Hey, their folks sit. It's Tuesday, August the fifth. I got a question for you. Do you consider yourself woke? And do you consider woke a good thing or a bad thing? In fact, is it an insult or a compliment? If somebody says you're woke? Actually, let's go back a bit. Do you even know what it means to be woke? And with that, welcome to this very woke edition of Amy and TJ Rope. Somebody calls you woke, you immediately take that as what instinctively.
I would instinctively take it as a compliment. I'm aware that I am interested in things outside of my world and my lens that I'm saying.
Even with all that we hear about woke these days, you still would hear it and take it as a compliment.
Well, it depends on who was saying it and why they were saying it. Yeah, that would be an important nuance. But I do think generally speaking, I would consider someone who is woke someone who is has been awakened, who recognizes that you don't know what you don't know, and that there are other people and other cultures and other just issues that maybe you don't consider that you've now recognized. So I guess in my head it's like it's a cultural awakening, it's a that's kind of how I would
look at it. I understand it's thrown around in certain ways now politically that are intended to be insulting. I get that, But I still think, how is it a bad thing to wake up to recognize, even if it's what you don't know, How is that a bad thing?
Oh, it's not a bad thing. Obviously, the word has been stolen, it's been co opted. It's been taken from us, I should say those of us, in particular the black community.
It's been taken by and let's be specific, politicians, Republican politicians, white Republican men, to be specific, is where this word has and they have done a great job with their messaging, because I don't even feel like black folks have control of this word anymore, because in the I would say ten years, in the past ten years, at least, the majority of time I hear the word woke has been all negative. It has been all political. In the years prior to that, it was all black folks. It was
a positive thing. It was you were almost it was almost an insult. If somebody considered you not to be woke, that's not where we are anymore. The word is such, it is thrown around as DII and it just it's
all negative. And this came up Rover. It's probably daily, is it not that we end up doing a morning ryme, we're doing our podcast, we're doing the news, and the word woke comes up, and at some point sometimes I've done it on the podcast in just a moment, are certainly saying to you like, I'm so sick of this,
I'm so sick of hearing the word woke. We should do something on it one day, And we finally got here because actually was Trump that got us to this point today with a very long, confusing post that he went woke and I didn't see it coming, and it's the Sidney Sweeney ad. We're still talking about that thing, but that has people are celebrating that as being anti woke.
Which is I think assigning something to it that I would like to believe was never the intention. But okay, use that again as a political hot potato and use it to then push this messaging out that yes, white male politicians specifically have taken over and made to actually support an anti wokeness basically in a way, if that makes any sense. What is anti wokeness.
Anti woke is pro white, anti wokeness is anti blackness. It's anti diversity if you are against that, and that's how it's being used.
Now.
We can say this all day long, and we are not unlet We should make this clear, Robes. We are not trying to have a political discussion right now. We are not trying to get on the sides of people who think this is an ideology or not. I have my feelings about where it is when it comes to woke, but this is not We're not trying to have a
political argument. All we were trying to do, Robes, And I've been begging folks to just stop for a second, take a beat, and examine what woke actually is and don't just accept the negative definition that's being heaped on you, because you're actually starting to think, and we're starting to believe that if you are woke, then you are for diversity, and that's bad. All. That's where the messaging now lie. And we talk about those robes all the freaking time.
Do you even know if you walk down the street, what is woke? I just asked three kid downstairs, all white under the age of twenty two, about woke, and their answer was all the same. It's negative.
It's an insult, which is crazy because so you've been wanting to do this podcast for some time, and I asked you to give me some of the just the the articles, the research that you were using to go back and really take a look at that word, where it began and how it basically was stolen, especially in the last few years. And I have to say I learned a heck of a lot about that word that I did not know, and I'm just fully admitting I did not know the origins and I did not realize that.
I mean, even a few years ago, folks were saying, go ahead and just exchange the word woke for black, and that's basically what's being said, which is scary if you think about it in those terms. If you just replace woke with black, that's offensive as hell. With how it's being used right now by many politicians, it.
