Hadassa Larissa Ferreira, Contributing Writer
A remarkable fact is that the newer generations love to attach a label to things. With the woke culture movement, it would not be different. In the past 10 years, the world has been attached to the idea of awareness of social issues and injustices. Although the first use of the word “woke” started popping up in the 1940s, currently, it has been used to talk about several underprivileged groups and has evolved into something much bigger.
Being “woke” is related to the acknowledgment of all the prejudices, racism, and intolerance that our society was constructed upon. It is to recognize that even though all humans are equal and deserve the same rights, people are not equal in practice since, historically, serious events have happened that held back the development of some groups. It is to recognize that society is marked by those happenings and that there are groups who suffer the consequences even nowadays.
The woke culture movement has raised awareness toward the different weights of things to diverse types of people. It has shown how society evaluates black people differently for doing the same thing as white people. Also, how some actions are judged differently if it is a woman doing it, or how an LGBTQ+ person faces tough challenges to just be accepted.
If the woke culture movement is bringing up all this reparatory justice, why is it controversial and why do some people have restraints regarding it? Well, together with all the awareness, it also came the necessity to punish and boycott everyone who commits acts considered offensive. It created the cancel culture movement.
Rather than incentivizing people to be against racism, homophobia, and sexism with practical actions of inclusion, the woke culture movement is intimidating people who commit mistakes and are willing to exclude and “cancel” them.
Some think that the cancel culture movement is about being superior to someone that is not “woke” yet, which is contradictory to the movement at its core.
“Cancel culture is kind of stupid,” said Kennedy DeSylvia, a freshman student who majors in psychology. “What is the point of canceling somebody if their career is already beyond what you can imagine?”
After all, the controversy around the woke culture movement, the state of Florida tried to pass a new law that limits the discussion of racism and privilege in schools and workplace training.
In short, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s law aimed to forbid schools to teach that individuals, regarding their race, color, sex, and origin, hold responsibility for past historical happenings. The law was blocked by a federal judge that sees the law as an unnecessary form of censorship from the state, picking and choosing what topics to illuminate and which ones to keep in the dark.
The fact is that the “woke” and the “cancel” culture movements are at the forefront of American society. With the advance of the internet, people can now call out others for their intolerance and prejudices but on the flip side, this can also mess with others’ mental health through the cancel culture movement.
