The fact is conservatives don’t like the concept of “woke” these days.
Governor of Florida Ron DeSantisthe potential Republican presidential candidate, has repeatedly said that his state is where “woke go to die”. Former President Donald Trump have talked about generals being too “woke”.
Mr. DeSantis did not attend the conservative political action conference just outside Washington this week. But many others focused on “vigilance.”
Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley said that “I am running for president to renew an America that is proud and strong, not weak and awake.” Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama gave a talk on the first full day of the conference entitled “Sacking the Woke Playbook.”
“Today they are being indoctrinated with all this wake-transgender, CRT, 1619,” Tuberville said, referring to allowing transgender people; critical race theory, the niche legal theory that many conservatives have used as a rallying point to describe education about black history and racism; and 1619 the project, the project of The New York Times led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones describes the impact of slavery during the founding and present day of the United States.
Black Americans largely adopted the term “woke” back as late as the 1940s as a phrase meant to be aware of racism around them and became a staple of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). But lots of activists on CPAC had a different definition.
Marleen Laska, a conservative activist from Pennsylvania who attended the conference, has a broad definition of what “woke” meant.
“It’s a loaded question,” she said. “It covers so many things. It incorporated all the stupidity going on with the country.”
She specifically mentioned environmental and social governance investment practices.
“The kids and in the schools and trying to trans, and it came to so many things … which is wrong in this country,” she said The independentwho also criticize including rainbow spread flags in classrooms.
“To me, the word ‘woke’ is the antithesis of everything America was founded on,” said Marie Rogerson, executive director of program development at Florida-based Moms for Liberty. The independent. “It’s all to me anti-American, anti-common sense, anti-real in the sense of education, what education was supposed to do.”
Rogerson said Mr. DeSanti’s war on the concept of “woke” was necessary to help the state prosper.
“Killing the ‘woke’ means it’s like a garden, you get rid of the weeds so the things you actually want to grow can,” she said. “In the case of Florida, he’s talking about industry and our economy and our education. And all the things that we want to thrive can actually thrive because we’ve choked the weeds.”
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Ms Rogerson said people did not need to use the word “woke” to discuss racism.
“”I think there’s a better way to say it,” she said. “Racism exists. I don’t think it’s a, you know, depending on the area and what we’re talking about, it could be a big problem, it could be a minor problem. I don’t think it’s necessary to say “stay awake” to be concerned about any racism that exists in America. Woke means more than just racism.”
Ms. Rogerson’s colleague Sheila Armstrong, who works with the group’s Philadelphia chapter, had a slightly different definition.
“”So the word ‘awakened’ is that they are using it wrong. Being awake is when you realize that maybe what you did was wrong,” she said The independent. “If I’m a black woman, a lot of this slang and terminology they’re trying to use comes from our society. But they’re using the terminology wrong. So for a person to be awake, it means you realize what you’re doing is wrong. Just because you’re awake is right. That’s where the confusion lies.”
Angelo Veltri, Northeast regional director of Young Americans for Liberty, had a similarly vague description of what the word meant.
“‘Woke’ to me means you base your reality on fiction and your emotions rather than actual facts,” he said The independent. “‘Woke’ is more of the meaning of sameness, if you feel a certain way you must be true, and they usually stick to their truths rather than the truth as a whole. And that leads towards this awake postmodernism in a way. Woke communism, where they try to take over based on people’s feelings rather than actual evidence.”
Kate Ng contributed to this report