don’t ‘woke’

Tonight seems like as good a time as any to un­leash this rant I’ve been want­i­ng to for a while, so here it goes …

I don’t like ‘woke.’

I’d rather you didn’t call me ‘woke’ even if you mean it as a compliment. 

The prob­lem I have with ‘woke’ (and I re­al­ize this is a very well-mean­ing term meant to sep­a­rate me from peo­ple that refuse to wake up and see and all that) is this: Maybe this is a white peo­ple thing, but we have this way of find­ing out what the pos­i­tive terms are and grav­i­tat­ing and in­gra­ti­at­ing our­selves to­ward them. 

It’s so­cio­path­ic, but we key­word. Hard. We find a way to do just enough of the con­spic­u­ous pub­lic things that will get us a ti­tle (and we love ti­tles) and we will con­struct among our­selves an arms race to get our­selves there, even if (and es­pe­cial­ly when) we don’t mean it. We want that tro­phy. And wok­e­ness has of late be­come an­oth­er so­cial tro­phy. So we will present our­selves in what­ev­er way gets us that tro­phy in the quick­est and most pub­lic manner.

Fur­ther, it’s an as­pi­ra­tional ti­tle for what should be a ba­sic de­fault set­ting: You don’t need to be woke. Just don’t be a hor­ri­ble piece of shit. Be cu­ri­ous. Lis­ten to peo­ple. Es­pe­cial­ly peo­ple that are dif­fer­ent than you are and maybe give them the ben­e­fit of the doubt about what they say their life is, even if it seems far-fetched to you. 

I don’t need to be woke. I just want to not be terrible.
 
 

—ja­son malmberg

Flom­mist Ja­son Malm­berg is a sim­ple man who be­lieves in brown liquor and small dogs. He also makes art some­times. Copy­right © 2018 Ja­son Malm­berg. Pic­tured: Alek­san­dra Ek­ster, Cos­tume De­sign for Sa­lome, 1917, source.

MOR D’ARTÍCULOS  MOR FLOMM !

READ SOME  RELATED  DER TUNG  POSTS  :

in­fe­ri­or artists colum­bus broad­cast system con­verse­ly deep killing this will al­ways be this? go­ing forward sort­ing fab­u­lous­flomm­ness