Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who wants to be president, is against everything “woke.”
To imagine the policies he’d inflict on all 50 states as president, we need to figure out what he means by “woke.”
Mother Jones says (here) that DeSantis, “chief warrior in the crusade against ‘wokeness,’ has hurled the word at so many targets as to render it meaningless.”
That’s not quite true. While he, and other Republicans, use “woke” much the same way they use “communist” (i.e., if you’re a Democrat, you’re a “communist”), it does refer to something. It just so happens a lot of things are “woke,” because there’s not much they like.
Still, it’s slang, and therefore not a term you’d expect to hear in court. But when DeSantis fired an elected Democratic prosecutor, who’s now suing for reinstatement, he called the prosecutor a “woke ideologue.” The prosecutor’s lawyers want to know what he meant.
Under questioning, DeSantis staffers said it refers to a belief “there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them,” and gratuitously added that “DeSantis doesn’t believe there are systemic injustices in the U.S.” (see story here).
Systemic injustices identified by progressive activists include “redlining, environmental racism, discriminatory policing.” They would also include discrimination against LGBQT+ people, income inequality, unequal access to health care, etc. According to DeSantis, none of these things exist; or, even if they do, he’ll refuse to do anything about them.
Actually DeSantis has gone farther; he’s tried to suppress America’s fraught racial history in Florida schools, and force private companies like Google and Facebook to disseminate conservative propaganda.
In any event, we’re not going to get a clear definition of “woke” from this lawsuit. We won’t even get a fixed legal definition, because in the legal system, the meaning of words can change from one lawsuit to the next.
This only tells us Republicans like things just the way they are, they’re against social progress, and they’ll use political power to impose their cultural beliefs and practices on everyone.
Which we already know.