Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2023

Abstract

This Essay critically analyzes the “anti-woke” message deployed by the Conservative Political Action Conference’s (CPAC) 2023 annual meeting’s poster—the suggestion that awake is good and its synonym woke is bad—with the goal of establishing the importance of CRT in general and in education more specifically. This work shows how critical theories are key to deconstructing disingenuous messaging about the meaning of words, theoretical constructs, and historical realities.

The Work first elucidates that the meaning of awake, as utilized in myriad fields, addresses the concept of consciousness—awareness of injustices in society. Second, the Essay historicizes the origins and uses of the word woke to emphasize that it, indeed, is synonymous with awake. Following, it traces the development of critical thinking in law to establish the value and importance of critical approaches in analyzing language as well as in scrutinizing social (the family, educational and religious) institutions. The Work also shows how invaluable critical thinking is to unearthing legal structures’ often-skewed foundational values and thereby promoting a deeper understanding of constitutional values such as equality. Next, the work exposes critical analysis as a necessary precondition to the attainment of justice by utilizing the tools of CRT to unveil the intentional distortion of the meaning of woke as part of the strategy to entrench, maintain, and reify the status quo and marginalize, if not erase, difference—particularly racial, ethnic, and sexual hierarchies.

The Essay concludes that the attack on woke effectively is an erascist assault on African American language, values, and history. As such it is a symbol of the quest to perpetuate the status quo; an attempt to expunge the difficult truth of the country’s history on race unearthed by theoretical movements such as CRT’s unveiling of the racialized foundations of social institutions including law and the legal system. Erascism erasing uncomfortable racial and other social truths—appears to be the goal of the anti-wokeness fervor.

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