US Democrats at loggerheads over 'Woke' culture after Virginia defeat

Democrats on Saturday were at loggerheads about the equity and “wokeness” calling it a national problem blaming the culture for the recent Democratic defeat in the Virginia elections. Progressives and centrists argued that the leftists during the Joe Biden administration opted a culture of self-righteousness on social media in denial of the realities of the public opinion that is causing many lawmakers in the Blue party to abandon their core supporters and the party’s overall core purpose.

‘Woke,’ chiefly a US slang and a past tense of ‘wake’ in the political and cultural sense implies a state of being aware of the issues that marginalize communities, which includes political and social problems such as racism and inequality, but the term, that was added to Oxford dictionary in 2017, has been at the centre of debate and has often been whipped out as an insult and sarcasm. ‘Wokeness’ entered the mainstream vernacular after the Black Lives Matter  #BLM movement used the hashtag #staywoke that gained global momentum. 

A report carried by The Hill on Saturday analyzed that the victory of GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin over Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, stating that Dems argued that the result was demonstrating the ‘strategic error’ in the approach of the party. ‘Wokeness,’ they believe, has depreciated the spirit and support of Biden’s party’s key voting communities across America. The obvious signs of this were first seen during May 2020 election in Minneapolis for changing the city’s police department with a safety agency. But the Democrats faced a major defeat in the state where Black man George Floyd was murdered by a white police officer. 

'Go to a 'woke' detox center,' Democratic vet tells Biden party 

Democratic veterans like Clinton-era strategist James Carville had labelled the ‘stupid wokeness' a national problem for Democrats in a televised interview with CNN's Don Lemon, as he stressed that this was precisely the reason for losses for the Blue. 

"What went wrong is just stupid wokeness. Don't just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this 'defund the police' lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off of schools. I mean that — people see that," Carville meanwhile said in a broadcast statement.

The latter also cautioned that the ‘wokeness’ will cause suppressive effects all across the country on Democrats. “Go to a 'woke' detox center or something,” he told PBS NewsHour" host Judy Woodruff. He also accused the Democrats of using the language that the Americans generally do not use, adding that “there's backlash and a frustration at that.” Carville derided language such as ‘defund the police’ which he described as “lunacy”, “Take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools,” etc.

While Carville made public comments, one other Democrat who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the Dems had “a long run of defining these debates in the worst possible way for us,” The Hill reports, adding that Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) echoed similar stance. Wokeness debates among the Dems involve topics such as race, gender, and sexuality, as well as policing, criminal justice, and education. A racial justice activist, Johnetta Elzie, told the newspaper that the optimism behind the ‘woke’ culture that was sparked by the Black Lives Matter protests in mid-2020 has shaken.