Fake Wokeness on Campus
By KENDELLE GRUBBS ‘20
Social justice has become everyone’s stepping stone to becoming a “good person.” People pat themselves on the back for following a pro-feminist account on Instagram or memorizing how to pronounce Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Instead of doing any actual work for advocacy, people feel comfortable sitting back in their chairs, retweeting AOC and Bernie. And this attitude persists in Milton’s ultra-liberal climate. Milton has strived to remake itself into a diverse, inclusive school where all identities can walk hand-in-hand, but there’s an imbalance between students who actually care and students who pretend to.
We have so many culture clubs and affinity spaces on campus, yet somehow we’re still making the same gay jokes and saying “colored people” in our history classes. We demonize conversative voices on campus as controversial, insensitive, and bigoted regardless of the intent or substance of the opinion. There is such an elitist, snobby culture against any opinion that doesn’t follow the grain of mainstream feminism to the point where having a different opinion makes you the bad guy. People lecture about feminist values and standards while never participating in any hard work or calling themselves out about how biased and privileged they themselves are.
You don’t just wake up one day and become the perfect feminist. No one in this entire world can be instantly aware and educated on every topic known to man. I barely knew anything about the 80’s AIDS crisis until a board member led a GASP meeting about it, I am absolutely clueless about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and I couldn’t tell you much about reproductive legislation in America. I recognize that I am far from where I want to be when it comes to being socially aware and active, but I can own up to it. I cannot say the same for many of the “woke” students on campus. Wokeness isn’t just for you to spout some random pro-diversity rant, get a pat on the back from the OMCD, and a better chance at being a Transitions mentor. Too many of us are so comfortable in our baseline “wokeness” that we don’t strive to learn more. How many “woke” students even looked at Ms. Cacho’s Black Feminism course or have tried to sign up for a diversity conference?
Social justice work is exhausting when you actually care. It’s a constant uphill battle of fighting against systematic forms of oppression and wondering whether any of it is actually worth the struggle. You put your entire self into working to make Milton or the world a better, more inclusive place. Then someone makes an offensive joke, and suddenly your work seems unimportant. At Milton, we glorify the 2017 sit-in as a monumental and revolutionary event while forgetting all the negativity and turmoil it caused. The members of the senior class are the only remaining students who actually sat on those Stu steps. We had to see the administration brush off incidents of black face and yellow face. Black students had to witness being called the n-word from a random car on Centre Street as we left our affinity space. We had to read the group chats of the notorious Hooligans, who wrote anti-women jokes and sexual remarks.
As a Milton community, we need to be honest with ourselves and recognize our own misconstrued use of social justice. There’s no perfect stance on what ideal social justice is, and everyone comes with their own experiences and biases. Stop trying to make cute, social justice-related moments just to Instagram them and get those 200 likes. Actually do the work to better yourself and the community you live in.