' to be woke it's the preferred state of being to be in my opinion.

JesterRose · Answer

Being aware of something and trying to push others into a view/belief/actions that they do not agree with is another.

I often run into this issue, I sit in the middle politically and don’t hold many social beliefs that would ruffle most feathers. But I often see the right and left slinging insults for being “x” or not being “y”. Both fully ignorant of the fact that the actions/tactics they despise in the other are the actions they themselves use.

I have no real liking for either side because I have listened to both and hear the same word games. Both would see everyone but them in chains of some form.

Chazmatazz269 · Answer

It’s not the nature of being “woke” that’s wrong. It’s the way they’re going about it. The pushback has nothing to do with a power struggle. Contrary to popular belief, the people being most hurt by woke policies aren’t the ones in power, and they never have been.
Furthermore, it’s being pushed in ways and in places where it’s just unnecessary. Remaking old movies and TV shows just to race swap or gender swap the main characters? Why not just create new material? Develop compelling characters and write good stories, and nobody will bat an eye. But they’re pushing garbage onto the market that isn’t even attracting their target audiences, and then blaming poor reception on sexism and racism. Ell oh ell! It’s nonsense. It’s just the next stage of manufactured outrage. I definitely hope it’s the last, but it probably won’t be.

strateguy632 · Answer

because woke presents stuff in a way that breeds hate... and desire for revenge and excludion.

and rips apart society n even families as jenifer lawrence n others led their MANY fans to "even attack nutral n family" who don't want to get involved.

Gillette making men look bad... people would rather START grow a beard than buy gilet shave products.

the exclusion of whites and of men in the "lie of inclusive" but excluded!

in jobs reserved places for minority to displace n replace whites instead of who is skilled. merit based. n other stuff already listed here n actually presented better than i could.

kudos to exit here and kost about excluded.

To @Jester about the bullying for example for pronoun n cis etc. n most superb the list by piotr 👨‍🎓🤩💖

msmissydc · Answer

Its not wrong. It never was wrong. It is just being used as a slur by those not wanting to be called out as homophobic, transphobic, sexist and racist. They kinda do our job for us by calling woke a problem while they actually call out themselve as the real problem.

FunkyMonkee · Answer

Well, look at how stupid those people are! Every word in the dictionary is now considered offensive! You can't say, "Hello" to any of them without them being triggered and starting a wild massive protest over it!!
You're not allowed to applaud because it might trigger one of them!! They act like a bunch of spoiled rotten little brats that always got their way!
They're absolutely intolerable!!
Woke started about 30 years ago and it was still called, "awake:" and meant that you should wake up and see what the hell the elites are doing to fuck you over! Some mental dwarf started calling it, "woke" because they didn't know any better and others of that ilk followed because they didn't know any better, either!
In the `60's, what are now called, "the woke" were FIGHTING the establishment!! Today, "the woke" ARE the establishment that we were trying to fight!!

David94358 · Answer

Because extremists should be avoided at all costs, looking at the extreme right, "woke" is the other side of that same coin.. and equally as idiotic and dangerous

DrPepper12 · Answer

This is why pale, male, stale people are so animated. For the first time they're being asked to SHARE instead of MONOPOLIZE power and to many of them that seems like an attack.

Anonymous · Answer

1) Woke trans sexuals force people to use they/them is not good either
2) Woke Black people think slavery still exists and EVERY white person is bad and should be accountable for that
3) Woke Women think every men are evil and try to oppress them, same women go around saying "Kill all men"
4) Woke movies hate men and whites so much that they make a brown actor play Snow white
5) Woke people are Pro-Abortion ( It's a whole new discussion if you think it's not wrong)
6) Woke people support Trans women (Men) in women's sports thus destroying careers and dreams of Female athletes
7) Woke people think there are more than one gender and think Men can get pregnant
8) Woke people have made kids undergo gender change surgeries and woke teachers shove their ideologies to kids
9) Woke people in power give "Woman of the year" award to a Man (trans)
10) Woke people constantly annoy and bully the public with their "protests"

exitseven · Answer

It started when liberals used the term to imply that there viewpoint was somehow superior or enlightened or "woke" . They wanted the rest of us to know that they were the ones that knew best. Their condescending tone was insulting especially to the people that work in this country to keep the lights on, the busses rolling or the streets safe, what did they expect would happen?

