Hmm. I have....subtle but significant objections to both of those pieces of writing and while I strenuously object to the endpoint conclusion of that tumblr post, i actually agree with it in terms of it having correctly identified a very real and concerning example of a racist trend. I just...don't think they're idea of what to do about that is good at all.
That cultural appropriation article tho. It's. Well is very intelligently written, and it's not technically ~wrong~ in many ways, but it's deftly manipulating it's truths to make a point that I think is actually quite harmful in and of itself. If that makes sense.
Didn't read the article because... don't feel like reading. But with regards to the tumblr post:
I'm not black, so massive grain of salt here, but I always assumed that, if not intentionally then at least implicitly, "woke" was meant to parallel the "consciousness" part of "class consciousness," in that to be "woke" is to be "not asleep, not lulled into a convenient unawareness." It's what happens when the sheeple "wake up," per se.
Since I was interested, I looked up the origins of "woke" and found the wiki article for it. It doesn't say anything about police brutality specifically, just racial and social justice. It seems (according to wikipedia) that the precedent for using "woke" in such a way came from the allusion to "waking up" and staying awake, which makes sense with what I wrote in the last point.
Moving on, I think it's ridiculous to blame allies for the fact that activism gets mocked by mainstream anti-leftists. That's just. So absurd of a concept, whether it comes to queerness or race. I can absolutely guarantee you that right-wing assholes making fun of "woke" has nothing to do with the fact that it's black-of-origin or that ~white liberals~ watered down its ~serious and specific~ meaning. It's respectability politics to think anybody on the outside cares about community-scale discourse.
To further illustrate that point, just look at how right-wingers mock "sjw (which was a term that used to be used in earnest as a self-descriptor!) or "womyn" or even "feminist," none of which are specifically black-of-origin ("womyn" arguably is, but it has multiple traceable origins aside from black feminism). OP says the term "woke" as been appropriated "to the point" that it's used for mockery, which falsely indicates a cause-and-effect relationship. But the appropriation has nothing to do with the mockery. Liberals causing "woke" to "diverge from its original meaning" isn't opening the term up for mockery, it's mockable even if you take it in the strictest seriousness. All words are.
To continue on that point, it's kind of just the nature of slang to come into fashion, then oversaturate everyday life and become overused, then fall out of fashion. Yes, there is a racial component to slang, but even setting aside the issue of "is 'woke' black language that got appropriated?" it just... makes sense that people who don't find value in the concept think its an overspoken and banal talking point worthy of mockery. That's what assholes who don't care about the politics behind words do.
re: "woke isn’t supposed to mean being up to date on feminism and social justice," why can't it, though? I mean aside from the fact that it's most frequently used that way and honestly seems to have always been used that way (to signal awareness/consciousness of social issues), why can't the language expand? Just because "gatekeeping" was a medical concept doesn't mean it isn't fundamentally applicable to other scenarios. It's actually kind of... bad theory if you coin a term and then try to keep it "pure" by restricting it to solely its original specific context and allowing nobody to draw parallels or extrapolate outwards or find ways to queer it.
re: "it’s supposed to be for black people and police brutality," I don't... actually... understand this part? What does "it's supposed to be for black people" actually mean? Is it supposed to be a term only applicable onto black people, as in black people become woke when they realize that police brutality is a (racialized) thing? Because practically speaking, it makes little sense to differentiate black people from non-black people in terms of "consciousness of the systemic and racialized contexts behind police violence" because police violence is neither a black-only phenomenon nor can it be solved or fought against by only black people being aware of it. Or is it that only black people can determine if another person is woke? In which case, what is the fundamental Knowingness of a black person that makes their understanding that police violence is a thing and affects black people different from a non-black person's understanding of the same concept (including that it affects black people)?
I honestly don't understand the end bit of "being woke has nothing to do with that" because like? Isn't the point of "being woke" being about police brutality that police brutality is a social justice issue? How is divorcing the social justice/racial justice aspect of police brutality useful at all? Unless OP means "call out culture and purity culture," in which case... that's just a facet of scrupulosity and performativity within social justice in general. It's not a "woke"-specific thing that some people are shit at doing social justice, it's just something that happens in social justice spaces with poor awareness/critical thinking/compassion/etc.
Because actually, you could replace "woke" with "social justice" in the post and would just... be a mediocre post complaining about liberals in leftist spaces. Maybe this is iffy to say, but honestly most of the emotional weight of the post comes from shaming a non-black audience and appealing to their own racial scrupulosity by somehow twisting "wokeness" into... a concept divorced from social justice?? Despite the fact that arguing that it's about only police violence (which I see no reason to believe it is) means it's intrinsically tied in with social justice. It's just so. "Queer doesn't mean being weird, it means specifically being persecuted for the love you experience," like. No, and also what you said is inextricable from being weird??? Like being critically conscious of police violence is inextricable from being conscious of other systems of racial/social injustice. It just is, why are you trying to divorce these things? Just to get mad at allies? Really?
It just reads as this weird "this was never supposed to be political and you guys made it political and fucked it up!" kind of anger when police brutality was already a political phenomenon. I'm just having a lot of understanding the appeal for OP of trying so adamently to act as if being about "black people and police brutality" is fundamentally not being about social justice.
And again, I'm not even going to touch the whole "black language appropriation" thing because quite frankly I think trying to determine whether every single thing ever is cultural appropriation is banal and at this point there's no good way to parse "yeah it's shitty and kind of imperialistic but also culture has always been created in the margins and there's not really a practical solution to changing that" so I'm not going to try (plus again, I'm not black, sooooo).
Like... those are the problems with the post's premise even aside from whether or not it's a legitimate or not claim to say that non-black people using "woke" are appropriating it.
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nerdflighter
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Date: 2019-07-11 10:39 am (UTC)That cultural appropriation article tho. It's. Well is very intelligently written, and it's not technically ~wrong~ in many ways, but it's deftly manipulating it's truths to make a point that I think is actually quite harmful in and of itself. If that makes sense.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-12 07:36 am (UTC)Like... those are the problems with the post's premise even aside from whether or not it's a legitimate or not claim to say that non-black people using "woke" are appropriating it.