(Headline USA) CNN’s Don Lemon said on Friday that he scolds his friends if they use the term “woke” to describe leftist ideologies.
During a panel discussion on CNN’s new morning show, Lemon claimed no one knows how to define the word “woke.”
“The hottest fight in the American culture wars right now is over wokeness,” he said, noting that Republican politicians and media figures blame wokeness for everything from censorship to bank failures.
“What exactly does it mean to be woke?” he asked.
Lemon cited Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who said it’s an ideology that defines people by their immutable characteristics, such as skin color, rather than by their potential.
However, the network’s former prime-time host dismissed that definition.
“It’s not about defining people for a characteristic,” he claimed.
“It is being aware. It is about being aware of issues that have to do with minorities, destruction of the country, issues that have to do with women. Issues that have to do with any marginalized community,” he continued. “That’s what it is—not defining people. It’s being aware of the structural injustices in our society and trying to be better, not trying to cancel people.”
Lemon’s definition nonetheless fit with that of many conservatives, that wokeness denotes an obsessive preoccupation with identity politics and race.
However, Lemon then claimed people would be better off if they just stopped using the term altogether.
“I always tell my friends who, you know, use ‘woke.’ I’m like, don’t use that word. You know, there are certain words, like, it’s not a good look,” Lemon said.
Lemon went on to claim that the term “woke” is a bad one because it has been “co-opted by conservatives and people running for office.”
CNN’s panelists then played a viral clip in which conservative author Bethany Mandel freezes up when asked to define the word “woke.”
After the clip, Lemon and CNN contributor Alyssa Farah Griffin, who co-hosts “The View,” laughed out loud at Mandel.
“You lose your train of thought, you know, someone tries to help you out, usually in the moment, but it happens. But it’s been. That was a tough moment,” Lemon said.
The comments essentially parroted other leftist radicals, including activist Touré Neblett, who has desperately tried to make the word verboten as leftist find growing backlash against their ambitious social-engineering efforts.
At this point woke is a slur. The way the right uses it is an undercover way of saying "those people," or "non-white people." It's a polite way of saying the n-word but in this case the n-word includes Blacks, LGBTQ folks, and other marginalized groups.
— Touré (@Toure) March 15, 2023
