The impact of COVID’s lockdown continues: inflation worldwide, the surge of divorces and a generation of young people learning to deal with the anxiety and depression it caused. However, amid the pandemic, people were forced to sit still. Life was not business as usual. They reflected on life choices and made changes. They also had to take notice of the injustices, and the brutality of anti-Black and anti-Asian racism.
More Caucasian people became self-aware of the privileges extended to them because of their whiteness; which grew into empathy and compassion. They were awakened to the plight. Less focussed on the stereotypes and tropes that influenced their interactions and behaviours towards Black people. They learned about the societal, systemic, emotional and mental impact of discrimination on Black people as well as themselves. This type of awakening is what is called “woke”.
Woke was a term coined by Black activists in the 1900s; meaning to understand (deeply) political, social, and racial injustices. A word that encapsulates and speaks to the indoctrination of a people to keep them docile, to becoming enlightened and knowing as human beings they are entitled to the same rights and privileges as the ruling class. The word, the psychological process that gave Black people the power and strength to fight for their civil rights.
The lockdown created an opportunity and path for a movement to listen and correct the wrongs of the past. You saw companies attempting to fix the wrongs by prioritizing diversity, equity, and political correctness and offering employees training on micro-aggressions and biases. Grants were given to groups to assist with the impact of the history of institutional racism to level the playing field.
“Finally! The word said by many of my Black friends and family – maybe we can put our guard down just a little and have open conversations without fear or being told we should have thick skin, or the steadying of the goalpost that keeps being moved when we are winning, thriving and surpassing.
But while some were being empathetic, there was an undercurrent of those experiencing White fragility which shows its face in many forms. And then this happened – the highjacking and weaponizing of the word “woke” by the alt-right bros, by reframing it into something negative, and it seems to have permeated into popular consciousness.
The co-opting of Black activism vocabulary is now used boldly, as a weapon steeped in racism to devalue something good. Being woke should evoke compassion, understanding, kindness and ultimately change and equality. Instead, it’s being weaponized to fuel hate, to be dismissive of anything that speaks about being better and making the moves that disrupt the status quo – from gender, and race to environmental consciousness. Let’s be clear the use and obvious change in narrative is a racist slap in the face of Black people.
Furthermore, it’s evident, with the interactions on social media that the changing of the narrative is being used to bully those who want to do right and are vocal about doing what’s right for people and the planet.
Changing the narrative to change the reputation of someone, in this case, to undermine and belittle the person who is actively fighting for change is, actually, a bullying technique.
It’s called relational aggression, it attempts to affect the reputation of another by changing how others see the target, and or their social standing by undermining and devaluing through spreading lies, and gossip.
This technique was thought to be specifically used by young girls. Studies speak to the bullying tactics of boys and girls, different tactics because of how each gender is socialized – girls are taught to be docile and boys to be physical. Boys bully by physical threats and girls bully by changing the narrative and the reputation of their target. They tell lies and alter the way someone views the girl with the twist of a few words to affect her reputation, get others to distrust her and affect her social standing.
Although it has been previously identified as a tactic used predominantly by girls, boys also use this tactic. And the bros are perfecting it, getting away with it. It was not long ago that bullying caused outrage on social media platforms. We went from a social media universe (particularly X) of compassion and sensitivity to normalizing the spewing of vile pettiness fuelled by insecurity and hate.
And now let’s get to the more personal aspects of changing the narrative in the workplace. The way Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and politically correct have also been co-opted by the alt-right bros. Today we call them bros because that is a name they are now proud to embrace, but they are not new, bros with the same mentality existed 30 years ago with the first drafts of political correctness. They used the same tactic to change the narrative of inclusion and political correctness. It’s being used to negatively impact a qualified person of colour or woman hired to fulfill the mandate to level the playing field because in the past people were NOT hired because of their colour, or their gender – not due to their lack of skills. White men were hired because they were White men, not necessarily because they were more experienced or qualified. The term in DEI bro nuance is used to devalue a person and their skillset, insinuating that anyone in those categories is not truly qualified. Consequently, affecting the professional reputation of that person.
My response to that is this, why would a company hire someone who isn’t qualified? There are enough qualified candidates to vet to get the one that fits. And secondly, most women and people of colour are overqualified for the damn position because of the added scrutiny of always being underestimated.
In addition, there is a false narrative, also steeped in a scarcity and insecure mindset. That the underqualified are taking all the jobs. In reality, those jobs going higher up the ladder, the majority of people of colour or women are about 10-20 percent. So if you have 10 managers, of that 10 that’s one or two. White men are still the dominating force. Labour-intensive or lower-earning jobs are generally filled by those who are new to the country and those with less education regardless of race, gender or ethnicity.
So for those woke individuals, don’t let the narrative coming from insecurity affect your sense of fairness and justice -stand up to the bullies and stay WOKE!
