A trip down Memory Lane. (From Socially Asleep to WOKE.) 

11 Jul A trip down Memory Lane. (From Socially Asleep to WOKE.) 

In the not to distance past there have been waves of injustice, discrimination, prejudice, hatred, incarceration, and even murder against all of us.  Many of these injustices were cured through social awareness, others through the courts and some required legislation.

Woke is now defined in Webster’s dictionary as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice),”; it is identified as “U.S. slang”. It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. By the end of that decade it was also being applied by some as a pejorative term for anyone who is or appears to be progressive in their thoughts.

The Chinese – In the 1850s.

Chinese workers migrated to the United States, first to work in the gold mines, but also to take agricultural jobs, and factory work, especially in the garment industry. Chinese immigrants were particularly instrumental in building railroads in the American west, and as Chinese laborers grew successful in the United States, a number of them became entrepreneurs in their own right. As the numbers of Chinese laborers increased, so did the strength of anti-Chinese sentiment among other workers in the American economy. This finally resulted in legislation that aimed to limit future immigration of Chinese workers to the United States, and threatened to sour diplomatic relations between the United States and China.  Source – Office of the Historian

The Japanese – On December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy invaded Hawaii.

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, stripping any and all people of Japanese descent of all of their civil rights. That order and the many subsequent actions carried out by the Federal Government represent one of the most shameful chapters in our Nation’s history.  John J. McCloy, the assistant secretary of war, remarked that he considered the Constitution to be unimportant, “just a scrap of paper.”

The Japanese Immigrants were excluded from political life by the prohibition against naturalization and were effectively barred from participation in all social and economic affairs.  California defined anyone with 1⁄1^6th or more Japanese lineage as a person who should be incarcerated.  More than 112,000 Japanese Americans who were living on the West Coast were incarcerated in camps which were located in its interior – most were born-in-the-USA citizens.  Source – National Archives

The Polish.

As for the Poles, the standard joke characterized the Poles as having at their core a negative representation as being backward and uneducated simpletons. It is perhaps this stereotype that is hardest for Polish Americans to combat, and is a legacy of the second wave of immigrants, the largest contingent between 1860 and 1914 made up of mostly people from Galicia and Russia. For many generations, Polish Americans in general did not value higher education, though such a stance has changed radically in the late twentieth century. Advanced professions are now heavily represented with Polish Americans as. The days of Polish Americans anglicizing their names seem to be over; along with other ethnic groups, Polish Americans now talk of their strong ethnic pride.

In her book Ellis Island: A People’s History – Małgorzata Szejnert, notes,

“As we know, the number of ‘worse’ immigrants…has been growing year after year, so setting a point of reference 11 years in the past demonstrates clearly whom the law’s authors support and whom they do not.” That is to say, they are prioritizing immigrants from Germany, Scandinavia, and the UK. Sounds an awful lot like not wanting to allow in people from “shithole countries.”  (Sounds a lot like Trumpish, a new language.)

The Italians.

The U.S. was in the grips of an economic depression, and immigrants were blamed for taking American jobs. It was alleged that “Mediterranean” types were inherently dirty and inferior to people of northern European heritage.  Not unlike the Blacks, they were attacked by the Ku Klux Klan, were hanged, their churches vandalized and worse.

Anti-immigrant sentiment continued until the 1920s, when severe restrictions on immigration were put into place by the U.S. Congress. When this legislation passed, the great era of Italian immigration came to an end.   Source- Library of Congress – Immigration and Relocation in US History.

People of color, LBGTQ and others.

From early days slavery, through the Emancipation Proclamation and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and  although reauthorized in 2006 by President George Bush, the white privileged and right-wing faction of our population of Americans have fought tooth and nail to preserve discrimination and take hard earn rights from minorities.  From eliminating polling places in Texas, banning distribution of water to voters while waiting to cast their ballots,  to overt, gun-carrying intimidation at polling places and  creating new legislation to curtail voting rights and even banning teaching knowledge on the past, these atrocities continue relentlessly.

The common thread is the use of any means possible, including the law to serve as a barrier, preventing all men as being treated as equal under the 14^th amendment.

Now we come to the word WOKE.  The Merriam-Webster defines WOKE as meaning “that someone is informed educated and conscious of social injustice and racial inequity”.

There is nothing different, nothing new in “WOKE”, it can represent all of the struggles outlined above… BUT has now become a calling card for reactionary Republicans  for as Mr. DeSantis has stated “We reject woke ideology”.

Former president Trump has proposed eliminating federal funding for “any school or program pushing critical race theory, gender ideology or other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content onto our children.”

If these laws are not sufficient, in the quest to become more “Anglo” many. Americans simply changed their names or the pronunciation. Some more recognizable families that changed their name include  Donald Drumpf is now Donald Trump and it is Mr. “DEE”santis or MR “DUH”santis, who lead the charge – whose names were likely changed to avoid ethnic discrimination.

OUR PAST IS PROLOGUE.

So… all together now, let’s ban books, forbid teaching of our past and restrict education.  Words have meaning and words are powerful so let’s also curtail our First Amendment rights to even speak the views of many, at the peril of the masses.