Words

“The Conservative Party has republished the English-language version of its platform after what it says was a "publishing oversight" resulted in the omission of a previous commitment to crack down on "woke ideology" in the public service and federal funding for university research”.

CBC News, April 23, 2025

Canadians go to the polls today to elect a federal parliament. The above statement from one of the parties hoping to form a majority government bothers me for several reasons.

Does the Conservative Party know the history of the term, “woke”?  It does not come from our Canadian culture – though it might have done so for a few. It came from the US black community out of their own history. The Oxford English Dictionary does add words from time to time and this definition appears now:

“woke, adjective: Originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice; frequently in stay woke.”

It also notes that the word was slang coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement and borrowed from the sixties era need for black people, especially in the south, to be aware of how their lives could well be in danger in certain situations. That applied elsewhere then too. I can remember being in Washington DC visiting with a classmate of my husband’s. His friend, an Episcopal priest, was stopped by the police, because the assumption was that if he were driving a new late model care, he must have stolen it. We were to go out to dinner together, and he also observed that he could think of a couple of restaurants where a white couple and a black man could be let in together. That wasn’t the land of the free but for some, it had to be the home of the brave.

So what is Anti-Woke ideology? It appears to be anti-DEI.

The opposite of diversity is monopoly perhaps, - or even monotony.

The opposite of equity is inequity – or perhaps unfairness.

The opposite of inclusiveness is exclusiveness – or perhaps superiority based on birth or upbringing or skin colour.

It’s not easy to be Canadian in a country where most of the population lives within 100 miles of the border to the south and strung out across a vast and varied geography. As the writer, Tony Judt, observed, it is easier for a small compact country to be a democracy than a large one like ours.  We are a country of immigrants, where nearly half of the population of our largest city were born outside Canada.  In spite of a recent tragedy we are mostly peaceful and try to get along.

We don’t need any political party to adopt words from another country that are so emotionally charged.  If there are injustices here – and there are in any democracy, let us face them on our own terms. Diversity is one of our strengths. Equity is one of our aspirations. Everyone Matters.