To The Man Who Called Me Woke
To the white man who co-opted a phrase intended to celebrate the ability to be open to a myriad of points of view and experiences and called me “woke” as a pejorative insult, as an accusation that I am naive and judgmental, I ask, “How, sir, can you be asleep?”
How can you be asleep when the news flashes another mass shooting, another bombing, another youth slaughtered, another death of a police officer, or another victim of police violence? The media feeds it to us daily. How do you look away? Is it too sensational? Does it breed fear?
How do you avoid our history, sir, and not see the karmic debt we hold? A country founded on genocide, slavery, and neo-imperialism? You see, acknowledging pain in our history does not deny our accomplishments. I can be thankful for the rights I hold. I am grateful as a woman born into poverty, that I had access to education. I can be proud of the advances we have made. I can also call out when we are not at our best. Why is the acknowledgment of pain threatening? Why are you angry at my ability to say, yes, this progress came at a cost to people.
Yes, sir, I started waking when I was four. I started waking when:
My mother instructed me to lie to my father about visiting Jimmy, the dark-skinned boyfriend of my mother’s friend Jane. He was the kindest adult I had met. Why would my dad…
