What AOC gets right – and wrong – about ‘Woke 1.0’ | Francine Prose

Recent comments by AOC have reignited a fiery debate about ‘wokeism’. But what are we really talking about?

F ull confession: I am one of those who have come to think that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can essentially do no wrong. At times when I most fear for the future of our country, I watch her videos and am consoled and cheered by her clarity, her honesty, her intelligence, her simple common sense. So I was a little surprised to hear that on a recent interview on ABC This Week, she quoted a political ally as having remarked: “Woke 1.0 was crazy.”

What surprised me was not that she called for some moderation of the radical positions – the call to defund the police and the military, for example – that have, at times, been an aspect of progressive politics. But I was frankly a little unnerved to hear her use the word “woke”.

The term has its roots in Black slang. “Stay woke” was originally a warning to keep alert to the dangers posed by prejudice and white supremacy. But its meaning has changed to become a synonym for what used to be referred to, also derogatorily, as “PC” – politically correct.

I’ve politely asked my colleagues at the college where I teach to avoid the word because it has so effectively been weaponized by the far right to mock and discredit anyone who supports racial justice, economic equity, universal healthcare, and many of the issues in which I too believe.

In the ABC interview, AOC explained the ways in which, during the Covid lockdown, “There was a huge opening. The doors were really open to entertain any and every policy that was trying to get us to a better place. But the rhetoric we used at that time is not the rhetoric we use today.” She went on to explain that her primary goal – improving the life of every American – has remain unchanged.

Even though I wish she’d used different language for it, I understand her suggestion that Woke 1.0 was crazy. The strict policing of language, the “cancellation” of anyone who had, at any point in their life, made a mistake that was perceived as injurious to women or people of color, the inflexible and frequently impractical notions of what can be said, taught and legislated raised the specter of a dictatorial left that devalued individual liberties and threatened our freedom of speech almost (though not quite) as much as the extreme right.

In the current issue of The Atlantic, there’s an eloquent and terrifying essay by Tyler Austin Harper, explaining why the absurd and damaging policies regarding the need to root our racism in the college curriculum and in the larger society made him decide that he – a Black scholar with a tenure-track appointment to teach interdisciplinary humanities in an environmental-studies program – had no choice but to abandon academia forever.

In 2021, it was decided that every department at Bates College, where Harper worked, must offer two courses that would “identify areas where white supremacy, ‘colonial’ frameworks, and other forms of bias might be lurking in curricula and major requirements”.