Lee Suckling: Are you 'woke' enough?

Every single one of us is in this together, and we've got to stay woke with each other so we can keep pushing forward as minorities. Photo / Getty

By now I'm sure you've heard the slang term "woke".

It's Millennial-speak for being cognisant of what's going on around you. Societally, politically, culturally, and in your community. To be woke - or rather, awake - to the world is something that has become expected of a generation of young adults with information addictions, always-on social media feeds, and decent educations.

So let's talk about what "insufficient wokeness" is.

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Given our access and our intellectual capability, we as Millennials have the duty to be woke: alert, aware, critical. There is no excuse for ignorance anymore - you can't just say "I didn't read the newspaper today" to get out of not understanding this week's turmoil in Trumpland or what the latest poll is saying for the New Zealand election.

Insufficient wokeness is more specified than not paying attention to general politics though. It's less about not knowing who Duterte is, and more about being disengaged from the issues that affect people like you.

There's a lot going on in the world today. It's too hard to know where the poverty line sits and what's happening with Brexit this month and what Beyonce's new babies are named. It's overwhelming, the barrage of information out there that we're supposed to consume on the daily. You could literally make news consumption your full-time job and still not entirely understand what's going on.

So insufficient wokeness is passively or actively ignoring what should matter to you, and others share the same struggles for different reasons.

To give a personal example, it's my duty to understand gay history. If I didn't know who James Baldwin was or what's happening with Australia's marriage equality plebiscite, I'd feel like I was failing in my wokeness.

However, because I'm a gay person whose ancestors were oppressed, I feel the obligation to know about the plights of the other communities that remain marginalised today, too. It's why Black Lives Matter is a gay issue, trans visibility is a gay issue, women's rights is a gay issue, and underrepresentation of Asian people is a gay issue as well.

Not knowing the ins-and-outs of all of those things would make me insufficiently woke. Being a righteous minority on a subject is undermined when you are ambivalent to the trials and tribulations of other minorities. Because I should know better. I should know the current struggles of others because, as an LGBT person, my people have walked in their shoes. In many ways, we still do.

It also pays to say that if you're a person of colour, women's issues are your issues. For women, LGBT issues are your issues. For LGBT people, people of colour's issues are your issues.

You can't be the high priest or priestess of wokeness about one conflict, and be globally naïve about all those that are similar (but you don't see how they affect you directly).

Every single one of us is in this together, and we've got to stay woke with each other so we can keep pushing forward as minorities. If you consciously or unconsciously ignore the plaguing problems others have encountered - or are currently encountering - because of who they are as humans, you're suffering from a case of insufficient wokeness.

To stay woke is an evolving process. I struggle with my own feeling of insufficient wokeness all the time. Sometimes I have too much personal stuff going on to pay attention to the world's latest civil rights violation. Sometimes I scroll too fast and miss crucial news items that later blow up to become All Anyone Is Talking About. Equally, sometimes I'll listen to three podcasts in a day, read five news sites, check seven different apps for updates, and still not feel woke enough. I still feel like I'm missing something or being left behind.

I suppose the crux of insufficient wokeness is - for me at least - making sure you try. I might fail at being woke sometimes, but that impetus keeps me chasing wokeness. For being woke is just that - an eternal pursuit to keep your eyes open.

The worst kind of insufficient wokeness, thus, is burying your head in the ground. Deciding that it's "all too hard" to pay attention and just focusing on your own individual life. It's that kind of attitude, that sort of wholly-introspective "can't be bothered" mentality, that makes **sufficient** wokeness all the more important for the rest of us.