The War on “Woke”
Image courtesy of Benson Kua.
What on earth is a woke scone?
A snack with a land acknowledgement? A pastry that self-identifies as a croissant? A radical leftist baked good demanding reparations for colonial tea plantations? No. Apparently, it’s just a scone without butter.
The National Trust, a heritage conservation charity in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, dared to make its plain and fruit scones dairy-free so vegans and the lactose-intolerant could enjoy them. The Daily Mail, ever-vigilant in its defense of British identity, declared this an act of wokery.
Never mind that the Trust’s scones had been dairy-free for years, or that the same critics once praised a near-identical recipe. The reactionary outrage machine must be fed, and, apparently, nothing is more dangerous than a pastry’s refusal to conform.
How on earth did we get here? After all, “woke” was once an imperative.
The term “woke” has its origins in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), where it initially meant an alertness to how racism does not announce itself, but rather seeps into the structures of the world.
“Woke” started to gain widespread attention in the 2010s, particularly through the rise of social media and movements such as Black Lives Matter. It migrated into broader progressive movements, expanding its jurisdiction to include class struggle, queer liberation and the fight against patriarchy.
The term once signified an awareness of systemic injustices, a refusal to be lulled into complacency by the soft comforts of ignorance. But language is rarely stable. “Woke” is no longer what it was; it has become what it has been mutilated into. It has become the territory of those who needed an enemy but didn’t want to go through the trouble of naming one…
Read the full Op-Ed at The Gate