Just drives me crazy that anytime it comes up, it's automatically it's a word, it's a catch all. It is a all encompassing phrase to represent anti diversity, it's this idea that any effort to be progressive, any effort to be inclusive, any effort to be anything other than heterosexual and white, is woke. And I hate that we are now using this as a word and using diversity itself, the idea that we want to be inclusive as a negative.
That's scary when you start to see businesses and we have seen one by one by one dropping their DEAI departments, dropping their DEI policies. Period. It's having real life impact on a lot of folks, and we haven't even seen the reality of what that's going to look like. You know, we're seeing these businesses make these decisions now in real time over the last couple of months. But what is it going to look like? What are these businesses going
to look like? What is what are their policies going to look like six months from now, a year from now? What impact is that going to have on the people who these companies are supposed to be serving?
And I don't look, but it's not like all these companies are very diverse when it comes to their corporate leadership already. So now you take away a policy or an idea, or at least a belief or at least a declaration that we want to do better, that we want to be more diverse. We are now embracing it, seems, and yes, this Sidney Sweeney ad has a lot to do with it, seeming to embrace this idea of yeah, we don't give a damn and we're gonna boldface, We're gonna look right in your eye and say we don't
give a damn about including you in our group. That is now where the Sidney Sweeney ad. I don't think it's what American Eagle was trying to do. Not knocking Sidney Sweeney for it, but it's become a bigger part
of a conversation. And that's okay. I'm glad we are talking about And you know what was the most encouraging part of us doing this podcast right now, if nobody else gets anything out of it, you just said, Wow, I learned something I didn't know about a word you hear all the time, and you hear me talk about all the time, and you still learn by just taking a beat on your own. And I think most people aren't doing that.
Oh god no, And I'm telling you right now, it was another one of those kind of humbling moments where you hear something, you reference something, you use the word, and then you realize, damn, I didn't know what I was saying. I didn't know what I was talking about, what the current use of it is, and I know generally what it means, obviously, but I did not realize
the origins. And when you realize the origins, you will think twice about how you use that word, when you use that word, where you use that word, and why you use that word.
Yeah. It what set us off today talking about woke is the President put on a long statement having to do with Sidney Sweeney, but he took a couple of swipes at other industries, not industries, other companies Jaguar and bud Light in particular. Jaguar had an ad not too terribly long a year ago, whole relaunch of their brand, but they used just models that seem to be what's the right way to put it dressed Androgyn's stress.
I guess right, like non gender specific, yes, And.
It was seen as a as a woke commercial company. He did terribly. CEO just resigned, so Trump jumped him for that. Bud Light, same thing. It was a year ago, two years ago had a campaign in which they featured a trans influencer. People went crazy about that. Trump jumped on him for that. He called Taylor Swift in the same post a woke entertainer and that her career is hurting. I don't think so. But the last line is the one that got me. Quote. The tide has seriously turned.
Being woke is for losers. Being Republican is what you want to be. Ah, that's tough. That's the president saying that this idea of awareness, this idea of woke, or at least the way they are defining is that if you are any way in any way supportive of progressive ideas or being diverse in any way, then you're a looser.
The frustrating thing about it is, I think a lot of people, and I'm guessing I'm gonna put Republicans and some of the folks who are behind this way of thinking that it's if you're woke, you're a loser. They might be going up against or fighting back or pushing back against overcorrection, like overcorrection like we have to nobody can say anything, or we're gonna offend somebody if we don't use the right pronouns, we're gonna offend something. So I guess my point is you could still have an
argument for guys, let's everybody calm down. Let's not be so quick to overcorrect and to be overly inclusive that we end up alienating everybody. And I think a lot of people can understand that. But that's not what he's saying, and that's not what a lot of folks are saying, or even the legislation we saw in Florida is saying. Because I could understand that, I understand it. It's tough sometimes when we go out of our way to the point where we are trying to include everybody, but it
ends up excluding a lot of other people. You can go too far, is my point. And I could get behind that. I understand that, and that would be perhaps maybe an appropriate lane to stay in. But that is not the lane he's ever even been in. It's completely all or nothing, and I don't think in any way you operate if is that. Okay, you can't be all
or nothing. There has to be some middle ground. And so if they're upset about overcorrection or even any conversation about inclusion when it comes to people and wanting to be a part of things, to go to the other side of things and say, anyone who considers anyone who doesn't look like you, sound like you, believe what you believe in, if you try to then placate them, you're a loser. That's ridiculous. That's so sad to me. And I don't want to go and point the finger at
them or anyone else who feels that way. But think about what you're doing and what you're saying. We're right, you're wrong, us versus them. Tribalism, it's to visit and it's we should be about trying to be inclusive and understanding and curious, but not demonizing the other side or demonizing someone who thinks differently than you. And that's exactly what we're seeing from this leadership.
