Before you say it… PAUSE…

… “Woke”? What is it? What does it mean? Should I treat it with derision like many choose to treat rap music?

I am as guilty as the next person, for uttering statements such as: “what is this woke nonsense?”

Today, I learnt a very poignant lesson..

Some Americans (of African descent) are only just, in 2024, finding out, via documents that were only just made available through recent declassification from the federal records, how the Grandma whose picture has graced their wall at home for decades, died. One was a mother who was in her 40s in 1945, when she was arrested for selling alcohol – which was prohibited in her state at the time, under the Jim Crow laws – and she was beaten so badly, that her neck broke and she vomited profusely and died in the back of the police van. It has taken her granddaughter nearly 50 years of requesting information relating to her death.

Now, a guy like me can sit about here in the UK and question why these black folk in the US can’t just move on and get on with their lives. You hear politicians here, casually saying “woke”, “wokeness” and bandying those words about, without as much as a clue as to why these folk coined the term and what it means to them.

I am determined from today onwards, to refrain from commenting on this topic. I simply do not know enough about it.

Yes, a great deal of horrible, unthinkable stuff happened over the years, and if we look away, if we say “woke is crap” and we get complacent, there are still many people in today’s world, who can drag us right back to terrible eras such as the Jim Crow era in the US. There are still many capable people out there who wish to dictate to women, who wish to dehumanise other human beings just because they are in unfortunate circumstances e.g. in the hands of people smugglers or seeking refuge or migrating illegally – they are still human beings and much as their form of migration (illegal) has/needs to be controlled and they must apply for legal entry, they should not be dehumanised.

People must move on, YES. Talk of reparation for slavery for instance, in terms of payments, is just silly and unworkable. The folk asking for it should be looking for industrialisation, development that gets them up the ladder to become developed nations. Receiving payment ain’t gonna do anything long term for them.

Going forward, I will not comment on ‘Woke’ again. I do sincerely hope that those in society, who still feel like they are not getting a fair shake, see improvements soon, so that we can try to progress to times when people can get a fair shake