TommyMountainFigure · Answer

I don't really understand the whole 'woke' thing. It really confuses me. So far, and I'm yet to see anything that contradicts this view, everyone claiming to be woke are on the side of gaza. yet Hamas a terrorist organisation was voted into power despite their charter calling for the 'death to all Jews. '
You see where I'm going with this? Woke according to you means bearing aware of racial injustice.. So how come nobody who is woke is aware of the Jews right for survival?

abc3643 · Answer

It's not wrong. The people who think it's wrong are like this:

ApplePie409 · Answer

The left white, woke, liberals told a black woman she was no longer allowed to read Dr Seuss books to kids. She obeyed her white masters. Maybe you recognize her.

HighValue · Answer

Fighting against injustice?

Then why is sexism against men, hate against Christians, and discrimination and crime target against White people NEVER a concern of the woke liberals?

Because they actually agree with it and are the ones that cause and participate in it often.

CriticalCatDad123 · Answer

Wokeness is cult like adherence to leftist social orthodoxy

What is leftist social orthodoxy?
- LGBT indoctrination in schools
- Feminism
- BLM, CRT, Pro-Palestine
- DEI
- etc

Why anyone would willingly fall in line with any of this ideological bullshit I honestly have no idea

Hispanic-Cool-Guy · Answer

I think people took "woke" to the extreme wanting to "cancel" people like comedians and their shows for telling certain jokes and that every little thing one says or does against a certain ethnicity must be "racist" and soon people just got tired of "woke" ish

sheikalana · Answer

Is not being woke that is wrong. The problem is that people who have very strong opinions on something usually try to force those opinions on you and are not willing to listen to those who have different opinions. It's okay to have different beliefs and disagree with some things as long as we respect other's opinions and give each other space to express themselves.

ProbablyClueless · Answer

It's well intentioned, but a lot of woke people started throwing around labels on people who weren't actually the thing they were accused of being. The general public has gotten quite tired of the antics.

If someone is very obviously not a racist, and a bunch of knuckleheads are running around screaming that they are a racist, the term "racist" loses meaning.

jahaims · Answer

Most people have problem with it because it goes overboard and dismantles society. A healthy society functions with logic and reason, not feelings.

Gospeedracer · Answer

I'm a White Separatist and most people like me have no interest in having power over anyone else except for the power to keep other groups away. Wokeness is an idea built on double standards like you can't be racist against whites or Jews pushing multiculturalism and criticism on all white people while unapologetically demanding an immunity to criticism and an ethnostate for themselves etc.

Knightwatch27 · Answer

The problem is in the first sentence. This movement makes up injustices left, right and center without there even being any. Then they deny basic biologies claiming there are infinate genders, they promote harmful sex change operations for minors, they seek to legalize every single thing from the most obscene drug usages to pedophilia, the list is quite endless.

msc545 · Answer

Because it is often taken too far, and it also more importantly pisses off the right wing.

Staximus · Answer

The world has never been a fair place. Some people struggle just to struggle.

juliaanita · Answer

you have courage, sister

Snakeyes7 · Answer

The term originated to mock those who pretend to have been "enlightened" into thinking that social injustice IS justice.

VV3ZZY123 · Answer

Because people wake up a little and they think it's done and they're better than everyone else.

KrakenAttackin · Answer

"Woke" is an NPC responding to programming.

QuietRunner · Answer

Because people are trying to force values on others Tolerance is different

Babygirl_S · Answer

Because they want injustice to prevail

OtterMan68 · Answer

depends on your definition of woke

Why is it so wrong to be "woke"?

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