You Don't Know What "Woke" Is

Being woke is a Black experience. I can tell you right now, half of you don't know what woke is (and part of it may not be your fault.)

The other day, I came across a video about a comic who decided to put a "woke" Karen in her place. She was a heckler who had spoken out at the comedy show she was attending--a practice I don't recommend. Her outrage? A joke where the comic said he didn't respect his wife for marrying him.

Great joke, but my problem lies with the click bait title the comic used. "Woke audience member put in her place." Ha! Some people just can't take a joke! Her fragile sensibilities were challenged. That's what that was, someone who can't take a joke.

I'll tell you what it wasn't. It wasn't feminism, it wasn't standing up for the comedian's wife, and it for sure wasn't woke, honey.

Being woke has always been a Black experience--take it from this Black author. So, what is being woke and how do you get there?

Woke is when you have to defend yourself from the accusations of shoplfting even when you have your receipt. Being woke is when you try to get some classic American Denny's but can't order because "they don't serve your kind." Woke is when you get yanked out of your car by the cops and realize that you "shoulda kept your Black ass at home." Being woke is knowing why some people can't say "Black Lives Matter." Being WOKE is realizing why we can't even grab a pot of hot water form off our own stovetop.

Woke is not only the happening of injustice, but also a deep knowing--the who and why. Being woke is reality shattered, it'a your whole world turned upside down. It is the understanding of who you are and who THEY are.

My mother always told me, "the truth will set you free."

The road to Black freedom isn't paved with complacency and bootlicking. It's paved with hard truths and the harsh reality of a racist and colorist America, that from childhood, the young Back person must learn to navigate--whether their eyes be closed tight or wide open.

Dear reader, let me leave you with a personal story if anything. The first time I realized I was "Black." I don't just mean African-American, but Black. Someone different, someone other.

I wasn't any older than 10. My parents let me walk myself to school, it was about a 10minute walk. I never really had troubles on my walk to school, but this one morning, I had decided to walk on the other side of the street and oh boy did I get a surprise.

A little boy came running out of his house as I began to walk by. I recognized his face. I knew this boy and even dared to think we were friends. But, he quickly ran up to me, an anger in his eyes that I couldn't understand until he punched me in the face and called me a n*gger.

Yeah, hard "er." He told me not to ever walk on his side of the street again or i'd have the shit beaten out of me.

I'd like to say I defended my honor against this boy or hit him back, but instead I cried and ran all the way to school where I complained about the assault to a teacher. Fortunately, my cries weren't ignored but it was a new reality for me.

I remember I went to the bathroom that day and looked at myself in the mirror--I looked at my brown skin and felt a self-hatred. For the firs time I felt what it meant to be Black in America and the unreasonable hosility that it came with. From there I would experience, i'm sure, what many Black children go through. I now lived in a new harsh reality that my parents couldn't save me from.

I was a similiar age when my grandma took me to a boycott. It was also a first--the first time I had cops point rifles and auomatics at me. I thought it was our right to protest, I felt proud until fear stole my every thought. Would they really gun down a child? You can Google that one.

I didn't grow up scared of cops; that fear was taught to me. And now as an adult, I watch the news and see my fellow Americans, Black people, gunned down for things as simple as knocking on a White woman's door.

I write this only weeks after the murder of Sonya Massey, who I know, despite all mental obstacles, could see far into the souls of the cops that entered her home that fateful night.

You don't know what woke is but, with an open heart, you just might begin to understand our Black experience, our lived truth. And, honey, let me tell you--the truth will set you free.