The headline of my novel, Mumbo Jumbo, is that something about Black Culture causes mass hysteria in America, whether it be Ragtime’s animal dances, Rock and Roll, which Zora Neale Hurston cited in 1942, or Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, against which Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia campaigned.
The current cultural Bogeyman is something called Woke, which is invoked by those with difficulty defining the concept. When CNN’s resident right-wing heavy, Scott Jennings, used it on Abby Phillip’s show, another guest, Nikole Hannah Jones of the 1619 Project, exposed his ignorance.
But what it means doesn’t matter to those who use the word as a talking point. All Trump’s Deplorables need to know is that it has something to do with Blacks, and Blacks are always aware when their enemies use euphemisms to talk about them or use Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s “signifying” about them–talking about them without using their names.
Jesse Jackson meant this by saying, “The bus is us.” So when their enemies used the word “busing,” they were signifying Blacks. The old demagogues used coarse designations to address Blacks. The new demagogues are graduates of Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, and so Critical Race Theory, which is invisible in the lower grades but cynically campaigned against as though it is pervasively taught, Cancel Culture, and Woke are expressions used to refer to Blacks. Though Woke, as the word is used now, refers to efforts to improve the conditions of Blacks, people with disabilities, and members of LGBTQ communities, Blacks are singled out.
So when George Coleman, the Black conservative in training at CNN, said that DEI was created to make whites feel guilty, a panelist reminded him that DEI, a subsidiary expression for Woke, includes other groups as well.
The panic against Woke unites different factions, from Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Bret Stephens to Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis, a personality with whom H.L. Mencken would have had a field day satirizing.
DeSantis promised that Florida would be the place where Woke would die. Instead, his presidential ambitions died.
Dowd blamed Harris’s election loss on Woke, not the racist and misogynist attitudes toward a Black woman candidate, who was defined as a whore and trash by the men who ran against her.
Even though Kamala Harris was treated in such a gross manner by her male opponents, the majority of American white women voted for her opponent, Donald Trump, for the third time. The ideas of some of his cabinet choices endanger the health of their children. The majority of white women were indifferent to the sixteen white women who accused him of sexual aggression or those who were bleeding out in parking lots as a result of the end of abortion protections by a majority Catholic Supreme Court.
Were they seduced by his promise that he would protect them from Black and Brown rapists when they are typically raped by someone they know?
White media figures and even successful white women attributed Harris’s loss to her failure to address kitchen table issues, which the Vice President addressed at every campaign stop.
Besides, millions of Trump voters can afford groceries, second—and third-homes, expensive cars, and robust portfolios thanks to the Biden economy.
There seems to be a consensus among the men who dominate the columns at The New York Times that we live in a post-race period, an attitude contradicted by evidence of continued discrimination against Blacks published weekly in their newspaper. On December 5, 2024, the DOJ issued a report on the Memphis police. Their offenses against Blacks include the use of excessive force, unlawful stops, searches and arrests, and discrimination against Black people in its enforcement activities. The response from the Mayor of Memphis is pure Trump. He rejected the report, which gives the police the mandate to search and destroy members of the GOP’s hated minorities.
Black novelist William Melvin Kelley offered a benign, nonpolitical definition of “Woke” in The Times, May 1962. Maybe the anti-woke columnists at The Times didn’t read it.
According to William Melvin Kelley, “Woke” refers to the rapidity with which Black language changes, which baffles outsiders. Once they learn a word, it becomes passe. The expressions he cited, like “you dig,” are associated with Jazz musicians.
Before Kelley, the folk singer Lead Belly used the word in his 1938 recording of his song, “Scottsboro Boys,” about Black men falsely accused of raping white women in 1931. On the recording, Lead Belly says: “So I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go along through here, stay awake, and keep their eyes open.”
So why does an idea of such benign origin draw fierce opposition? Enter Christopher Rufo, who uses Woke as a right-wing weapon in a heavily financed cultural war against those who are not white, Christian, and heterosexual, including Gays, Hispanics, and the disabled. The anti-woke coalition is led by Blacks, who are regarded by the right as the traditional troublemakers. Though Trump’s campaign wanted him to stick to the economy, his scapegoating of the Woke won him the election. The Washington Post reports that during the post-election period, threats against Hispanics, LGBTQ, and Blacks have increased.
The role of women, according to the anti-Woke movement, should be one of incubators and housekeepers. Rufo is a fellow of the right-wing-funded Manhattan Institute. One of their funders is the Bradley Foundation, which financed The Bell Curve by Scots-Irish writer Charles Murray. This book uses pseudo-science to propose the intellectual inferiority of Black people.
