Dear Editor,
It would be helpful to readers if words used in your newspaper, including in the Letters section, would either be words with agreed-to definitions, or if writers would define the terms they choose to use.
In a recent Letter, a writer used the word “WOKE” as a derogatory term. Example: “A progressive, woke American patriot is the ultimate oxymoron.” Clearly, this says someone who is “woke” cannot be patriotic to America.
So, what is “WOKE?” I looked it up, and found that Webster’s defines WOKE as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues especially of racial and social injustice.” The online dictionary defines WOKE as “being conscious of racial discrimination in society and other forms of oppression and injustice.” Can it be that being aware of injustice is unpatriotic? Or are the dictionaries wrong?
How is WOKE defined, so we can all understand what is being said without confusion. Awareness of injustice is NOT unpatriotic, so WOKE must mean something entirely different to the Letter writer…even the OPPOSITE (shades of Orwell’s “1984”)…from what the dictionary says.
Once that definition is provided, we can go about correcting all the dictionaries in the land.
Jeff Harrison
Buffalo, Texas
