Mariella Gattini

A language can not be reversed at will. Languages are conventions and are built generation after generation, so they can not be changed by one person on a whim, not even by one party’s interests.

Propaganda always takes on this unattainable goal by taking possession of a little word like “woke” and by reversing its definition, but this new artificial meaning does not last over time, what remains is the awareness of the racism behind this attempt. “Woke” was initially used by Black Americans to identify those aware of the oppression, discrimination, and injustice they’ve endured for centuries. During the Trump Administration, the far-right transformed it into a mocking term to obliterate the efforts of the ones trying to introduce the real history of Black Americans in the United States into public education, instead of the history that has been written and taught for centuries by mainly Anglo-Saxon scholars.

It is an up-stream battle: The far-right’s intention to impose their fractured and corrupted language versus that of those who want to change public education in order to improve its core by introducing a history never taught before. The proponents of laws that prohibit this change in the education curriculum in states like Florida are using excuses, such as the need to protect Anglo-Saxon kids from feelings of racial guilt, especially when it comes to talk about slavery and its history here in this country. All these laws want to accomplish is to reaffirm the fact that Anglo-Saxon kids can behave with impunity and get away with it, reinforced by a written history tailored made for them. However, these laws are fruitless, they are only weak barricades that can not withstand the vast torrent of true knowledge.

The use of the pronoun “we” for example has been utilized to overlook the differences between populations. In my case, I use it to identify the human race as a whole, independent from our idiosyncratic and racial differences, or to speak about women, since I’m one more of them in the crowd, but never with the intention of speaking for all of them. That’s not the case for the far-right. They use “we” as the antonym of “them” creating a dreadful antagonism useful in the expression of their twisted minds. However, this is simply semantics conducive to create differences that overlook and disregard the needs of the ones outside their racial spectrum.

Another term used by the far-right is “okay”, which means all right, but the “OK” hand gesture (probably with the right hand) has been taken by the far-right and distorted into “alt-right”, when it simply came from Oskar Krause, the Ford worker that put his initials on every car he inspected, according to popular belief.

TV and the internet are sources of information and entertainment, but they are not conducive to knowledge. The fact that we, as human beings, have a big amount of data in our hands thanks to the internet doesn’t mean that we are knowledgeable of all the information that data provides. So kids need experienced teachers who can help in the processing of all that data. Albert Einstein once said, paraphrasing, that all that remains from our education are the things we remember years later, not the ones we memorize for a test. Those memorized lines are the first to go from our mind because we use our short-term memory as storage in that case, and that memory has a very short span.

What we can do to help, in this weaponization of words coming from the far-right blind objectives, is to remember the words’ original meanings. “Woke” is a powerful word that means being aware of social issues that have been pressing on a large, undermined, and minoritized population for centuries, and integrating this awareness into the public education curriculum is the first step to accept the realities of a past that will continue to haunt us until we face it head-on. “We” is another strong word that can be used for the benefit of every human being who opens their minds to things the way they truly are, and navigates them until something comes to mind to help solve our core issues. “Okay”, or “OK”, is a word that we should embrace not as a political, fractured, propaganda piece of garbage, but as the original term that serves us to express the fact that even if we are going through so much as a country, we still are standing on our own two feet, aware of the ones who want to bully us with their sociopathic distortions and cruelty.

A language can not be changed at will by one individual, not even by one party’s interests. Languages are conventions, in other words, languages are agreements between people to be able to make sense of the world around us, in that way we produce the stability we need to create a new and better world that can give way not only to the English language, but to all the languages known to humans. In this country, we can collaborate by taking back basic words that have been manipulated and distorted, and integrate them back to our everyday vocabulary in its original meaning, in that way, we send a message to the rest of the world that says, we are listening and we care about them. By reclaiming those words from the language used in those bullies’ propaganda, we are saying to the world that the people of this country do not stand by those bullies, that we are a majority determined to be there for the ones who want to reason with us and get things done once and for all.

The English language, especially the American English language should move away from the imperialistic intent that once reigned to become, and remain, a language that serves as a means of communication between different cultures for mutual understanding and growth to be able to reconcile our differences for the benefit of all the parties involved.