We are woke, but are we AWAKE?

What does it meant to be woke? What does it mean to #staywoke?

Woke or being woke is defined by the urban dictionary as “being aware, knowing what is going on in the community”. It entails being aware of social injustices like racism, sexism, heterosexism or homophobia just to name a few. Being aware of social injustices and fighting against them is not a new concept, but the linguistic representation of this concept as “woke”, “being woke” or “staying woke” was first used in the USA, specifically in a song by Erykah Badu in 2008. It however gained most of its popularity after the Black Lives matter movement, formed to protest police brutality against people of colour and racism in general, used it as one of the slogans in their social media activism.

The concept of being woke inevitably found its way to South Africa (don’t you just love the internet?). Being woke in South Africa is celebrated. It means you are conscious of the social issues the country or community is dealing with and you are not afraid to talk about them. It means you are fighting for justice, for freedom and this indeed deserves celebration.

The #feesmustfall movement is one of the more obvious manifestations of being woke in SouthAfrica. They have waged protests all over the country against institutional racism, for access to decolonised education for the poor, for the invisible people, for black people. Beneath the protesting (both peaceful and violent), there is anger towards universities, the government, towards patriarchy/men. Beneath the protesting there is pain and frustration.

These protests are not the only protests that have taken place in the country, they are also not the first protesters and they will certainly not be the last. As a result I find myself wondering if being woke is enough. Have we, in our awareness of and focus on our community’s problems, lost awareness of ourselves? Has being woke become another escape from who we are? Is being woke just another creative and more convenient way of going through the motions? Does being woke mean refusing to be awake?

These have been difficult questions for me to ask myself and they are even more difficult to answer. How dare I question the importance of fighting against rape culture or homophobia? These are just causes without a doubt, but is it enough to fight just for causes and not for the person? We are angry, in pain and frustrated and we need solutions, but have we sat with our pain, our frustrations or our fears? Have we even acknowledged that we are in pain and we are afraid? Have we named the pain or what we are afraid of? Have we sat with our small and big victories, our hopes and dreams? Have we explored our joys basked in our laughter? Are we present in our own lives even in the mundane activities? Are we honest enough to ask ourselves the difficult questions every day? Have we identified or acknowledge our own prejudices and phobias? If we have not acknowledged our own biases, or if we have admitted them, but we have done nothing to ‘correct’ them can we honestly point fingers to another for doing the same? In our efforts to be “woke” have we forgotten to be awake, to be present and conscious of our own feelings, thoughts and actions?

In my preparation to write this post I stumbled on to an article by Maddy Foley. She said:

According to dictionary.com ‘woke’ is the past tense of ‘wake’ – as in, someone who is past the process of waking up. They’re done with it. They’ve moved on. They’ve evolved from, you know, being asleep and hitting the snooze button 15 times. And frankly, that’s a pretty accurate description of how ‘woke’ is currently being used as an adjective.

She is right about this understanding of woke. What I would like to draw your attention to though is the problem with approaching our societal problems in this manner. This approach takes the responsibility away from the woke. In believing that we are ‘past the process of waking up’, it is easy to think and believe that we know it all and we have all the answers and solutions. It becomes difficult, almost impossible I would argue, to see that every day we stay disconnected from ourselves or leave our pain, fear, anger, sadness, guilt, prejudices or frustrations unacknowledged, we hit the snooze button. Every day we don’t enjoy the victories, and the joys no matter how small, we hit the snooze button. Every day we are unable to see and appreciate beauty in ourselves and in the other we hit the snooze button.

We are the community we are trying to heal, if we do not take time to get to know ourselves, to locate the sources of our pain and joy, if we do not make conscious decisions everyday to be present in our lives and the lives of those closest to us, we will forever be treating symptoms. So by all means stay woke, but don't forget that being woke will simply not be enough. #stayawake!!