What AOC gets right – and wrong – about ‘Woke 1.0’ | Francine Prose

Full confession: I am one of those who have come to think that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can essentially do no wrong. At times when I most fear for the future of our country, I watch her videos and am consoled and cheered by her clarity, her honesty, her intelligence, her simple common sense. So I was a little surprised to hear that on a recent interview on ABC This Week, she quoted a political ally as having remarked: “Woke 1.0 was crazy.”

What surprised me was not that she called for some moderation of the radical positions – the call to defund the police and the military, for example – that have, at times, been an aspect of progressive politics. But I was frankly a little unnerved to hear her use the word “woke”.

The term has its roots in Black slang. “Stay woke” was originally a warning to keep alert to the dangers posed by prejudice and white supremacy. But its meaning has changed to become a synonym for what used to be referred to, also derogatorily, as “PC” – politically correct.

I’ve politely asked my colleagues at the college where I teach to avoid the word because it has so effectively been weaponized by the far right to mock and discredit anyone who supports racial justice, economic equity, universal healthcare, and many of the issues in which I too believe.

In the ABC interview, AOC explained the ways in which, during the Covid lockdown, “There was a huge opening. The doors were really open to entertain any and every policy that was trying to get us to a better place. But the rhetoric we used at that time is not the rhetoric we use today.” She went on to explain that her primary goal – improving the life of every American – has remain unchanged.

Even though I wish she’d used different language for it, I understand her suggestion that Woke 1.0 was crazy. The strict policing of language, the “cancellation” of anyone who had, at any point in their life, made a mistake that was perceived as injurious to women or people of color, the inflexible and frequently impractical notions of what can be said, taught and legislated raised the specter of a dictatorial left that devalued individual liberties and threatened our freedom of speech almost (though not quite) as much as the extreme right.

In the current issue of The Atlantic, there’s an eloquent and terrifying essay by Tyler Austin Harper, explaining why the absurd and damaging policies regarding the need to root our racism in the college curriculum and in the larger society made him decide that he – a Black scholar with a tenure-track appointment to teach interdisciplinary humanities in an environmental-studies program – had no choice but to abandon academia forever.

In 2021, it was decided that every department at Bates College, where Harper worked, must offer two courses that would “identify areas where white supremacy, ‘colonial’ frameworks, and other forms of bias might be lurking in curricula and major requirements”. This would include the science classes, taught by faculty who often had no idea how to address these complex topics.

Such courses might include a math class aimed to help students understand “the role of mathematics as a gatekeeper and driver of injustice”. A colleague suggested that when a student or teacher made a remark perceived to be insensitive, another student should call out “oops” or “ouch” as a helpful corrective.

Though some of the more extreme policies were eventually rescinded, the final effect was to make Harper decide that he no longer felt capable of functioning with any degree of personal freedom and integrity on a college campus.

The policies implemented at Bates were, I assume, typical of the Woke 1.0 ideology to which AOC was referring. Policies like those, which were heavy-handed interventions in curricula and teaching norms – and the headlines they generated – made it all too easy for the far right to ridicule the ideals of the more moderate and left-leaning Americans, and to use that ridicule as a tool to make sure that the old-fashioned, constitutionally-guaranteed aspects of our democracy – including freedom of speech and assembly – could be characterized as “radical” and even “communist”.

The infighting and mutual recrimination that this inspired between progressive and centrist Democrats made it all too easy for the right to dismiss the worthiest of ideals – freely available healthcare, childcare and education, an end to inflation and to the profiteering that has enabled billionaires to widen the income disparity so harmful to average US families – as the kind of folly that allowed the Bates community to describe an argument between white and Black students as a “lynching”.

So once again, I agree with AOC. We need to focus on what’s politically viable, on what is attainable, on what the American people so desperately need. Censorship and repression are not only counterproductive but destructive, regardless of whether those efforts come from the right or the left.

The midterms are approaching. Our country stands on the brink of a brighter or a much, much darker future. Let’s concentrate on coming together to represent the real needs and interests of our citizens and not on the labels – “woke” or ultra-conservative” – that only deepen the problems of a nation in which the average family must so often choose between feeding the children or paying the rent.

• Francine Prose is a former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her latest book is Five Weeks in the Country