"Early Usage: The concept of being "woke" has roots in early 20th-century African American culture. For example, in a 1938 recording of the song “Scottsboro Boys” by blues musician Lead Belly, the term is used in the context of being aware of racial injustices.
Civil Rights Era: The term continued to be used sporadically through the 20th century, often in social justice contexts.
Modern Usage: "Woke" re-emerged in mainstream discourse during the 2010s, especially with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. It broadly signifies awareness of social inequalities and a commitment to addressing systemic injustices.
The awareness and activism associated with being "woke" push for significant changes in social, economic, and political systems. White supremacists of all ideological flavors (sic) often react with hostility towards such changes, perceiving them as threats to their way of life."
Fieser, James. "Abolitionism." The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2024.
Chokshi, Niraj. "The True History of the Word 'Woke.'" The New York Times, June 14, 2020.
The ideology that has most radicalized people globally, and intensely so in the USA, is white supremacist capitalism/imperialism/colonialism. No other economic and social system has so radicalized people that they have abandoned morals, norms, and principles for mammon aka wealth and power. Yet few journalists, scholars, or media pundits discuss this radicalization that took hold and controls the narrative on the topic.
Capitalist radicalization is driven by polarization using controlled capitalist narratives, media polarization, the emergence of social media, and the ongoing legitimization of military and para-military budgets for war on people from the streets of the US to the streets of Gaza and Kiev. The military expenditures, particularly in the US and UK, paid for with the people's taxes do not benefit the majority of people in any way, shape, or form, yet the people are so radicalized that they consent to the violence with which they are consistently threatened and which is often perpetrated against them in the streets by militarized police.
I argue that the root cause of the violence is the perceived decline of white supremacist Euro-American domination and the simultaneous radicalization of conservatives, populist movements, and the Republican/Tory Parties. Since the 1960s, conservatives, particularly...
Police Reform, Defund and/or Abolish the Police: Just the Facts, Maam
September 16, 2022
The national debate about the role of policing in the USA is far from over. Protests may have quieted down for a bit because organizers have been bought off with big grants but there are new groups and organizers that will replace them because the problem is nowhere near being solved. Social media makes it hard to ignore police brutality and violence no matter how much censorship is increased in the US. The problem remains that the system of policing in the USA today is the result of a historically and present-day corrupt system driven by the politics of supremacy (class, race, sex, etc.) The structure still remains that those classified as rich and white have generally a civil, moral, and juridical standing lifting them above all other races and classes. The present system of rule of law and law and order uses law enforcers as the front line for social control of the poor, the dissenter, the striker, and people of color whether they are crossing a street, driving a car, or sleeping in their beds. This dominant paradigm or model of policing is being challenged by citizens, human rights agencies, and many scholars in spite of those who...
The Jury in the Kyle Rittenhouse case has just given white supremacists in the USA of any age a license to kill "race traitors" and any people of color who fight against racism. The behaviors of the Judge made it all possible and he is a case example epitomizing the authoritarian excesses of the State in which the concept of white supremacy and social control supports the everyday reality of killing "bad guys" based on false narratives be it "cowboys and natives", or Blacks vs Whites, or Christians vs Muslims in a country very much at war with itself. He played jeopardy with the jurors, banned the use of the word "victims" of the men murdered, allowed the offender to choose jurors, and buddied up with jokes and laughter with the Defense and offender while the prosecutor threw the case.
This kangaroo court justifying its rulings with loophole laws represents a country utterly lost to all reason, humanitarianism, and real due process.
Commentary: Dehumanizing Victims and Playing Murder Jeopardy
November 2, 2021
Commentary
No good will come from the Judge in the Rittenhouse trial underway in Kenosha, Wi, USA this week. The general outcome of this trial will resemble a battlefield rather than a due process-oriented court hall in a so-called "Democratic" republic. The Judge presides over a battle to the death of ideas, a common feature of the US where the paucity of in-depth insight and evidenced-based knowledge are notable only by their absence in legal and political processes. Judge Schroeder displays a draconian authoritarianism over his virtually exclusive and inviolate courtroom domain pronouncing that the human beings murdered may not be called "victims" thus dehumanizing them with labels such as "arsons" and "looters". He is already playing to the herd mentality of those he considers as part of ‘his’ crowd. Several news outlets report him playing “Jeopardy” with the prospective jurors thus trivializing what should be a serious trial garnering national attention. I can well imagine what the family of the murder victims feel. Without much care for due process or the Prosecutor, this judge will silence those who dare dissent with other opinions or viewpoints and most importantly, in the streets. They will be censored and canceled as if...
