What does WOKE mean? Really!

What does WOKE really mean? The term has been hijacked by the Republican Party and right-wing pundits to promote the idea of woke being divisive and threatening traditional American values. The right wing has used it as a catch-all term to criticize progressive stances on gender identity, racial justice (like Critical Race Theory), and corporate diversity, which they argue promotes "reverse discrimination" and ideological conformity.

The term "woke" entered mainstream use around 2014, driven by the Black Lives Matter movement and protests in Ferguson, Missouri, to signify awareness of racial and social injustice. Originating in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), it gained widespread, international recognition by 2017 when added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

By 2020, the term was increasingly co-opted, by conservative media, as a belittling, mocking, or derogatory term for progressive, left-leaning, or "social justice" stances. So, why did the Republican Party find it necessary to hijack a term that in fact is almost a synonym as the Spanish word "Cuidado"?

What does "woke" really mean? "Woke" originated in Black American culture as a slang term meaning to be "awake" or alert to racial prejudice, social injustice, and systemic inequality.

The Republican Party and the conservative base are using the term "woke" to motivate the conservative base against progressive social changes and framing it as being damaging to society. They do not want social justice concepts applied to institutions including schools, military or businesses. The promote the idea that "woke" is policing political correctness, limiting free speech.

However, they have no problem with these concepts being adopted and enforced by their government police force of "ICE" or as I see it "ICE-SS".

Those who are following the conservative dogma and think one day you will wake up and the "WOKE" boogy-man is going to get you, must be re-living your grade school days when you hid behind the ottoman to watch the scary movies on chiller theater.

Bari Weiss is the latest main stream perpetrator of this ridiculous concept. She is ruining CBS News because she has no experience in real broadcast journalism and she is using a term that has no meaning to honest respectable white and brown middle-class citizens with nothing to fear, but are slammed in the face with fear mongering and corporate genuflecting to a translucent paper tiger who is in fact a demagogue.

Bari Weiss acts like end excited school girl with her experience as a podcaster. She is not a professional broadcast journalist who will ever fill the shoes of Edward R Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Fred Friendly, Don Hewitt and the list go on. Bari Weiss, you are no Don Hewitt! If you want CBS News to be like FOX News, go to FOX and work.

This is one of the results of billionaires buying up the media like The Washington Post, The LA Times, CBS News, and what will be left except the opinion of the 1%. We are witnessing the demise of the free press in America. And to add insult to injury, Bari Weiss sold her web business called the "Free press to Paramount." And they own CBS.

CBS News should toss her ass out on 7th Avenue and tell her to go back to writing on the internet for the remaining 35% of halfwits who are die hard Trump cult-o-files. CBS News was doing fine with Nora O'Donnell. All they need to do is tell a story with the truth and some responsibility and not be another acolyte for Donald Trump and his pathetic ideas.

Will it happen? NO.

That's the fact Jack!

Think about it and be sure to VOTE!

Jack Wilson

Opinion