What is Woke?
Written by Dr. Chad Higgins, Executive Director of ESSDACK
Educators have an extremely difficult time engaging in some really hard, important, and electrified conversations due the public nature of our jobs and lives. The “woke” buzzword has been around for more than a century but has gained popularity over the past 23 years and recently, has made a resurgence, especially in the Kansas Statehouse in recent weeks. I laughed a little when I heard one of our state legislative leaders, when asked what woke meant, responded with “look it up.” This “look it up” line took me back to 8th grade when I used the exact same response to my English teacher. I was asked a question about a reading assignment I didn’t complete. I did get a few laughs from classmates but I also recall that neither my principal nor my parents were proud of me at all. I wonder if others use the “look it up” encouragement when they’re not really sure of their own answers.
The exhausting use of woke or replace it with “snowflake”, “cult”, or “beta” is certainly meant to be defamatory and those words keep us politically divided. I’ve spent the past 12-plus years talking with colleagues and peers about my own personal shift from arrogant, isolated limited life experiences toward becoming a more humble, vulnerable, and enlightened human being. I’m far from where I want or need to be and at the same time I’m certainly far from where I used to be. Another recently buzzy reference, a thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect,tells us that often, a person's lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area causes them to overestimate their own competence (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). What a great tool for self-reflection!
I didn’t get “woke” during my K-12 education or even during my college days, in fact, it was likely the opposite. I sought comfort and surrounded myself with people who were like me or who I thought I wanted to be.
Wokeness didn’t strike early in my teaching and coaching days either, although there was one very memorable lesson that sparked inside me the idea that maybe the belief system I had embraced my whole life to that point , wasn’t actually who I was. A young man on our football team that I helped coach was suspended for possession of drugs and I was adamant that he be kicked off of the team in order to make an example for our other student-athletes; to protect them from this kind of moral erosion. I was raised to believe that if a person didn’t follow the rules, they deserved whatever consequence was assigned, regardless of any other factor. The head coach, defending the kid and allowing him to remain on the team, simply said, “if he’s not with us, who is he with?” Like a lightbulb switched on, this made perfect sense to me, a man who loves helping others grow. And in that lightbulb moment, the glass of my belief system cracked as I began my journey down that first slope of the Dunning-Kruger curve (Image 1).
*This graph does not accurately reflect the research but the popular perception of the effect.
Fast-forward a few years, I was a high school principal, frustrated that a student, who we had put so much effort into supporting, simply stopped coming to school. Angrily, I went to her home to bang on the door and chastise this teenager for letting us all down. A knot formed in my chest when I cautiously stepped on her front porch, fearful it might collapse. As I stood in her living room, I was slapped in the face with the reality that not every kid grows up as fortunate as I did, And that cracked-glass belief system shattered as my descent down the Dunning-Kruger curve accelerated.
I was humbled in that moment. I was finally mature enough to learn from that lesson rather than excuse it away. Since then I have become more comfortable with being wrong, with difficult self-reflection, and with the guilt that can come with not having been the person I wish I would have been all along.
“Wokeness” isn’t simply accepting every new or any different idea as it comes along. It’s simply considering an idea, evaluating it, and then accepting, dismissing, or blending parts of it with the parts you believed before. It is an evolution of personal beliefs through exposure to a world you might never have known before and a world that you are only just now beginning to understand. The opposite, or anti-woke, is the echo chamber of the proverbial “never leaving your hometown.”
I have worked hard to stop getting so frustrated with those who think like I used to because if I hadn't been so fortunate to be in the education business, I probably would still think like that. The “unwoke'' aren't unlike those kids raised in housing projects or toxic home environments who only know one way to think and behave. They haven’t been blessed with the personal, humbling learning, and growth opportunities that I’ve been afforded.
It is easy and productive for politicians, special interest groups, and those in power to oversimplify societal issues. Buzzwords and blame are effective tools to divide people who generally want the same things. Here I describe my own “wokeness” and am unbothered by any label used for that divisive, simple-minded purpose. I continue to learn and grow from the amazing educators, friends, family, and neighbors I surround myself with and value productive discourse with anyone who genuinely seeks to better understand those with different beliefs and experiences.
What if we all were to consider the possibility that we are wrong, about everything, all of the time? Because we probably are to some extent. At least due to our own limited life experiences, we haven’t walked in every person’s shoes. What if we were to listen more? To ponder more? What if we tried to defend the perspective that is counter to our own? What if, we could simply consider becoming awake to the question, “what if?” It takes real effort and tremendous courage to think critically; to not only question what you read or hear, but, to a greater extent, be skeptical of what you believe to be true.
In this way, if we can wake up to our fellows and their struggles and contributions, we all might become more open to the growing and shattering of our own glass.
Resources:
Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing
one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121
Cherry, K. (2019). Dunning-Kruger Effect: Why Incompetent People Think They Are Superior. Retrieved from Verywell Mind website: https://www.verywellmind.com/an-overview-of-the-dunning-kruger-effect-4160740