Should we be ‘woke’ at work, and what does it mean?

In a free market society, politics and business remain separate, only interacting when advocacy or legislation is needed to protect workers, communities and the environment. But when a government acts to restrict and ban meaningful conversation and activity around social justice issues (i.e. color, gender identity, orientation, etc.) that directly impact the value-added by a company or organization, all bets are off.

This is exactly what one state is attempting to do. In Florida, the Stop the Woke Act, signed into law last April, intends to “curb teaching about or conducting trainings on certain topics related to race, sex and gender in Florida public schools and workplaces. The law was passed with the clear intention to curb ‘critical race theory’ in the state — and to do so through outright censorship,” according to Reason.com, an American Libertarian magazine.

Critical race theory and woke

We could have a weeklong conversation to fully understand these terms. Here are descriptions, albeit distilled significantly, that will get us through today’s lesson.

Critical race theory (CRT), according to Brookings, “states that U.S. social institutions (e.g., the criminal justice system, education system, labor market, housing market, and healthcare system) are laced with racism embedded in laws, regulations, rules, and procedures that lead to differential outcomes by race.” So, when Black Americans are incarcerated at higher rates compared to White Americans, and they are by five times (The Sentencing Project), this is what CRT wants you to understand.

There are two important distinctions essential to understanding CRT. First, you don’t have to have racists to have racism and an inequitable democracy. Second, CRT and its advocates do not blame White Americans who are living now, they do believe White Americans have a “moral responsibility” to stop the negative impact racism continues to have today.

So, what does woke mean in terms of these social justice issues? In 2017, both MerriamWebster and Oxford dictionaries added the term described chiefly as U.S. slang, originating in the African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) defines the word as: “Aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” It is being aware of what CRT reminds