Very sad news. Professor Charles Mills, preeminent philosopher and longtime friend of Philosophy at NEIU, has died. Prof. Mills was on Dr. Milsky's dissertation committee, he was our first Hoagland TriVia speaker, and he served on Dr. Zimmer's committee as well. In the picture, you see him visiting Dr. Zimmer's class in the way back 2018. He had only just received the Lipponcot Award.
This is very sad news and a big loss in the world of philosophy. I met the Jamaican philosopher, Charles Mills in graduate school at Loyola. I studied his book, "Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race" in one of the philosophy classes I took there and it is in my top ten most influential books. I used it heavily in my dissertation. I also got the chance to meet him and his wife and they were both wonderful and she was very funny. I have used his written work in my classes for many years. May he rest in peace and power in the knowledge that his brilliance shed a light in that befuddled but beautiful discipline called philosophy. Below is an excerpt from my dissertation about his work. I have introduced the work...
I have been teaching a course called "Five Hundred Years of Resistance to Imperialism" for almost 20 years but this year I view this course as one of the most difficult to teach. The manner in which the ruling class has co-opted and subverted real revolutionary, decolonizing, and paradigm-shifting efforts is mind-boggling. While there have been CIA, Mossad (Israeli secret service) and MI-6 (British Secret Service) successes in fomenting regime changes and coups since the 1950's the level of their sophistication at these violations of state sovereignty presently are at an all-time high from Ukraine to Hong Kong to Cuba. https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/.
We now have government-sponsored uprisings and manufactured revolutions that look like real resistance movements but they are not and it becomes hard to tell who the players are given the narratives the media spins. No other uprising may be more confusing than the January 6th attack on the Capitol this year. White people calling themselves patriots, many who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps, carrying Confederate flags, some in costumes with white supremacist and Nordic symbols entered the Capitol at the urging of President Donald Trump. These pro-Trump supporters used American flag poles to break windows...
Liars, War Mongers, and Womanizers: US Presidents in my Lifetime
January 20, 2021
I was born during the nuclear bomb dropping Truman years. Truman ushered in the Cold War against all communist and socialist countries, leaders, and people. Later this made me want to know more about why the ruling class hated communism so much. I spent much of my professional research years studying that subject with tours in Cuba, Venezuela, and China.I came of age and so did the cold war during the "I Like Ike" years of Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency. That mantra was repeated a lot in our house. Later I found out about his hatred of the Soviets and his anti-communism, the US-engineered coup in Iran, the support for Ngo Dien Diem, and his messing with Nasser and Fidel.
Then came the Kennedy years with Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis and while Chicago was a Democratic stronghold my Italian mother believed Republicanism was akin to godliness not to mention, which she did mention, that he was a womanizer. When Kennedy was shot and killed she politely said she did not mourn his death. I remember thinking that was pretty cold and not at all "Christian" behavior when everyone else in the neighborhood was devasted.
As you know, on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, people calling themselves patriots, many who were wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps, carrying confederate flags and some in costumes with white supremacist and Nordic symbols entered the Capitol at the urging of the President Donald Trump. These pro-Trump supporters used American flag poles to break windows, and bats and pipes to beat Capitol Police and created a riotous insurrection.
Many of these rioters are the same people who defend police, veterans and service members when Black Lives Matters activists and supporters or people they call Antifa take to the streets in protest or when Colin Kaepernick takes a knee to condemn police brutality. As is the historical pattern in the US, most of them, white men, walked out of the Capitol unscathed and bragged about their actions on social media as if they had won a major battle in a war. It did not take long for the indigenous people of this land to note on social media that they were not afforded such kid-gloved treatment while engaging in peaceful protests at Standing Rock where water protectors, including women and children, were met with tear gas, vicious dogs, rubber...