Hi, Sarah, thank you for your input on this issue. I completely agree with you that we should talk about what the concept should mean — everyone treating everyone else with basic human respect.

For me, anyone who uses any label for selfish reasons is wrong. I write quite a bit on the evils of self-centered memes as weapons, because I see it as a huge problem preventing us from seriously dealing with issues. Maybe I travel in different circles, but I do not run across this behavior of “virtue-signaling” or self-identification-as-woke. I’m not on Facebook, Tik-Tok, or Instagram so maybe it happens there. I DO see “woke” as a strawman argument. For example, if you look at YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=woke, the use of “woke” is almost entirely a meme of the Right used to shout down any discussion of social issues. The Right is trying to start shouting matches and some people do fall for it. The whole “wokeness”meme depends on enticing a few angry kids to pound out memes on social media and use that to mock all activism. But this doesn’t alter the larger realities.

My answer, until I see a better one, is to point out the reality that this whole issue stems from the systemic inequalities of society and the overwhelming preponderance of the use of “wokeness” is by those who use it to buttress those systemic inequalities. That is what we all need to be talking about. I hope you will join me in that :)