AIBU to say that people who are "Anti Woke"

[AntiWoke]

are the people who would like free reign to be racist, sexist, mysogenistic, homophobic. In short, people who want to be able to say whatever they like, even if offensive to some groups of people?

This. Racism and homophobia are illegal, and they should absolutely be treated in accordance with the law.

StockpotSoup · Yesterday 08:57

Anyone who describes themselves as “anti-woke” is someone I’d walk into traffic to avoid.

I would do the same with anyone who was daft, naive, self-righteious and simple-minded enough to describe themselves as 'woke'.

Definition, please. If it means being liberal, humane and respecting others - fine. But we don't need a new word for that. I suspect it means much more unpleasant things and the woke people I've met have been the most intolerant, judgmental, narrow-minded and bigoted types - a definite backwards step in our culture.

Why would anybody even start a discussion about whether two absolutely abhorrent things are worse than the other! How does somebody's mind even get there?

Pooooochi
I also dislike when some US racial issues are assumed to be the same in the UK, when our demographics & culture are very, very different, our police don't routinely carry guns, black people are a much smaller proportion of the population, we don't have the same history of segregation in schools for eg, and people from the Indian subcontinent are a much more significant minority here, which brings a different set of issues with religion among other things.

This is how I feel. I'm not taking on responsibility for the US's awful racist history, thank you. To suggest that race issues in the UK are akin to the shocking attitudes in say, the southern states of the US is ridiculous. I've never been a racist and I'm not accepting the woke narrative that somehow I must be!

I have 2 main objections to the term'woke'. One is that no-one bothers to define it - they just weaponise it. And secondly, it's an American term which came out of an American situation.

@DropDeadFreida I apologise if I'm sounding colonial or like it's a game. I can understand your perspective and I've been trying to do reading so that I'm not asking people who are living things I have not lived to educate me. The task force and the other examples you gave are fucking awful.

@BillionaireTea thank you but no apologies necessary. I don't think you sound colonial, just the fact that you're engaging with this topic shows that you're willing to hear other people's perspectives. And I think that's half the current battle unfortunately, somewhere along the line people just stopped listening to each other.

@firstpasttheposter but if you saw her social media you would think she was the original freedom fighter or something. Sending her 'solidarity' to all and sundry from her very comfortable life of not actually doing anything worthwhile to support people.

When we were still sort of friends, there was a coup in my home country after a long period of attempts at ethnic cleansing, and you can imagine the panic and worry of that sort of event. It was all over the news, she knew where I was from and not once did she check in with me to see if I was okay, my family were safe etc. And yet I was still expected to be an active audience member to her monologues on equality, racism etc - you genuinely cannot make it up!

I'm well aware of the origins of word, but unlike you I do not accept that critical race theory is coherent. Yes, you can measure structural inequality, but jumping to 'obvious' conclusions that it is caused by structural racism is what has done so much damage. For instance, certain ethnic groups actually do better that Caucasians in countries like the US and UK - Indians and Chinese are among the highest earners. So it is clear that the explanation for poorer outcomes say in black populations is not necessarily that the UK and US are full of racist bigots. If you break down the Black populations, you see huge differences in performance by country of origin, with Nigerians often being much more successful than West Indians. What is so often ignored in CRT and woke ideology is that culture within a population is clearly a huge factor in career success and income.

There are very many other things wrong with woke ideology (and I'm not even going to get into queer theory, because that is a raging hell pit of stupidity and perversity). One of the most egregious is how woke thinking actually killed many black and asian people in the pandemic. When it became obvious that a hugely disproportionate number of black and asian doctors and nurses were dying of Covid, media and institutions immediately jumped to the conclusions that it was due to structural inequality. Which was patently ridiculous as many of those doctors were on high incomes and could easily afford a healthy lifestyle. While everyone was happily assuming that this was proof what an awful racist country we have in the UK, they were blithely ignoring the real explanation: that having dark skin minimised production of vitamin D in northern climates, and having low vitamin D status made you much more vulnerable to severe and even fatal Covid infection. So, well done those well meaning woke idiots. They obscured the biological reasons for ethnic vulnerability with virtue signalling nonsense, and people died as a result.

Interesting you bring up women and discussions. I agree with you on this one, men are allowed to dominate in discussions. But how do you think statistics like the one you quoted change if those men identify as women? Would they immediately start talking less, do you think?

If you're tribally woke (imo), you’re genuinely either resistant to learning new information, or you’re an arse.

Well said on both posts.

I lived in the US. There are deeply concerning levels of institutional racism.

Whilst in the UK we are not perfect Its not the same here and I hate this pressure to adopt the same stance. It’s just indicative of how the US expect everyone to be US-centric

I remember when George Floyd died, in my local city centre there was a protest of a load of people lying on the floor repeating “I can’t breathe”. Annoying bastards getting in the way of everyone - I felt like saying what are you doing, or protesting, and to who?

Sounds like she did you a favour when she dropped you as a friend!

DropDeadFreida
but if you saw her social media you would think she was the original freedom fighter or something. Sending her 'solidarity' to all and sundry from her very comfortable life of not actually doing anything worthwhile to support people.

And isn't that the very definition of 'virtue signalling'? I'm guessing that people who think of themselves as woke disapprove of that term, but to me it expresses exactly what you've described: loud public declarations of 'the right view' with absolutely no cost to oneself. I've seen it so often! People who don't actually do anything to help, or make any sacrifices, but think they're superior because they spout the accepted narrative on any particular matter.

I object to the the term 'woke' because it sort of hijacks all kinds of reasonable attitudes (anti-racism, criticism of colonialism, concern about equality etc) as if only the recently-woke espouse these views, when in fact all fair-minded people do - but they don't go shouting about it.

An example was the National Trust putting pressure on their volunteers to wear rainbow lanyards. The irony is that I might agree with nearly everything a woke person might think - but I absolutely would not wear a badge, lanyard or slogan declaring it. It's so insulting - implying that unless you are making a public declaration of your liberal views,, you must be a bigot.

(Great posts, DropDead.)

I have been reading more about the lgbtqia+ acronym on the back of this thread because some of the terms confuse me.
I read that ‘2 spirit ‘ is included in this acronym and was intrigued to read about the 2 spirit group of people that existed in some 1st nation peoples. However I also read a warning that a non 1st nation person using the 2 spirit identity is culturally appropriating an identity.
And that is where I decided to stop reading …..
I agree that some of this stuff is detracting from the important work that needs to be done to ensure that each child in our society has equal access to opportunity and doesn’t face barriers in their education and career and in the justice system.
And some of it is just bollox imported from the USA.