Local View: Stop weaponizing ‘woke,’ other words of adversaries – Duluth News Tribune

Such a deliberate use of words can diffuse a tense situation and lead to more self-awareness, understanding, and positive change.

Unfortunately, as we mature and understand words better, the use of words can lead to more conflict if the words themselves are transformed into weapons. How many times have you heard someone say that it is not what you said but how you said it? The delivery and interpretation of words can change their meanings dramatically.

Words matter, but the meanings of those words matter even more.

Mastering the many meanings of words is critical to understanding others, especially in the world of politics. It is within political discourse where we find the most significant use of wordsmithing. Here is where people are constantly jockeying for ideological position in their attempts to find a clear path to victory.

In the generation before this one, the phrase political correctness was originally meant to signify that someone was sensitive to language and actions that were racist, sexist, or homophobic. If you were being politically correct, you were trying to use labels that made people feel better about themselves, reduce discrimination, and promote equity. The change from firemen, policemen, and mailmen to firefighters, police officers, and mail carriers, for example, was considered a politically correct adaptation to the fact that many more personnel in fire, police, and postal departments were women.

While seemingly harmless and even positive, the meaning of the phrase political correctness was soon changed to a pejorative term by people who opposed this process of sensitivity. They relabeled the concept as "PC." This new meaning claimed that a PC person was someone who wasted their time trying not to offend anyone by watching every word they said. It is claimed that PC people are part of the cancel culture because they want to change the longstanding behavior of others through the excessive, constant, and annoying manipulation of our language.

This partisan evolution of the phrase political correctness demonstrates how the meaning of words can be changed to, in effect, weaponize them as tools against those who originated them.

Today, this same weaponization process has been applied to the concept of woke.

Originally, woke was a concept that came out of African American communities in the United States during the 1930s. It was a term used to help people become more aware of racial prejudice and discrimination that affected African Americans. Folks were encouraged to stay woke, or aware, of such disparities and to fight to change them.

In the last few years, though, woke has been used by many political groups fighting for equality. This broadening of the term has been quite expansive. Calls to stay woke can now be found at protests involving LGBTQ+ issues, womens rights, immigrant rights, environmental protection, economic inequality, funding for the arts, and many other social-justice issues.

The basic meaning of woke has become more of a general awareness of all forms of prejudice and discrimination and the need to defeat them.

The opponents of woke took this expanded meaning and twisted it to apply to anyone who they feel hates America and has declared war on our culture. They claim that woke activists push their identity politics so forcefully that they are destroying the unity of our nation. They demonize well-intending woke by saying they have no respect for tradition and that they wish to wipe out our collective history.

As adults, we have learned to use our words. Unfortunately, we have also learned to misuse other peoples words. When we weaponize words that were intended to do good, we undermine the goodness of those respective movements.

It is time to grow up as a society. We need to stop attacking those promoting social justice because we have become frustrated and fearful of change. We need to diffuse the current tense situation in our society by taking our clever word-power abilities and using them to promote more self-awareness, understanding, and positive change.

Dave Berger of Plymouth, Minnesota, is a retired sociology professor who taught for nearly three decades at Inver Hills Community College. He also is a regular contributor to the News Tribune Opinion page.

View post:

Local View: Stop weaponizing 'woke,' other words of adversaries - Duluth News Tribune