Woke means you hate all white people and think they're all from England and had slaves.
It means you're too stupid to realize people like me, have ancestors that were under foreign occupation from 1500-1913 and had absolutely nothing to do with colonization and didn't benefit from oppressing non-Europeans in any way sort or form but think we deserve punishment.
You aren't a decent human being if you're woke.
I'm a Yugoslav ethnically. Yugo means south, slav being the root word for the word slave because we were taken as slaves by the Arabs and Ottoman Turks.
We also suffered a similar fate that natives in Canada did, the Ottomans took the first born son of every Christian family and sent them to be part of the Ottoman army and forcefully converted us to islam.
Took out daughters as sex slaves in harems.
Taxed us stealing our labour and wealth for 500+ years.
We were under the same empire that the Palestinians were under, and what happened to them happened to us, but woke people want me to suffer because I have white skin.
Woke people are evil scum. They aren't decent people in any shape or form, they are basically nazis spreading lies about me just like the Germans did about the Jews.
I know this because woke people like to throw slavery and other things in my face just because I am European without realizing the word SLAVE is derived from my ethnicity.
Hitler hated us just as much as he hated the Jews and we were part of the holocaust, but woke people don't care,
I'm white, I'm European, I must be a colonizer worthy of punishment for the actions of some people in England who speak a different language, use a different alphabet, practice a different religion and lived 2000 km away.
That's what woke people are. They're fucked in the head.
My country is currently teaching our children to hate me based on my skin colour and they think I deserve it. Again, just like the Nazis did to the Jews.
I assume you are Indian, imagine you were randomly getting blamed for shit Pakistani people did 300 years ago and your country was teaching kids that you are a bastard for what Afghani people did just cause you have similar skin colour.
That's wokeness. It's a disease.
None of my ancestors subjugated other people groups to any form of discrimination and didn't colonize anywhere else. But woke people think they did. I've interacted with enough of them that hate me just for being European, most of them are British themselves which is insane.
It is 100% the same thing that the Nazis did to the Jews and the Slavs, spread lies and propaganda about them. Woke people would have fit in Nazi Germany.
I've yet to meet a woke person who will acknowledge Muslim occupation and oppression against south eastern Europeans.
My last name isn't a Persian word because I'm Persian. It was assigned to my family by foreign occupiers.
We don't eat middle eastern influenced food because we are middle eastern, it is a result of foreign occupation and subjugation.
Our music isn't middle eastern influenced because we are middle eastern, it is a result of foreign occupation and subjugation.
Macedonian wedding song played at every wedding is called Mashallah. Christian people there aren't singing for random, it's a result of colonization by the middle east
I literally in the same day had two people tell me that because I am white I am a colonizer. Either person could explain in detail to me why. They just got angry and said if I don’t know then it’s not worth explaining or something to that effect.
My main point is that I did not colonize anything, I did not have slaves. So why are you angry with me?
One, get educated. Learn the actual history of this place. Just doing that alone would make it so you wouldn't even ask these questions.
Two, accept that you are the beneficiary of these systems of oppression, and as such, use your privileged position to help dismantle them. Support policies that benefit the oppressed even if it's at your expense. Talk to others, educate others. Oh look at that you're "woke" now
If you want to do something you can help the native Americans and Hawaiians who are still oppressed for example.
Most remaining native Americans were thrown into so called "reservations", impoverished areas which were chosen on purpose to be unfit for the native's traditional way of life, hard to access food in and lacking in resources, some of these areas are so poor and their peoples so miserable that you would think they are third world countries.
The natives had and still have to this day their cultured crushed and forcibly "westernized" through various means, for example they were for a long time often forbidden to use their native language in school and general everywhere except at home to the point that only a few percent of natives can speak their own language.
Even if a lot of the direct violence against native has stopped, they still suffer from it's consequences, their cultures never recovered and continue to disappear, most of them still live packed in "reservations" were they lack of everything even essentials like water, food and medicine and depend on what little the federal government and charities give them.
If you want to help them you can do charities for them, protest for their rights, join a de-colonial movement or any kind of organization in support of native rights, there are plenty of things you can do, it doesn't even have to be a supper big thing, any help of any size is welcome, even just informing yourself and others on the topic is good.