Was it the d D didn't they change? They took John Lewis's name off of a what was it?
Well, they took I know they took Harvey Milk's name off of the off of the airt aircraft Carria.
The very good example now in wanting to honor an LGBTQ plus icon by who had a military background.
Whose parents were military, he was military, I.
Told myself, I didn't want to use specific examples in this because it's going to go sideways, but you've made me think of it. There. If you just want to honor this guy who had a military connection and was an icon for the LGBTQ plus community, that's woke.
No, That is showing people that there's presentation for people who look like you or perhaps act like you, who aren't like the others. That's important. And I can say this is as and I can say this is a white woman understanding that you can speak to it in a way that I can't. How important it is to see people who look like you, or act like you, or feel the same way you do reflected in some way. It doesn't mean we have to go over the top. It just to take it away completely is so sad to me.
So, folks, do you know right now? Folks, do you ask yourself, if you had to right now give me a definition of woke, could you do it? Well? It depends on who you ask. But today, most of the time that we hear the word woke, this is the definition that goes along with it. It is a negative. It's defined often by conservatives as an ideology being woke is to embrace progressive ideas that recognize social and racial injustices. That's a negative.
How is that negative?
Well, it is because no, no, no, I'm not going to go with into their ideas, but it's that is what being woke is today, that you embrace progressive ideas. Now they want to go far their robes, and I didn't want to get into that. But the idea of you're actually embracing an ideology that suggests that America is systemically racist in many of its facets of society has been, and that black folks and people of color adding a
disadvantage from white people. If you believe that you are wrong and you are woke, and you're embracing an ideology that is wrong. There are many people who do want to view this country as one that is completely fair to all sides, and there are no advantages if you are white and if you believe that you are woke and you are wrong. That is the definition. But there is another one, folks, that black folks have had for the world. It's much different, and it goes back over
one hundred years. We continue now, folks, Robac and I here we gave you a minute you had a little break there. Did you come up with a definition of woke? There is another definition of woke Roabes, and it goes back some one hundred plus years. And I said, the way I have heard and used woke up until about ten years ago was all the time, you need to wake up, you need to be aware. You ain't woke, You ain't on this. It was a negative if you weren't.
I've been in environments where if I wasn't aware of something going on, I was looked at and called out for not being woke. How can you not know this? How can you not be aware of this? That's how it was used against me. You remember I had a show with a black TV network. That show was called Don't Sleep. And I remember the executive at the time, we were trying to figure out what we should call the show. All these meetings went out he and it was a play on being woke. Don't Sleep.
So I knew you were on that show. And I thought the name don't Sleep was used because it was late night.
It was a play on that. But no, the idea is don't sleep. We're going to tell you what you need to be aware of. You need to be up on. Don't sleep.
It's about you gotta be aware. Yeah, and I'm asking a question as a white girl, as a white person, the point being if you're asleep, it could be dangerous. Yes, that was.
The origin of it. It was a warning you need to be aware of what's around you. In particular, we're going to get into it here in the South where some boys were actually falsely accused of doing something and ended up on trial and convicted of a crime they did not commit because they weren't aware of their surroundings. If you will, you wait, you and in Mississippi, you
and Alabama, you don't know. We need to be woke, You need to be away in that crazy Yes, because that word and that thing is now being stolen, co opted by somebody else, and it's not ours anymore, at least in the public conversation. Because there's no way I should be going down there and talking to those three white kids and the only thing on their mind. Yeah, woke is a negative. That's terrible, it's bad. That shouldn't be the case. That means we are losing that.
Battle, my goodness. Yes, because when you go back and look at what the origins are I It makes sense now that I know, but I was shocked at how much I didn't know. And I mean, look, you, we've talked about this a lot. Your head is always on a swivel, and it always was a little perplexing to me.
