We Speak for Ourselves by D. Watkins

Author:D. Watkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

PART 3

NEVER PATRIOTS

10

I’M SICK OF WOKE

“Big bruh, I got these #StayWoke shirts for twenty dollars!” said the dude I’ve bought my incense from for over five years now. His shop is just a little ways away from my neighborhood and he always has a nice selection.

Dude bagged my goods, I paid him and proceeded to walk away as he grabbed me by the sleeve of my hoodie to show off his new merch.

“I’m good, bro,” I said. “I’m not really woke!”

He laughed, “You betta wake up, man, it’s a jungle out there! Stay woke!”

I shot a peace sign at him and left the store.

Everybody’s woke now, right? I wonder how that’s working out?

The term “woke” simply refers to not being asleep, not being ignorant to the issues that plague black America—racism, poor schools, food deserts, crooked cops, our broken justice system, unfair hiring practices, and the banks that bury us with vicious Black Taxes like unfair interest rates on mortgages. You know . . . the hurdles.

Woke people know the origins of everything that hurts black people, the policies that allow these systems to function, and have the most effective language when given the opportunity to explain these issues, mainly online or during the intermission at spoken-word readings. Woke people are smart—they are normally educated with at least one bachelor’s degree, keep a copy of a James Baldwin or bell hooks book on their person, have a passport, are fluent in all forms of social media, and have been to Cuba at least once since Obama lifted the embargo.

Woke people wear locs or baby fros and use coconut oil, olive oil, and hemp soap. They blog, they have a brand, they wrap themselves in henna or war paint at festivals even though they rarely engage in a physical war, if they ever engage at all.

Woke people have the best graphic T-shirts and catchiest hashtags. They have great jobs or no job because their families can afford to float them, they are the first to pop up at a protest, take the best viral images, and run home to talk about it on the internet. Sharing variations of the same image repeatedly. Here are some of my favorites:

• Group selfie at the protest

• Screaming at a cop they’d never touch

• Definitely that iconic image where a small group does the black power fist pump

• Solo image doing the black power fist pump

• And if you are lucky, you’ll get that newsworthy clip of yourself being arrested, shouting “fight the power” as you go off to be detained for three hours

I went to two protests before I realized they weren’t for me. The woke crowd seemed off and I didn’t know why. I guess it felt like everybody was talking to a group of people who don’t listen. It wasn’t until Donald Stevenson, a real activist sitting in the audience at a panel I sat on in Southeast DC, broke it down that I understood.

I shared the stage with two well-known authors and community leaders, reentry expert Tony Lewis Jr.

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