Using "Woke-ness" to Hide Weakness: How We Might be Exploiting Social Awareness to Get Attention
In the world of high school, rumors fly fast and texts fly faster. Social media posts circulate like birds searching for prey. When you're seeing the same people for 7 hours, 5 days a week, for 4 years, trust me, everyone knows everything. Which makes it even more critical to craft a seamless persona for yourself -- an identity guaranteed to carry you to the top of the social ladder. High school has it's own economic system, and while you are busy engineering this personal identity, everything is fair game for currency: from the number of compliments you get on your outfit, to the number of likes on your latest Facebook post, to the number of people on the guest list for your party. And, when you live in a privileged upper-class American suburb, you can add one more item to that list: your perceived "woke-ness".
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, the term "woke" refers to a person's social awareness. A little more research shows me that the term has roots in African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Since it's emergence into popular culture, the word has taken on a specific significance to the BLM movement.* (Just this small bit of information alerts me to the fact that many people, myself included, are guilty of appropriating the word as well as the culture surrounding it).
As with most teenagers my age, my first introduction to the idea of social awareness came from Twitter. Increasingly, teenagers are turning to social media and their peers to gain information about social issues and current affairs. My high school experience, including the time I spend on social media, has opened me up to a new level of acceptance and tolerance for my fellow human beings. My interactions with other teenagers, both from my school and around the world, have forced me to reconsider and begin the journey of educating myself about themes as wide reaching as feminism, gender fluidity and norms, racism, and mental health, just to name a few. I have no doubt that my introduction to these topics has made me a better person, a person more willing to consider the world from someone else's perspective. Yet, lately, I have been thinking a lot about the uglier side of "social awareness", the side that causes us to brandish our "intellectual superiority" and put down people who we feel are not as "woke" as ourselves.
When you live in a safe, wealthy community that emphasizes hard work and higher education, it is not difficult to maintain a level of social sensitivity. But what happens when we come face to face with the very issues we preach about on social media? How often could you walk through the halls of my high school, hearing the same girls who retweeted a feminist tweet ten minutes ago, now slut-shaming another classmate? I will be the first to admit that teenagers have done, and are currently doing, amazing work for social causes. But when social awareness becomes the new "cool", hypocrisy is bound to exist.
I believe in the power of my generation. I believe that we are a generation of do-ers and risk-takers. I believe that we truly can change the world . But I also know that for us to be successful, we must continue to listen to each others stories. We must be willing to invite others to the conversation. We must make the effort to continually learn, continually evolve. Above all, we must not fall into the trap of letting our progressive values serve simply as medals to advance our status.
*https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/woke-meaning-origin