In addition to the answers below, don't take it personally. Racism and colonialism are systemic issues. You didn't have a choice to be born, you don't control the political economy of your country, you didn't choose what your forebears did. Don't view having an accurate understanding of history and political economy as a personal attack.
I was born after my dad stole your house. I just live in it, but I can't do anything because it wasn't me who stole the house, it was my dad, which makes it impossible for me to give the house my dad stole (that I'm actively living in) back. What can I do? Leave? I should leave the stolen house and lands my family stole? Are you insane?
Start by educating yourself. If people are calling you a colonizer to your face I'm pretty suspicious you're an ignorant asshole dipshit in real life.
You are not expected to give away all your money to bipoc or whatever. You are expected to understand how this society was built, where it currently stands today and where you sit in this society. And then you need to start trying to make a difference.
educate yourself on decolonialism. decolonizing doesn't mean you have to go somewhere else. it means dismantling the power structures that privilege you over natives and oppress them. it means replacing the colonial government with a unified state that gives natives real power.
Please enlighten me. Can you tell me how I am colonizing. I legitimately do not understand this topic and no one has even tried to explain it. I just get called a colonizer and a bunch of other names.
I’d just like to have a discussion and learn about this,”.
Even though you are not culprit of colonial violence yourself, the fact is that you are still benefiting from those violence, you live in a house built on stolen land, your job, whatever it is, exist because the business you work can extract resources from stolen land (or buy them from an other company who did) and sell it to other peoples who live on stolen land, etc...
The point is not that you should feel guilty about what your ancestors did (you are right that this would be unfair to you), but that you should acknowledge the fact that whether you want it or not you do live in a privileged position that exist because those colonial violence were inflicted on the natives.
It would go a long way for you to try to find what actual natives have to say about it.
i didn't personally enslave people or massacre the American indians to make this country, but i am the eventual offspring of of the people who did, and i benefit from their atrocities simply by my existence and more importantly by the racism that echoes in every corner of the laws my ancestors made to crush and bind the people they stole the country from.
I didn't do it personally, and maybe not even my family. I don't know when my folks originally colonized this country, but they came here from another country and took an emptied spot after the red carpet was laid.
it's not like i run around begging people for forgiveness. I am here now, and now that i am, the very least i can do is accept that my progenitors, my benefactors, destroyed a people and enslaved another in order for me to exist at all. Not only that, but my skin color gives me benefits (mostly of the doubt, but boy is that a big one) That makes me a colonizer. Cuz you know, the people who our ancestors crushed are still fucked, the opression still exists, the ripples of what they've done have lasted and will last longer than either of our lives.
And you likely are too, right? You benefit from the things your ancestors did. In fact, one of those ripples echoing through time is me, and another is you. What's the big deal with accepting that? It doesn't lower your worth as a person. You and i are here, no matter the circumstances. Accepting how we came to be can only improve our understanding.
I get that it's frustrating when people don't elaborate on it. It's one of the reasons smug Tumblr "leftism" that came with no theory was frustrating and alienating. However there is a lot of stuff about colonialism, neo-colonialism, and how it intersects with leftist theory and why it's important to know it. It's easy to find material. Also it's not the end of the world to be called something that research would confirm the best thing to do is accept it and work to make the world better in spite of your station. It starts with theory and moves toward praxis. I understand, especially if you reflexively know colonization is bad, a bad thing. It makes you feel bad. But part of that is a call to action instead of lettingit get under your skin. It's what you do with the information that is important. "Everybody is a little bit racist" isn't an excuse to be indifferent it's a reminder to be vigilant. I know I got some latent sexism from my youth so I just gotta try to stay aware and think before I react, to use a personal example. Does it sting a little when somebody says "all men are.." sure it does. But instead of letting it bother me I stop, consider where the criticism is coming from, and remind myself that the patriarchy is a complex and nefarious reality that is experienced more harshly by people that don't look like me. It's not a nuanced statement but there is enough truth to it, and legitimate grievance behind it, that my job is not to pop off with a "not all men" but to be considerate of these factors and use material history and intersectional theory to apply that nuance.