- Thu Feb 08, 2024 3:01 pm
#62271
Before PC, it was "right-on". Not so long ago, the right wing tabloids were full of "snowflake" stories about young people being soft.
Right on was appropriated from the progressives and used in a mocking way. PC started off as a polite and grammatically correct way to describe the appropriate way to speak to avoid causing offence. Snowflake had airs of narcissism (every snowflake is unique) and softness - a tendency to melt or dissolve under the slightest heat. Woke, originating in the civil rights movement, carries with it a good dollop of racism (or implied race betrayal) when used as an insult - as David Starkey put it, "the whites acting black".
Last year, Jeremy Vine tried to define "woke" on his Channel 5 show, and it was an absolute mess, with him delving into "you know, it's all a bit Guardian reader, do-gooder, holier than thou, green stuff" as I recall. Personally I like the take on it by the actress Rakie Ayola - if someone uses it disparagingly, ask them what they think it means, and why they think it's wrong.
Terms such as "wokery" are pure inventions, trying to make it sound a bit more cultish and sinister, a bit voodoo. As others have pointed out, it's become so overused, it's almost meaningless. Someone says something you don't like - woke. Someone you don't like says something you'd agree with if it came from anyone else - woke. On one level it seems to have come to mean that some thought was involved.
As the actress said to the bishop, rabbi, imam and priest
"My eyes have seen the glory, I'm a born again Atheist!"