Being woke has been a thing for a while. I’d say since 2013/2014 or so. It picked up heavily in 2016 with all that was going on that year. By the end of 2016 everyone was woke, including me. It really spread like a wildfire. For a time between 2017 and last year, it seemed as if everyone wanted to out-woke, one another. Person A was woke, but Person B was woke-er. Celebrities and media personalities started getting into wokeness, and then shit really hit the fan. Twitter was a wild site for a minute. I remember some of the fights that happened between liberal/woke celebrities and regular folks and conservative celebrities. It was funny and obnoxious. People were really fighting hard.
I grew tired of woke-ness when the pandemic hit in the midst of what would end up being one of the most embarrassing and absurd election cycles in recent history. Don’t get me wrong, the 2016 election cycle was bad, but last year’s cycle was even worse. People really were losing their shit last year. Woke-ness really was at an all time smug high. Everything became a test of who was woke. It got really annoying, really fast. During all this, identity politics had picked up speed as well. Before 2016, identity politics was a thing, but not so blunt in everyone’s face. From 2016 to last year, and even to today, identity politics permeates everything. Like woke-ness, identity politics is another barometer test. How many identities can you check off of a box. Person A is a cis-gender lesbian Black American, but Person B is a non-binary pansexual neuro-divergent Native American. You see the issue here. Everyone wants/needs a label if you are following the identity politics scheme.
Identity politics is obnoxious too. Instead of focusing on what qualities someone has, it focuses on small details of that person. Yes, your race, gender, sexuality is part of who you are, but it is not ALL that you are. Yet, this culture war wants everyone to believe that their race, gender, and sexuality is the most important thing ever. It isn’t. I understand the human need to be apart of something, but identity politics isn’t the way to go in my opinion. I don’t believe that identity politics is helpful. It causes more division than anything. I’m tired of division. It’s exhausting to be honest.
There has to be a better way to exist. The culture wars are annoying. The woke-ness is annoying. I’m Black yes, but that is not the end all be all to my identity. I want there to be a time in our lives where our race/gender/sexual orientation isn’t that big of a deal. We are like a pie, our race/gender/sexual orientation, are pieces of our pie. We are all humans first, and if we don’t come together, we will always be at war. When are we going to get tired of fighting one another?
