2020 has been a pressure-filled ride laced with powerful racial, gender and political turbulences that have facilitated a feeling of moral urgency to step up to the plate and help douse the fires around us. We are living in a time where “neutrality means taking the side of the oppressor.” The voiceless need our voices, and social responsibility means being aware to care. In other words, we need to be “woke.”

Merriam-Webster defines “woke” as being “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social injustice).’’ However, there’s been a recent development of a negative connotation to this word, and I'm simply not here for it. Wokeness is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke” that encourages people to be more aware and productively expressive of crises around them. Nowadays, the word is weaponized on social media as a slang to criticize individuals who are very vocal about social issues, particularly those written off as lesser or unimportant. This is because, quite naturally, we tend to partake in the othering of issues that do not immediately affect us or are not based in our immediate surroundings. Small scale issues, or those not popularized by the media, are often dismissed by us or don't quite capture our attention. This line of thinking is harmful to activism because it creates an unnecessary hierarchy of issues that ignores the fact that societal problems are interconnected and thus should not be treated separately. By following this popularity-driven hierarchy, we risk pushing those affected by less popular issues even further away from the attention that they seek.

The othering of issues has everything to do with the bubble of privilege we occupy, which hampers our ability to understand problems not personal to us. It is also facilitated by the fact that we might benefit from some of these systemic injustices and hence are less likely to accept that they are dangerous and need to be eradicated. For example, sexual harassers refuse to accept that the concept of consent is more complicated than a simple yes or no, because they rely on loopholes such as an alcohol-influenced yes or coercion, to harass women.

I use my Twitter platform to raise awareness about how social conditioning starts from the little things, and I experience first-hand how people in relatively privileged positions undermine the supposedly minor issues that I advocate against, such as restricting girls to the kitchen and not raising boys to take accountability for their actions. I advocate for gender roles to be abolished and, as a result, I am often labeled “woke” — in its negative connotation — by men on Twitter who claim I am making everything about gender and detracting from “actual issues.” I’m casually told to go focus on female genital mutilation and to stop undermining familial and cultural traditions or creating problems where there aren’t any.

The idea that we get to determine what is worth fighting for and what needs to be brushed over fails to incorporate the fact that small issues are stepping stones for larger ones. Yes, there are still rampant cases of FGM and domestic violence, but where do you think they stem from? The same patriarchal ideals that keep girls in the kitchen and away from education and liberation are the same ones that propagate the notion that women were created to be under the control of men. This notion is what manifests into the misogynistic entitlement that men think they have to hit, harass or subdue women. Purity culture and submission culture are why families practice FGM — to preserve women for men’s desires.

This is the power of social conditioning. We can’t claim to want an end to the more drastic problems at the expense of ignoring the less drastic ones. This takes us nowhere because these issues are interconnected and must also be tackled from their roots. Demarcating issues according to how visible they are can give a false sense of progress. We are not free until everyone is free.

Thus, wokeness is important; it’s a concept that promotes social vigilance and empathy in a time where so many are crying silently for help. It has led to a lot of progress in our world, but many don’t seem to think so. A tweet I saw recently suggested that if Shakira had released the song “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)” in 2020, it would have been accused of being “cultural appropriation” since Shakira — a privileged woman — centered herself in a song about Africans. The author thus implicitly undermined wokeness and implied it to be a negative aspect of how the world is progressing.

However, I don’t agree. If anything, the rise of wokeness proves that not only are we having more contextualized and constructive conversations, but individuals and organizations are also listening and tailoring their decisions to truly reflect concepts like inclusion and systemic change. We are learning more and applying our knowledge. Is that not the point of education? Gone are the days when a company can just throw a few words together and call that support for a minority under fire. The pressures of social media help to remind people to be deliberate about their activism. One could even argue that this deliberation makes our activism more intentional and less performative.

In conclusion, our activism should not focus on the issues with the most visibility or urgency, but it should also attend to every issue. We have the resources to tackle every single one of them. Social conditioning is more powerful than we think; so many principles that we consider normal are harming us and we don’t even realize it. They seep into our lives and create bigger, systemic issues that can only be eroded by our wokeness. Because these principles are so deeply ingrained in us, wokeness is desperately needed to identify them, unlearn them and aggressively uproot them. When we are quick to create a harmful hierarchy and ridicule wokeness, we risk muddying the waters for people who earnestly want to tackle issues from their roots. No one wants to be that person that creates smoke where there is no fire. Additionally, we must be careful not to create a toxic environment that discourages people from speaking up about issues that need more attention. The last thing victims need is the fear that they will be accused of pandering for sympathy when asking for support. Time is wasted arguing over the criteria of importance; let people fight for any problems they see.