“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”Members of today’s culture seem to be close followers of Mr. Dumpty. They employ words I have a great difficulty in understanding. One of them is “Woke Generation.” According to some sources, this phrase originated as part of African-American Vernacular English. I seem to recall hearing about Black Speech, or nonstandard English, many years ago, although I lost track of it when “rapping” became popular. I am unaware of when such words were formalized as AAVE.
Nevertheless, the Woke Generation became evident more than ten years ago. The phrase identified those who were alert to the conditions leading to racial prejudice and discrimination. The term became broadened to include awareness of other social inequalities, such as sexism. Its focus was enlarged from an interest limited to the effects of white privilege on Blacks and of reparations for descendants of formerly enslaved people to a focus that would include all issues relating to social justice. Activists in the Black Lives Matter movement began to use the term to include those who urge awareness of police abuses. At the same time, the words “woke generation” were employed by Conservatives as a pejorative to include those who follow an intolerant and moralizing ideology in which political correctness has gone too far.
This, of course, brings us to the term, Political Correctness. Originally, the words were used to identify and avoid any language, policies, or actions that might give offense, or result in a disadvantage, to members of particular groups in society, especially minorities or those considered to be “disadvantaged.” Again, the phrase became a pejorative with an implication that any inclusions, relating to these referenced policies, are excessive or unwarranted.
Humpty Dumpty was alive and well. He became the subject of academic investigations labeled: Critical Race Theory. Discussion of the topic originally was limited to a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement of civil-rights scholars and activists who examined the intersection of race and law as applied to racial justice. They studied whether racism is the result of complex changing social and institutional dynamics rather than from the explicit and intentional prejudices of individuals. Are the interests of white people, in relationship with those of people of color, due to governmental laws that are not neutral, but play significant roles in maintaining racially unjust social order? Accordingly, CRT would maintain that race is not “biologically grounded,” but is a social construct used by a white society to oppress and exploit people of color.
In the last few years, this advanced academic study has moved into the general population, who questions whether it should be taught at elementary and secondary educational levels in public schools. As a result, Conservative lawmakers have sought to ban or restrict the instruction of CRT, along with other anti-racism education, so that the predominate white society will not feel shamed for its former actions.
Part of the problem involves the use of “narrative” in describing the history of people. In one narrative, people of color, considered outsiders in mainstream US culture, are portrayed in media and law through stereotypes and stock characters that have been adapted over time to shield the dominant culture from discomfort and guilt. One narrative begins with slaves in the 18th-century Southern States depicted as childlike and docile. Harriet Beecher Stowe adapted this stereotype, through her character Uncle Tom, rendering him as a gentle, long-suffering, pious Christian. Following the Civil War, the African-American woman was depicted as a wise, care-giving “Mammy” figure. During the Reconstruction period, African-American men were stereotyped as brutish and bestial, a danger to white women; the epic film The Birth of a Nation, celebrating the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, was an example of this narrative. During the Harlem Renaissance, African-Americans were depicted as “musically talented” and “entertaining.” Al Jolson, a white minstrel-man, preserved this image. Following World War II, African Americans were portrayed as cocky and street-smart or as a safe, comforting, cardigan-wearing, TV-sitcom character.
Very recently, the narrative for race has been expanded as a result of comments by Whoopie Goldberg, a successful Black entertainer, who said that the Holocaust was an example of man’s inhumanity against man, in which both the master and the victim were white people. She has been criticized for an erroneous interpretation, since it was the Jewish race that was the victim of the Nazis who, as the Aryan race, sought to exterminate what they called the inferior Jewish race. As a result, her appearance on a daily TV show was cancelled for three weeks, even though she recanted her error.
This event calls to mind another phrase, Cancel Culture, which is a modern form of ostracism more often used in debates on free speech and censorship rather than for a television program. With this term, Conservatives refer to those who are perceived to have suffered disproportionate reactions as a result of politically incorrect speech. In these instances, support is withdrawn, or cancelled, for public figures who have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. According to them, cancel culture resembles vigilante justice employed to punish and shame dissenters.
Yes, Humpty Dumpty appears to be alive and well, using words according to his own definitions. On the other hand, Lewis Carroll, penned another short rhyme, one which may have future relevance: ”Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall/ Humpty Dumpty had a great fall/ All the king’s horses and all the king’s men/ Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”