I understood recently why your head was on a swivel because there were people who were trying to take our pictures and all of that, but I never really thought about it historically from the perspective of who you are as a black man, how you were raised, what you were taught, what you needed to know, and what you needed to do to be safe. And I never I never put two and two together because I've never had
that experience as a woman. I've had other things, but nothing, nothing, nothing compared to what I see you do each and every day. And understanding that word now woke and understanding you a little bit better by doing this research. It's it's mind blowing to me how much I don't know and how much I haven't had to experience in the same way or in any only in a very small way.
And it makes sense now, but it also is just incredibly gutting to me that not only has the word been stolen and used politically, but it's being used against the cause, against everything that your community has desperately tried to protect itself from.
White folks always do this to us. I said that somewhat jokingly, but white power. That phrase that scares the hell out of you came from black power. It was taken from us. It was something that was a rallying cry of black power, black lives matter, that was taken from us. The same thing happened in this messaging and language to where black lives matter became a negative. All lives matter, Blue lives matter, So if you say black
lives matter, it was seen as a negative. These things happen, and they have happened to us plenty, and once again the idea of woke. So we're gonna go back to nineteen twenty three Marcus Garvey. Did you know that name? You may have, but he was a black nationalist, Jamaican brother who was on this idea of black folks here in America need to go back actually to Africa. But he is considered a hero of the movement. But he was one who so many years ago started using the
phrase again. Nineteen twenty three is the first time he is attributed with saying it, but he was saying, wake up Ethiopia, wake up Africa. He was trying to it was a rallying cry. But that was one of the earliest times we heard people use so nineteen twenty three, Marcus Garvey a rallying cry for black folks. Today it's a total negative.
I wonder what Marcus Garvey would be thinking right now. I mean what I say, he's turning over in his grave. But could he have even imagined maybe he could have baby? He's like, yeah, that sounds about right. He probably would say that. Eh, figures I could have predicted that one.
Sounds about right the next one. Though, we go from nineteen twenty three to nineteen thirty eight, this is the first time, is believe this word woke appeared in a song. The song is called Scottsboro Boys. Now most of you probably never heard of it, but it plays a significant role because at the end of it, the singer led Belly goes his name, but he was speaking at the end and he's said, I advise everybody to be careful when they go down there, stay woke, keep your eyes open.
The reference there was to these Scottsboro boys who had been charged falsely with raping two white girls, and he was speaking to them in this song, Scottsboro boys, be careful when you go down there, stay woke, keep your eyes open.
It's well from what I understand, these boys were literally just on a train that happened to also have white women on it, and they couldn't They didn't realize that they were in danger or that they could stand to be accused of something just being in the presence of white women.
Think about that, folks, stay woke. As you hear Governor DeSantis telling everybody, this is Florida's where woke goes to die and saying it's such a negative that this was a warning to black boys who ended up charged with a crime they didn't commit because they didn't heed the warning to stay woke, stay aware. It's all this was.
You go.
Then to nineteen forty Negro mind workers in West Virginia. They realized they weren't getting paid the same as their white counterparts. They wrote to their bosses, quote, we were asleep, but we will stay woke from now on. Nineteen sixty two ropes That is the one that I think most people point to as the first time, maybe in print, but I think this is the one that's credited with really almost coining the phrase.
That article was fascinating, and you can google it and you can read it from start to finish, and it is I mean, it was eye opening, and I didn't realize he was talking about how the white beat nicks, the nineteen sixties folks who were in the jazz scene trying and taking on the language the music of black people, and specifically describing how all of a sudden, white folks start taking black phrases or black words, and then all of a sudden, the black community is like, yeah, we're
gonna move on and get a different word. But it's like, you know, the black community, they've got great music, they've got cool ways of speaking. And then going into the fact that some of this language was created among black people who were slaves, enslaved so that their masters couldn't understand what they were saying, and that is part of the history, and the fact that you've got every group
coming in going oh, that sounds cool. I'm going to start saying that, I'm going to start using that phrase. I'm going to start It was wild to see this written in nineteen sixty two.
