Am I “woke?”

Last year, a new neighbor, former Israeli army guy introduced himself to me. After telling me that he earned more than on million dollar a year as a hedge-fund manager, he wanted me to show him around the ski slopes (for free, of course) and asked me if I was “woke.” 

Since I didn’t exactly know what being woke was, I answered by the negative, especially given the pejorative tone of that guy’s question and what my perception was of that subject matter. At about that time, woke had already become the “bête noire” from the alt-right political movement and since that time, it’s now seeping all over the world, so it’s only logical that I wanted to better understand what that movement was all about. 

Back to its origins, woke is an adjective derived from African-American English meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination" that came to life in the 2010s, pushing for broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism, identity politics, social justice and the idea of “critical race theory” about white privilege, and reparations for slavery to benefit African Americans.

It progressively became more mainstream when Black Lives Matter (BLM) raised awareness about police shootings of African Americans, and that, as a result, US law enforcement should be disbanded and defunded. Part of woke was also the fact that women suffer from systemic sexism and that individuals should be able to identify with any gender, or none, as they see fit. 

Finally, all these various claims provided fodder to political, right wing parties in the US as well as several Western countries to use the term “woke” as an insult for various progressive or leftist ideologies perceived as overzealous or insincere. 

Likewise, some commentators came to consider it an offensive term with negative associations to those who promote political ideas involving identity and race. Among them is Jean-François Braunstein, a French philosopher that even called the movement a “religion”, mentioning the examples of the Disney company inviting its white employees to reflect on their privileges among other things. 

While I don’t buy the exploitation of that movement by the extreme right, I don’t deny that some elements in the woke ideology are totally justifiable, yet many are a long stretch if they’re not totally nuts, but this quick review simply confirms to me that I’m indeed not woke by still a significant margin!