Beware The Faux Awokening: Being Woke Has To Exist Beyond The Hashtags

In the Entry-Level Woke Manual, you’ll find a few easy to follow instructions. Support any movement that comes with a hashtag. Retweet said hashtags, but don’t worry too much about trying to understand what they mean. Regurgitate general top-line blabber about ‘progress’. Quote Emma Watson.

If you graduate to Staying Woke For Dummies, it’ll will tell you to disagree with the middle aged white man. Talk about inequality as if it’s a brand-new issue the world has only just discovered and apply disproportionate outrage to societal injustice without actually contributing productively to conversation. Drop the words ‘diverse’ and ‘privilege’ into conversations a lot. Wear t-shirts with ‘feminism’ slogans on the chest.

Being woke in today’s terms, and being visibly in tune with the political, cultural and social climate has become performance rather than a state of being. It’s taken a form that differs from it’s pre-social media appropriated origins. It holds a different sort of currency and encourages the expectation of a pat on the back at every demonstration of not being racist/sexist/bigoted/exploitative/a shit human.

At grassroots level, it manifests in middle class Twitter warriors who willhappily attend the Women’s Marchesfor the sake of getting a good picture holding a pretty placard, and then remain oblivious to the cause being fought for the rest of the year. At the level of widespread public influence though, at that of the government, CEOs, Hollywood’s A-list and those with international platforms, it takes a different shape. It’s here where performative wokeness has the potential to lure us into a false sense of security and distract us from the action behind the headline grabbing acts of low key, image-friendly activism.

Read More: The Authentic Social Media Activists Who Take Their Fight Beyond The Small Screen

The events that have unfolded over the last year or so have shaken us. It’s the well-publicised disgraces (the fall of Harvey Weinstein) and career-ending scandals (Damian Green’s ‘resignation’ as Deputy Prime Minister) that have propelled movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp into welcomed existence. But if we remove the rose-tinted glasses for a moment and take stock of where we are, it’s hard not to be a little bit disgruntled by a less progressive reality.

Awards season thrives on political controversy, and the Golden Globes black dress protest that is to be mimicked at the BAFTAs, and the waving of white roses at the Grammy’s that the BRITs intends to follow too, are the perfect way for celebrities (and we, the applauding observers) to ride the woke wave without the obligation of having to get hands dirty once the cameras stop flashing.

That’s not to take away from the huge amount of good that Times Up has already done and intends to do. But we only see a snap shot of activity which shouldn't be enough to quiet our outrage and assume that everything has been set right. In the current cultural climate, these awards shows offer people of influence a chance to fulfil the duty of aligning themselves with a good cause and giving lip service to movements that, in actuality, extend way beyond a convenient dress code.

The sight of hundreds of celebrities united against unequal pay is incredibly powerful, but that force is tied to a very specific moment when, in reality, we need it to carry through and for those crucial conversations to travel further. It also allows us to make the (incorrect) assumption that because a visual statement has been made, everything and everyone will follow suit. The sad reality is that these people represent a minority within a minority of an elite circle of powerful people taking a figurative stand.

And what happens when this genre of protest isn’t cool or exciting anymore and we’re back to unfavourable business as usual? Because we really can’t afford for the subject of diversity to be a trend. Every year writers and commentators pose questions asking whether or not this will be the year that #OscarsSoWhite finally makes impact, but what about the other days when the Hollywood powers that be aren’t paraded into publicly accountability for their discriminatory decisions behind the scenes? Well, very little apparently because the films celebrated at Academy Awards and flashy film festivals are a mere sample of production and, once again, the stats only reiterate that the level diversity in films has barely changed at all.

We only see so much. It’s deceptive because we do hear reports about new initiatives that align themselves with diversity (the media's favourite buzzword) every now and again. Last year PWC published a reporton how much less it pays its black, Asian and minority ethnic staff in the name of transparency (the corporate world’s favourite buzzword) ahead of this year’s requirement for all companies across the UK to publish their gender pay gap figures. But the transition to equality doesn’t start and end there. As it stands, this is little more than superficial awokening through a corporate lens.

Take the BBC's rocky gender pay gap journey, for example. What it symbolises is a wider, deeper problem that undoubtedly exists across all industries, yet it's the tip of a company ice berg that we're quick to assign as representative of all. And after the deserved outrage at the disparity in pay between some of their top presenters, some male presenters agreed to take a pay cut to match their female counter parts, however it says nothing for the wider continued discrimination within the BBC and neither does is resolve it. It's surface level solutions to overwhelmingly dominant systematic problems. And god knows we've had plenty of them already this year.

Accountability is crucial, of course. And in supporting those with platforms and voices in demanding it, we’ve helped to lifted the lid on the diversity problem a little. We’ve rattled the gender equality cage. We’ve made the issue of sexual harassment a public issue that dominates headlines and will hopefully drive some long-awaited change. But how far can wearing black dresses, holding white roses, retweeting a hashtag and crying feminism get us? They’re easy and publicly pleasing performances to get on board with, but they don’t escape the superficial nature that comes with aligning yourself with the most popular ideology. See: Justin Trudeux's recent outburst.

Being woke isn’t necessarily meant to be popular or cool. Neither is supporting the fight for a level playing field. It’s quite simply really fucking important. But jumping upon the ‘right on’ band wagon doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve earned the 'woke' badge and the same goes for the gaggle of famous people who are jumping to fall into line. Playing woke doesn't create woke, and it's not the way we're going to change the world.

Follow Jazmin on Instagram @JazKopotsha

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.