Say what, Huddie?

As he said at the very start of this blog series, The Grasshopper chirrups in fury when the mainstream media bundles big issues into tiny frames, painted to appeal to those who go only for the colour of the frame without glancing at the detail of the picture within. As soon as the BBC tells us ‘This is what you need to know…’ we hop off. The G. will decide himself what he needs to know, thank you very much.

An even more infuriating tendency is to give a label to a frame. And of all the misappropriated, misused and – it seems – misunderstood labels, ‘woke’ is way up there.

What does ‘woke’ even mean? To the liberal elite (now there’s a label if there ever was one) it’s everything that’s good about being aware of the big social justice issues of our day – the gender debate, systemic racism, climate change, intersectionality of all kinds. Gay whales against racism, and all that. To social conservatives (another label) it’s everything that’s wrong with the above - social media tyranny, cancel culture, virtue signalling and all that guff.

So, where did this word ‘woke’ come from?

As is often the case, some way to the answer can be found in blues music, or at least in the social structure of the US in the first part of the 20th Century that gave rise to blues music and the great troubadours of the age, like Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly. Let’s hear what Huddie had to say on the subject…

In 1938 or thereabouts, Lead Belly made a recording – one of many for the Smithsonian Folkways collection - of his song ‘Scottsboro Boys’. As often happened on these recordings, the artist also gave a short commentary on what the song is about. On this one, Lead Belly talks about the famous case of the nine African-American teenagers (if you’re unfamiliar with it, look it up) who were imprisoned for 6 years after hoboing through Alabama alongside two white women (but, it turned out, nothing more than that). After his song about this famous miscarriage of justice, Lead Belly’s narrative finishes with ‘…I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there – best stay woke, keep their eyes open.’

So, Huddie, woke means stay awake, keep your eyes open, don’t get caught out, right? Yep, says Huddie, stay woke. And this was its meaning for many years – until the soon-to-be-called ‘wokies’ (mis)appropriated it, and those opposed to them weaponised it, and so it goes on.

But here’s The Grasshopper’s main point, for today at least. While everyone is using up so much brainpower trying to figure out what that damn word ‘woke’ really means – and while, no doubt, users of the word in its original form have moved on to find another to mean the same thing – folks are taking their eyes of the abuses of power and privilege that the political classes of all colours are currently pushing out to the nth degree.

Now THAT’S what we really need to be woke to.