Woke: Term invented by folks who have (many times with effort) lived their whole lives in a mono-chromatic – mono-cultural environment and who, at one point in their lives, usually when they find themselves in a position of power and influence, decide that what they have been doing all along (add the fictional term ‘white guilt here’) is wrong and they have to demonstrate to the world that they have ‘Woke Up’ from their horrid lives and now they want applause and affirmation that now they are the ones who are ‘in the know’ and the ‘duty experts’ on all things racial and everyone needs to do as they say or they will be identified as ‘not woke’ and ‘racists.’

This is a version of ‘virtue signalling’, a way for those who want attention to demonstrate to the world that they now have great virtue and need to be lauded. And followed. Some leaders have threatened their workers with employment elsewhere unless all those under them are ‘on board’ with the leaders now very virtuous, very woke position and direction.

Another aspect of this is to all of a sudden recognition of the value of appointments based, not or very loosely on qualification, but on some specific identity, be it racial or gender related. Often there are calls for the in place leadership who are to a tee mono-chromatic, to step down and instead have put in place someone of a more variegated aspect. Interestingly enough, these are all calls for ‘others’ to do so, no ‘woke’ leader, to my knowledge, have they themselves stepped down and orchestrated a replacement more suited to their new, wokeness.

Those who have lived and worked in multicultural environments (read military, public school teachers, etc.) all or most of their lives know that the key to any relationship is to always be fair and kind to everyone and look to merit and qualifications before artificial aspects of race or gender or whatever else is deemed the present ‘virtuous’ qualifier. I seem to recall someone who should know something on this issue stating that they “have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”