The Origins of Wokeness

I’m from Argentina. When I met my current wife, she volunteered at an orphanage. Her task was to take one of the children out for fun on weekends. It seemed simple, but it wasn’t. There, she met “A,” a 10-year-old girl. Some weekends with “A” were easy, but she was generally problematic. So, as we tried to understand what was happening to her, we learned a bit about her past.

Her mother was a drug addict and a criminal. Her father was likely her grandfather and was also in jail for various reasons, including abusing her.

We were heartbroken and tried to help, but we didn’t plan to adopt her. There are many other details, but I don’t want to bore you with the horrors. To summarize, this story shattered my naivety.

However, the story takes a positive turn. When Argentina legalized same-sex marriage, two women adopted “A.” It was the first adoption case involving a same-sex marriage in our country.

Things weren’t easy for them. We’re friends now and see each other occasionally. They transformed “A’s” life for good. But it’s not like the movies. Once a child has endured such trauma, recovery can take years, and sometimes, it’s not even possible.

Nowadays, we have a president in Argentina who constantly claims to be engaged in a “cultural battle.” He’s a fan of Elon Musk and Trump. The “cultural battle” primarily involves removing sexual education from schools, removing organizations dedicated to protecting women from abuse, and portraying government spending on helping the poor as communism. He frequently uses the term “woke” to denigrate people who don’t share his views.

However, this “cultural battle” is all about hate.

The entire concept of “canceling culture,” “anti-woke,” and Mark Zuckerberg removing tampons from bathrooms are distractions. The world is full of children like “A,” and the cost of proofreading this with AI is probably enough to feed one person for a day. I’m not trying to sit on a moral high ground while I write this from my iPad Pro. But, at least, we should have more empathy.

Sorry for my long comment, but I feel that this article from PG misses the point (ja! It’s my second time writing in disagreement with a PG article). I’m concerned about the direction that all this hate is taking here in Argentina, echoing the things that happen in the US.

This passive phrasing implies a kind of universal consensus or collective decision-making process that the word has officially changed connotation. If this were the case, it would not be such a problem.

What happens in practice is that a small minority of people decide that a certain word has bad connotations. These people decide that it no longer matters what the previous connotation was, nor the speaker's intention in uttering it, it is now off-limits and subject to correction when used. People pressure others to conform, in varying degrees of politeness -- anything from a well-intentioned and friendly FYI to a public and aggressive dressing down -- and therefore the stigma surrounding the word spreads.

It's hard to believe that this terminology treadmill genuinely helps anyone, as people are perfectly capable of divining intent when they really want to (nobody is accusing the NAACP of favoring discrimination and segregation).

Add to this that the favored terms of the treadmill creators don't necessarily even reflect what the groups in question actually want. Indigenous Americans generally prefer being called Indian, not Native American (CGP Grey made a whole video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh88fVP2FWQ).

So that momentary pause you feel when you almost say "Indian" and then correct it to "Native American", who is that actually serving? It's not the people in question. It's a different set of people, a set of people who have gained the cultural power to stigmatize words based on their own personal beliefs.