Is Wokism Woke?
Go to Alabama and ya better watch out
The landlord’ll get ya, gonna jump and shout
Scottsboro Scottsboro Scottsboro boys
Tell ya all about
I’m gonna tell all the colored people
Livin’ in Harlem swing
Don’t ya ever go to Alabama
Just try to sing
This song repeats those stanzas over and over. Lead Belly wrote this song about the nine young black men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931, which he recorded in 1938 for the Smithsonian Folkways Collection. At the end of the song, Lead Belly adds: “Best stay woke!”
According to some, that was the first instance of the African American vernacular term “woke” being used.
I can’t even begin to imagine how Lead Belly would think about that. Would he applaud all the nice white people who now go around speaking the language of Wokism? I don’t think so.
Now, and after I first encountered a modern, 21 st century true believer of Wokism, I have steered clear of getting into any kind of dialog about Woke, and the currently pervasive, self- righteous, exploitation of an African American term, meant for African Americans, that liberals have adopted into their new religion of Wokism.
I can’t even begin to imagine how Lead Belly would think about that. Would he applaud all the nice white people who now go around speaking the language of Wokism? I don’t think so.
Over the past seven years I have retreated into my tiny room where I write my novels making up a bunch of characters with different backgrounds and ethnicities. I like putting unlikely people together, who would normally not meet under usual circumstances, and let my imagination follow them and write their story. Confession: Some of my characters are people of color! Some are good and some are bad. They mingle and interact with the white characters, who come in all shapes and sizes of good, bad, and ugly. The one thing they all have in common is that they are all part of the human race. If we ask the animals in my stories what they think of the humans I write about, I think we would get a lot of shrugs, eye-rolling, and tail-wagging.
Lurking underneath that artistic license I have bequeathed myself, a dark little watch bird now sits on my shoulder as I write and peeps nope nope nope into my ear. That peeping will not stop no matter what I do to shut it up.
For context I must add that every day now I read stories about nice, hard-working people – like teachers, doctors, writers, etc. – who get canned from their jobs for saying what they think. I grew up, like so many of my generation still around, when our education was about thinking critically and speaking our minds. Good teachers rewarded us for saying and defending what we thought. It wasn’t the content that mattered, but the thought that mattered. And my oh my, what fun it was to shout, laugh, accuse, debate whatever we wanted!
And nobody cried. Nobody got hurt.
John McWhorter just wrote his latest book entitled Woke Racism. His thesis is that Wokism has become the religion of a lot of otherwise very nice people. Like all religions it has devout followers. He dubs those followers “The Elect.” Those who are part of the Elect, he describes as follows:
“The Elect, then, have magic, clergy, and also a conception of original sin. Under elect creed, the sin is “white privilege.” (John McWhorter, Woke Racism, How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, Forum, Penguin Random House, 2021. P. 30)
My first encounter with this elect creed was in 2016. I hired a highly recommended editor, a young woman (white) in her thirties, from a highly recommended local group of editors. She read my book and charged me the going rate ($1500) to give me her thoughts about how I could improve my manuscript. Everything was fine until I asked an innocent question: “What do you think of my main character who is Nigerian?”
I opened a dungeon door and out came word salad demons that I can only liken to Breughel’s painting, Triumph of Death. Her scathing criticism, couched in the calmly demeaning language of Wokism, summed me up: “You are a Privileged White Woman, and have No Business, writing about a Nigerian person!!!” (She knew nothing about Nigeria.)
Naively, I was flabbergasted.
Her editorial advice followed: Join a group where you can confront and confess your white privilege and unconscious racism. Then start over and bring into your narrative many more characters of color, since America is multi-cultural, and your novels need to represent that.
When I pushed back with some thoughts about that, her response was automatic: “That’s what you all do. You get defensive when confronted with your white privilege racism.”
My age, education, and seniority to her meant absolutely nothing. Her mind was closed and entirely uninterested in who I was, what I thought, what was my experience, and all the research I had done regarding Nigeria and its people.
It seems this is where we are now. And where is this going? Without context for our thinking, I really cannot imagine anymore.