zlacker

Focusing on the term “wokeness” is a bit silly. I’ve always liked to think of it (“it” being the wave of political thought that came into influence around 2013 or so) as the latest wave of the civil rights movement. I call it “social justice” since they often use that term, but of course that term has been around for decades as well. It doesn’t matter what name you use, as long as we agree on the phenomenon we’re describing.

But really, you can trace it back further than the 60’s, as far back as in the 1920’s with C Wright Mills. He was a sociologist who essentially argued that science shouldn’t pursue explanatory knowledge, but rather emancipatory knowledge. The idea was that science can’t be some external objective thing apart from human political systems.

As for why it didn’t enter the national awareness until the last decade, I have no idea. But I think it has to do with the internet, that’s my intuition.