Holy cow, your conclusion encircles the excellent writing from the opening visceral narrative to the various aspects that the idea of Woke encompasses in modern times and pervious history. In short, it demands discussion and seeks engagement, not rebuttal or argumentation. It does ask us to look further afield, and I even felt proud to be called Woke, like I need a bumper sticker that says “Yes, I’m Woke.” (In Texas though I might get my windshield bashed in while shopping for such a sticker.)
We indeed must engage further into a deepening discussion that you inspire and go beyond being subjugated to the too-loud badgering and “cudgel” of the right that seeks to use it a performative term to bash us with. It leaves me searching for new answers and information on white-on-white violence and murder rates; and asking things like Why not call the massacres and enslavement of black Americans a genocide? Could the capitalist motive behind slavery and neoslavery until 1960 (at least) be seen as a much deeper and systematic form of repression than the jewish repression? The Jewish Holocaust killed far greater in number during the narrow scope of Hitler’s regime, but like African slavery that parallels go back hundreds of years, with anti-semitism have it ‘episodes’ and pogroms throughout European history. Looking beyond “mere murder”, to groups of massacres of various sizes that are based primarily on ethnicity, we can see terror on both continents to these ‘races’. Why can we see both as horrible and deserving of scrutiny under a broader context and range of facts? It’s not a competition of ‘worseness’ but an investigation into ideas.
I feel like I am on this journey, one that involves understanding over race, though in American the fight for democracy and equality has me looking more are black Americans than native indigenous and the horrors outlined in this essay that has wonderful clarity. The fact is I too am trying to get back into Apples, having been bombarded by the overwhelming number of Red Delicious I ate in my youth.
Stay Woke, stay strong. Stay writing and keeping us apprised of your latest mental journeys. Thank you again for sharing your earned insights!