So the new nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, a Fox News shock jock and Princeton graduate, has promised to end Woke and Critical Race Theory in the armed forces, where they are presently invisible.
It turns out that he and the president-elect are annoyed with the presence of a few Black officers who have a high rank. Perhaps the president-elect believes Black generals don’t have the necessities to do the job. As he said about the Vice President, does he think that they were born with a low IQ, indicating that he is listening to some Race Science quacks like Elon Musk, who got into trouble with the NAACP for suggesting that Black students have a lower IQ than whites? Tell that to NASA, which hired its first Black scientist, Katherine Johnson, in June 1953, and many since then.
This wouldn’t be the first time that government officials questioned the courage of Black soldiers. In “BUG-OUT BOOGIE – THE SWAN SONG OF SEGREGATION IN THE UNITED STATES ARMY: DESEGREGATION DURING THE KOREAN WAR AND DISSOLUTION OF THE ALL-BLACK 24th INFANTRY REGIMENT,” Ben Thomas Post II argues that “the racial animosity by a large segment of senior military officers, such as Lieutenant General Edward Almond, and their attempts to portray African American soldiers and African American units as incompetent actually backfired and instead of providing the justification for continued segregation, and actually gave men like General Ridgway the excuse to force the integration of the Army in Korea. The 24th Infantry Regiment, in particular, was singled out, often without cause, for incompetence. Using interviews from the Army Center of Military History study, Black Soldier White Army, this study shows that the men of the Fighting 24th actually showed incredible courage and determination against both the enemy forces they faced and a military leadership that demoralized and belittled them as soldiers.” The ability of the government hampered Black journalists who sought stories about Black heroism under fire. I’m surprised that Hegseth doesn’t know about the history of Black soldiering. One of the best presentations about Black history that I saw was aired on the Armed Forces Network.
Well, Hegseth and Bone Spur Trump and the gang might question the military ability of Blacks, but George Washington believed that Black men were capable of military prowess. They were members of a rag-tag Continental Army that braved the New Jersey cold while white New Jersey residents were extending dinner invitations to their enemies, the Hessian mercenaries. He awarded Badges of Merit to some of the five thousand Black men who fought for America’s freedom. Benjamin Quarles notes that many of these soldiers were returned to slavery after the war.
Suppose Black sailors under the command of Colonel John Glover hadn’t prevented his capture by the British. George Washington might have been executed during the Battle of New York.* If that had happened, the British would be running Princeton and Wharton, from which Pete Hegseth and Trump graduated.
Abraham Lincoln was so impressed with the courage of Black soldiers that he recommended that they be given the right to vote during a speech that got him killed. John Wilkes Booth, still a hero in the South, was in the audience.
Though the United States ignored Black soldiers’ bravery during World War I, the French honored them with the Croix de Guerre medal for their courage.
Italians honored the Black soldiers of World War II who liberated Italian cities long before President Clinton honored them.
I attended a ceremony in San Francisco where a Black soldier who fought in Italy was honored. Nearly in tears, a member of the Italian Consulate said, “Never will we forget.” During these wars, not only did Black soldiers have to fight the country’s enemies, but often white soldiers and officers. Boxers Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis, and baseball great Jackie Robinson found themselves in physical confrontations with white soldiers and officers over racist insults.
Trump and Pete Hegseth might not welcome the service of Black soldiers, but whites who flew B-17s and B-52s during World War II were relieved when the Black Tuskegee airmen were chosen to escort them. Before that, they suffered heavy losses.
After World War II, only a few Black soldiers received the benefits of the G.I. Bill. Like the Hessians before, German prisoners were treated better in the South than Black American soldiers.
Seven thousand, two hundred forty-three Black soldiers were killed in Vietnam while the president-elect was avoiding STDs. According to a Defense Department study released in 1972, Black soldiers were treated more harshly and more frequently than white soldiers.
But Blacks are accustomed to the insults from even those who, in the eyes of Americans, are highly educated. Blacks have survived slave-holding presidents like Andrew Jackson and James Polk.
They’ll survive the Republican Party, which will be extinct within the next twenty-five years as a new demographic overwhelms their bullying.
Ishmael Reed’s new play, “The Shine Challenge,2025,” will premiere on January 30th at the Theater for the New City. Info at theaterforthenewcity.net
