Rex Kerr
1 min readApr 21, 2024

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The meaning of the term has shifted. Illiberal leftists (for the most part) appropriated the term from the black community, with little pushback, I suppose because they were nominally on the "same side".

The problem was then compounded by others needing some term to use to refer to that particular widespread strain of illiberal leftist thought--the one that was favorably referring to each other as "woke" but otherwise refused to identify itself with a label. And so their outlook became "woke", and with sensible critiques it also picked up all sorts of baggage, exaggeration, and flat-out falsehoods as tends to happen. (Much like "liberal" has.)

So, anyway, "woke" got away. I'm sorry! Maybe the old meaning can still hold in the right contexts. But there's a new meaning now.

The new meaning could possibly be put back in the bag again if the illiberal leftists would pick a self-descriptive term and stand by it. Otherwise, if they're going to avoid being described--presumably to evade critique--others are going pick up on terms they use and apply them as names for the group and/or outlook, hence "social justice warriors" and "wokeness".

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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