ORLANDO, FLA. (Ivanhoe Newswire)– Woke language is a new way to advance the calling of social justice that started after the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, woke language is going beyond race, getting into the proper terms for different gender identities. Ivanhoe has the story on what these phrases mean and why understanding them is important in the modern world.
Woke. It’s understanding diversity and its key to countering racism and being actively anti-racist.
Christie Harrison, Healing Racism Activist, says “To be exposed to the truth and be educated about the origins of some of the stereotypes or prejudices that might be out there in the world that begin to be thought of as truth and to break those down so people can see behind it.”
So, what do some of the terms you hear mean? “BIPOC” stands for black, indigenous, people of color but is sometimes confused as meaning bisexual people of color. Latin-x refers to the Latin community without placing a gender on them. By saying Latin-x instead of Latino or Latina when making generalizations you’re able to include trans and non-binary people. In reality, “woke” means that you’re alert to injustice and the woke language continues to evolve with terms including cultural appropriation. That’s when you take elements from another culture without asking permission or understanding the struggle behind it. Such as when Justin Bieber wore dreadlocks. Identity politics zeroes in on how some groups based on sexuality, race, or ability, face more struggles and systemic oppression than others, and marginalization happens when people in power treat minorities as inferior.
Harrison states that, “As a white woman, I’m going to make a fair number of mistakes, and I learned to be brave in that.”
More people are coming out as non-binary, which has nothing to do with their sexuality but rather what some of them want to be called. They and them are becoming the preferred pronouns to use for non-binary people because they don’t feel they are one specific gender.
Sources:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/us/terminology-language-politics.amp.html
https://www.vox.com/culture/21437879/stay-woke-wokeness-history-origin-evolution-controversy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/14/janelle-monae-non-binary-pronouns-they-them
Contributor(s) to this news report include: Danielle Gober, Producer; Robert Walko, Videographer and Editor.
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