So if you all get a chance this, please please remember this. It's called if You're Woke, You dig It. If You're woke, You dig It. It's an essay from nineteen sixty two by author William Melvin Kelly. William Melvin Kelly, If You're Woke, You dig It. I beg you all to go check that thing out. I think it should
be required reading. If you were going to be engaged in politics these days, you should read that, because woke is everywhere, and unfortunately, I don't think most people uttering it have any idea.
Oh they don't, they do not can I can speak for all of those people we did not know, We don't know.
I speak for the whites. But then in two thousand and eight, this was when it became I guess it was just a good song master teacher by Erica Bad and it was repetitive in there. Woke, woke, woke was said a whole bunch in there. But then in twenty fourteen Rogues, when finally Michael Brown and Ferguson was killed, that's when it became more a part of a modern day rallying cry. With so much we were seeing.
And the Black Lives Matter movement also around that time as well, But it was it was interesting because it was Erica Badou who said at this point after that song, she said, you can go ahead and replace welk with black. And so when you're saying what you're saying, just imagine if you said black instead of woke, because that's what it feels like to us each and every time you say something. And that really stood out to me.
That's a great way to put it. And that's how I feel every time I see somebody standing at a podium saying anti woke or woke agenda's bad, or we won't cater to this woke agenda. It's not the right. I understand politics as politics, but this one it feels personal and it feels like an insult, and it doesn't feel inclusive in the least bit. Look, plenty of things don't feel inclusive, but this is you're looking in my face and announcing we don't want you here, We don't
want you to be a part of this. You are not a part of this. And even our products now we're not even going to pretend like we want you to use. We don't even want you to be a customer of ours that it's just it's starting to fit. It feels awful.
Do you feel like I have a question for you. You that the woke the anti woke campaign, do you feel like it was more directed or seems to have gotten more legs based on the LGBTQ plus community, that that's when it really rose to another level. When you're talking about trans rights and you're talking about bathrooms and who get like. I feel like that's when it really took on a whole other level. And it wasn't even about the black community, which is another slap in the face in a way.
Anything progressive, anything that's not the norm, and the norm is to some all American, white, conservative, heterosexual and if it's not that, then it's not really America. I don't owe your question again there.
Well, my question was do you think that it even took on a whole other level with the LGBTQ plus community.
I say that, I say yes, just because it gave folks another target. We have another option. First, we were just talking about you black folks. Now we can talk about you folks over here and you folks over here. Now we just got more groups we can we can actually discriminate against if you will. I think that just gave them another talking point and another agenda, and another and another way to divide us to win elections. To be honest, I think that's really all that wasn't just I do.
This is not about politicians. This is not about a political issue. This is not us trying to get you to go this way or that way. It's just trying to get folks to be a little more aware of what you're hearing, what's being said to you, where it comes from, why, and just and make your own call about how you use that word, when you use that word, and how you feel when you actually hear it. It's not an insult to be woke, folks, It's just not God.
No, I hope that that actually I mean, I feel like that resonates. Why would it ever be a bad thing to not be asleep at the wheel, to be awake, to understand, to do the research to understand history. There's a reason why we have history classes. The problem is we're not taught history. We're taught white history. We're taught very specific history. We're not given the full breadth of what and how we got to where we are.
We didn't even mention the Stop Woke Act in Florida. Florida, they literally have passed a law to keep folks from learning about some of this stuff, some diversity, because they think if you learn about how the country started, then the little white kid that's six years old now is going to think he's privileged.
Or he's or he's a bad person because people who came before him are pressed.
Yes, I just I don't. It just drives me crazy, And I just hope folks that this came off the way we wanted it to come off, which was just to get you to think a little more about the word when you hear it, and you're going to hear it probably tomorrow.
Maybe even tonight in a tweet, in a truth social post. But it is fascinating to understand the history of it, to understand its origins, and to understand its actual meaning versus how it's being used in politics today.
I was about to say, just I'm gonna leave it though there's only one word I can think of. We took from white folks that they had first. And with that, folks, we always appreciate you taking a listen with us. I'm CJ on the behalf of my pard n Amy robot, who has a facing her.
Hands because I know the word yes that you're referencing.
We will, We'll see y'allsoo