A memo by the organization Third Way, which bills itself as center-left, featuring a list of 45 “woke” words Democrats should never say again, got a lot of attention recently – much of it hilarious. You can probably rattle off some big offenders pretty easily: birthing person, microaggression, the unhoused, incarcerated people, patriarchy, and I’m delighted they included my own favorite, most loathsome term, stakeholder.
The reason for this call for a ban (that the authors insist is not a ban because insisting on standards of any kind – behavior, qualifications, decorum, or terminology — isn’t allowed on the left) is explained,
The intent of this language is to include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace. The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness.
That may be because the people your article is talking to are, in fact, extreme, divisive, elitist enforcers of wokeness. I mean, have you seen the level of screeching, incessant vitriol leveled at women like J.K. Rowling and Riley Gaines for simply recognizing that biological men are, well, men. Always have been, always will be, so says science. Or the lunatic support to the point of violence for giving a recognized country to a misogynistic, anti-gay, genocidally antisemitic, theocratic terrorist organization as a reward for committing one of the most heinous crimes against humanity in modern history in the name of (newly banned word) intersectionality.
Third Way ultimately can’t square the circle of their argument, insisting that the weird, woke language the Left insists on using is unintentionally obscuring mainstream policy objectives. But then they admit, “…they use it because plain, authentic language that voters understand often rebounds badly….” In other words, speaking in clear language about what these people intend to do is repellent, so they have to come up with their bizarre woke-speak in a nonsensical attempt to make it somehow palatable to mainstream voters, only for that to come off as even more offensive and out of the mainstream.
Sorry, but that should indicate your problem isn’t the superficial language, it’s the root policies. Or, as a progressive hero, Lyndon Johnson was fond of saying, “You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken [poop].” And on this point, it’s important to note that what Third Way recommends here is cosmetic. There’s no call to abandon the whacky underlying programs like defunding police forces, “transitioning” pre-pubescent children, and the anti-human, economically suicidal energy polices coming from a quasi-religious perspective on climate change. These things they continue to unapologetically defend.
As the authors insist, “We will never abandon our values…,” just the verbiage. Good luck with this. Take one of their newly banned terms as an example: Latinx, the woke term for Latino/Latina, eliminating the Spanish language’s millennium-plus-old history of having masculine and feminine words, which offends the (newly banned term) “LGBTQIA+” community because of its (newly banned term) “heteronormative” nature.
But can you think of a better example of elitists using their “white privilege” to “culturally appropriate” a language spoken primarily by “people of color” and “intellectually colonize” a “minoritized community” than the absurdity that is the term “Latinx” being foisted on Spanish speakers? I can’t. Given that something like 96-97 percent of Latinos and Latinas do not use the term themselves, and almost all of those who know about it despise it, back me up on this. But these wokes are so narcissistically wound up in their own self-righteousness, they can’t see that they are the thing they are supposedly offended by.
Seriously, how can it even be possible to maintain the values that lead one to someplace like Latinx but somehow find “authentic-sounding” words to explain the imposition of an inauthentic, made-up word that would somehow sound normal in any way to normal people? I look forward to watching the attempt, should it be made, which I seriously doubt, with all due respect to the persuasive capacities of Third Way.
That said, as Progressive Democrats attempt to abandon their woke-speak, I will encourage those on the center right to adopt our own politically correct (but in this case I mean the “accurate” definition of the word) term for those suffering in our society through no fault of their own: “people experiencing progressive policies.”
The phrase came as a throwaway line in a recent column, but since then it has been rattling around my head and growing on me. People experiencing homelessness? No. These are “people experiencing progressive policies.” Specifically, housing policies that drive up the cost and availability of shelter, law (non)enforcement policies that encourage anti-social behavior, and welfare policies that subsidize the lifestyle.
Victims of crime, either direct or indirect – thinking of the residents and businesses in Burlington and Brattleboro these days? They’re just people experiencing progressive policies. The same applies to folks who are having trouble accessing healthcare or paying their property taxes. Kids who graduate from high school who can’t read or do math proficiently, they’re just people experiencing progressive policies.
It works! Clear, accurate, sympathetic, and to the point. Maybe it will catch on. It’s definitely better than Latinx.
