I completely forgot to send you all this piece by John McWhorter from last week's NYT! I enjoyed it.

Sadly you need to register an account to read it.

As Bob said, it's firewalled. I never have known what "woke" means, so it doesn't matter to me if it's an insult or just more jibberish.

Oops sorry! We get the Sat-Sun NYT delivered hence get to read all issues onlline. I'd thought maybe NYT gave the browsing a couple of free articles, I guess not. So here is an abbreviated version, with the main points.
--

The first thing that happened to “woke” was that it was borrowed from Black slang. It first appeared in neither a BuzzFeed article nor a rap but a jolly piece on Black vernacular expressions in 1962 in this newspaper called “If You’re Woke, You Dig It.” Many will be surprised that “salty,” as in “irritable,” another Black expression that white people have taken on of late, also occurs in this piece.

By the time something hits the page, we can be sure it had been around long before, and it’s a good guess that Black people had been using “woke” for at least a couple of decades before this. Lead Belly gives us a look at its likely origins when he urges people to “stay woke” in an afterpiece remark on a 1938 recording. He is referring to Black people being alert to actual physical danger; it would have been a natural evolution to start using “stay woke” to refer to more, as we say, systemic matters…

…But if that’s the story, then why is wokeness now something so many people are more likely to disavow than own? Isn’t that the same old thing, a rejection of Blackness?

A rejection, yes — but of a kind too typical of what happens to words all the time to fit a race-specific narrative. We understand this when we see that the real wind behind its wings in the early 2010s was that “woke” served as a handy, nonpejorative replacement for “politically correct”…

I remember that term used straight, without dismissal and only a hint of irony, in 1984. A white college friend, very much of the left, used it with a quiet sprinkle of irony, but sincerely. (“Of course, you know this if you’re” — smile and two-millisecond pause, signaling “you know” — “politically correct.”) He meant that a certain complex of leftist beliefs — i.e., the ones called “woke” in 2012 — were obviously the proper ones for any reasonable person to have, that they signaled a higher awareness.

In a view like that, there is, inevitably, a certain self-satisfaction. And in some of those holding this kind of view, that self-satisfaction will express itself in dismissal and abuse of those ungifted with the third eye in question. The result will be resistance, much of it no less pretty, and this was why, just a few years after my college friend used the term, “politically correct” had become the slur “P.C.,” hurled at the left from the right and even from the center.

“Woke” has just undergone the same process: Those bristling at being accused of not being woke have pushed back to the point of leaving the term in bad odor. Certainly “woke” has a racial substrate, but the larger process here is the race-neutral euphemism treadmill, a term I am ripping off from Steven Pinker. A well-used word or expression is subject to ridicule or has grimy associations. A new term is born to replace it and help push thought ahead. But after that term spends some time getting knocked around in the real world, the associations the old term had settle back down, like gnats, on the new one. Yet another term is needed. Repeat.

This was how we got from “politically correct” to “woke.” This was the path from “crippled” to “handicapped” to “disabled” to “differently abled.” Certainly it can be about race matters, as “slum clearance” became “urban renewal.” But just as often, it’s things more race neutral. There was a time when one called a trade union a combination, and the draft was often called conscription. The old words had, for better or for worse, menacing associations that made it seem useful to sub in other ones…

…Another one: We are in the midst of what has been called, since last year, a “racial reckoning.” However, not long ago, the set term for what this refers to was “conversation”; many of us will recall, in fact, the Clinton administration sponsoring an official national conversation on race. The term “conversation” here was somewhat, yes, euphemistic.

The real aim was less conversation than conversion: to the idea that America needs to acknowledge the role that racism has played in its past and present — i.e., to own up to it, to … reckon. However, the term “conversation” as applied here came to feel — and not just to whites! — clichéd and even insincere. It was natural that the term of art in 2020 would be something else, and “reckoning” was not only useful but also more precise and honest.

Thus in the broad view, what has happened to “woke” is a demonstration of negative associations gunking up well-intentioned labels. This is as common and even inevitable as germs. What can look like people deliberately seeking to confuse the rest of us with ever-morphing terminology is usually just a matter of trying to be seen plain.

A mature societal take on language will understand that words are not simply what they mean in something called the dictionary and that words referring to issues societal or controversial — i.e., the interesting ones — will often need replacement about once a generation.

It seems to me that people who think that "woke" is an insult are saying more about themselves than about the people they are labelling. To me what they are really saying is that they are bigoted in some way or other - be it racist, homophobic, sexist or whatever - and they object when someone else doesn't share or approve of their prejudice.

However the language point of the article is well-taken. An example is the cerebral palsy charity that was once known as The Spastics Society. The problem was that the word "spastic" had become an insult. Even at my school, as solidly a "decent" school as you would find, those of us who were rubbish at football were sent in games lessons to amuse ourselves on a small football pitch in the furthest corner of our playing field. It was known to everyone, including some teachers, as "The Spazzers' Pitch". The society changed its name to Scope to get away from this kind of thing.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

quote:

Originally posted by BobHale:
"...Spazzers...".

The same term applied here, and I was among those to whom it referred.

It seems to me that the majority of US culture is black-inspired, but whites are loath to admit it, so they quietly - or sometimes not so quietly - appropriate it.

Very interesting, Bethree. I really do like John McWhorter. Shu and I listen to his podcasts all the time.

I found some of the terms he talked about, like disabled, interesting. Another we see is substance use disorder. It used to be substance abuse, and before that just plain addict.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Very interesting, Bethree. I really do like John McWhorter. Shu and I listen to his podcasts all the time.

I'll second that recommendation.

I don't know what a podcast is. I might from its name infer that it has to do with throwing unshelled peas, but probably not. Please explain to this electro-technology-challenged old fart.

A radio show on the internet.

Ah well, it is like me not having Zelle or Venmo. I am collecting money for someone's wedding and finally had to start Zelle. Apparently no one uses checks anymore.