For one who enjoys words and how when used properly can elicit a gamut of human response from joy to anger, from antipathy to action. But I don’t always warm up to new usages of old words that spring from who knows where. Journalists and social scientists I suspect act as genesis for these updated definitions, but it is politicians and the social media culture most responsible for their spread across the land.
The word “woke” falls into this category of early use turned on its ear eight decades later. The term was originally used first back in the 1930s by Black writers and lyricists; to stay woke meant to be ever mindful of life in racist times. In the mid-2020s, conservatives adapted the word as a slur to those thought too liberal in their attitudes toward social issues of racial injustice.
We learn things in stages; you don’t teach calculus or metal shop to children without first introducing years of math and art classes. But there does come a time. My first year at Hartnell Junior (then) College a young female instructor used a text called “Underside” in her American history class. In it were stories our previous history teachers had failed to fully cover on our way to “gradual indoctrination”; aka graduation. We got more historical detail that helped us better understand how or past determines our future.
A quick example is why today, when looking at the whole Jeffrey Epstein situation, it is understandable why many people can support a man with a record of mistreating women and who is suspected by many to have mistreated minor females when such acceptance has been part of our history. While the genealogy is too much to record here, it is a fact that while between the ages of 14 and 16 years, a slave named Sally Hemings was impregnated by her mid-40s owner Thomas Jefferson; a not uncommon occurrence in America at the time.
My 14-year-old granddaughter Leilani lives in Oklahoma, where the education system is ranked 50th out of, well, 50. I sent her a book written by a lady of Japanese descent who spent time in the relocation camp at Manzanar during the Second World War. Lani is one-quarter Japanese. So, because few young people read books outside of school, I am encouraging her to become a bit more “woke” about Americas’ past; both the good and the bad. I doubt that after reading the book the Japanese part of her will develop a sudden mistrust of white people any more than if one of her Anglo friends were to read the same book and develop an inferiority complex. I do believe both would benefit from a bit of history that will help them guide their future paths. “The only thing that is really new is the history you don’t know.” Harry Truman said that.
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In last week’s column I used a quote and stated I didn’t know the originator. I was being lazy because in the video (film actually) that introduced me to those words, the speaker was a middle-aged Frank Sinatra. Obviously, someone wanted to press a point and used a celebrity to voice it, but I didn’t figure Ol’ Blue Eyes with only a Hoboken high school diploma was the author and didn’t figure you folks would buy it either and I didn’t feel like doing the research. I got caught. The author was Konstantin Jirecek, born in Vienna in 1854, and was an intellect. This I know because John did the research just to keep me in line. You see John is one of the old Greenfield Fifth Street Gang from the late ’50s, early ’60s and we watch out for each other.
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It would take a whole chapter in the book I’m never going to write to explain my personal journey from when racial barriers separated me from my fellow students of Mexican descent to the present day where acceptance is the norm. And it is not my acceptance of them, but their acceptance of me. I look back on photos of my birthdays of the early school years and regret that among the faces there is no Richard or Danny, no Virginia or Gloria, nor any of the dozen or so Mexicans from classrooms and playgrounds. I am not content looking back on how easily I fell under the rhetoric against Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Worker’s plight. Now when I hear the ice cream truck coming down the road in mid-summer blaring out Christmas jingles, I don’t get offended; music is music when it comes to ice cream clarions.
A better understanding of history certainly aided in my change of attitude, most notably the whole policy known as “Manifest Destiny”; two words that held such serious connotation young minds could only be impressed and convinced of its purpose. In reality it was a massive land grab, mostly by military force. While I could go on, a chapter’s worth, I’ll keep it short by saying the other day I was at SVF in the beautifully decorated Pavillion among a couple of hundred people of all ages celebrating a Quincenera. Her name is Adamari; she is my next-door neighbor whom I have known her by her nickname Angie since she was about 3 years old. I was the only white guy, the only non-Spanish speaker, and not once was I uncomfortable. These people were celebrating in a land they have been tied to for centuries. One little fact helps me keep this in mind: the tamale is 8,000 years old.
It is just after 4 a.m. Monday morning and as I finish up this column, there is very heavy rainfall taking place outside; a sure ’nough gully washer. That will surely raise water levels from rivulets to creeks to rivers here in the Valley and up and down the state. Drive accordingly, please.
Take care. Peace.
