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We’ve semantic-drifted a long way. ‘Woke’ first hit my radar as a black activist term around Ferguson/BLM in 2014. Feels like yesterday. It’s gone from a brain-dead obvious thing to be to a brain dead obvious thing to avoid being.
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People who are not woke: blacks, whites, Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, gays, trans people. People who are woke: a small minority of college-educated, disproportionately white, disproportionately wealthy people + educated, professional middle class minority rent-seekers
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You’d have to be a true asshole to not be woke by the first definition. You’d have to be pretty gutless patsy not to resist and reject woke by the second definition. The semantic drift from woke (2014) to woke (2019) is so extreme we shouldn’t use the same word for both.
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Maybe it's age, maybe it's different life experiences, maybe it's knowledge of more history. But from pretty much day 1, it was clear to me that the language and people involved, regardless of the actual issues, fitted into the second definition. 1/
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