# ep 120. What is Woke and Why is it a Bad thing?

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## [00:00:00] Introduction to the Black Executive Perspective

[00:00:00] A black executive perspective, whether you are aware of it or not, it's a topic that is often avoided. We'll discuss race and how it plays a factor and how we didn't even talk about this topic 'cause we were afraid a black executive perspective.

[00:00:19] **DeSantis:** We have embraced freedom. We have maintained law and order.

[00:00:24] **DeSantis:** We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers and we reject woke ideology.

[00:00:37] **DeSantis:** We fight the woke in the legislature, we fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where.

## [00:00:51] The Evolution of 'Woke'

[00:00:51] **Tony Tidbit:** Welcome to a Black Executive Perspective podcast, A safe space where we discuss all [00:01:00] matters related to race. Especially race in corporate America. I'm your host, Tony Tidbit. The word woke has become multifaceted today. While some critique it, others applaud its commitment to social justice. Today we're gonna delve into the concept of woke and we will explore the discourse around it.

[00:01:29] **Tony Tidbit:** We will discuss the origin, the true definition, the evolution, the negativity as well. How now is being weaponized for political purposes? To join me in this discussion is my partner's in crime. Chris Reed and double A. Chris, what's going on my friend?

[00:01:54] **Chris P Reed:** What's going on with you, sir? Man, I'm, I've been chomping at the bit at this one because it's such a [00:02:00] spark plug, a hot topic as far as nobody can confidently say where it is as far as calibrated.

[00:02:07] **Chris P Reed:** So you taking this on is a very herculean effort and I appreciate being involved.

[00:02:12] **Tony Tidbit:** Look buddy, I appreciate the word Herculean effort. I know., I had a hard time at the gym today, lifting 30 pounds but you know what? I'm gonna live up to that expectation. I love it. I love it. Double A.

[00:02:26] **Tony Tidbit:** What's up, buddy? What's good? What's good? Good to you. You ready to talk about this or what?

[00:02:30] **Adrian Alvarado:** Oh, I'm privileged to talk. I'm glad to be one of the woke. I'm absolutely very excited.

[00:02:35] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay, let's go. Alright, let's do it. Come on guys, let's talk about it. So kick us off, aa

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## [00:02:42] The Impact of 'Woke' in Society

[00:02:42] **Adrian Alvarado:** We're gonna kick it off with a news reporter, Christina Kim from KPBS News in San Diego. And she's interviewing a Mr. Mike Milton.

[00:02:53] **Adrian Alvarado:** [Recorded Clip]

[00:02:53] **Christina Kim:** [Recorded Clip] We're living in a time where we're more divided than ever and we need a common vocabulary to talk [00:03:00] about those differences. But that can be hard when we're not on the same page. We start today with Mike Milton. He's a retired navy man who identifies as white and a lefty center left. Politically speaking, that is, he says he pays attention to the news and current affairs, but lately there's one word he's been hearing a lot of that's got him scratching his head woke. I think it shows how woke is and destroys everything fun in our society. It's a word he mostly hears used by conservative media and he's not sure what it means.

[00:03:35] **Mike Milton:** One question I do have is, what is wokeness?

[00:03:40] **Tony Tidbit:** All right, thank you Christina and listen. I gotta give him a man a lot of credit. Mike Milton. , he's an active American citizen. He's paying attention to what's going on in the world, especially here in the United States.

[00:03:56] **Tony Tidbit:** And he's been hearing this word [00:04:00] woke. And . It is got him scratching his head. And then you just heard a little bit of the clip where I think and you guys tell me if I'm wrong, but how wokeness is destroying the nuclear family of something of that nature. So that don't sound like a positive thing.

[00:04:15] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay. If I didn't know what it meant, I would be like, oh, what is that? So I gotta give him a lot of credit because at the end of the day, he really wants to find out for himself. What this word means.

## [00:04:29] The Misinterpretation of 'Woke'

[00:04:29] **Tony Tidbit:** What's your guys' thoughts on that?

[00:04:31] **Chris P Reed:** I'll kick it off. I think that it's always good to be vulnerable especially when you're ignorant or you don't know what's going on. If you give a damn if you care, then you wanna at least lean in. So I do applaud that in that regard. I also wonder what outlets that he frequents where he's hearing it cast in a negative light so frequently. Because it's now at a point in my experience where I don't ever hear it as much positive, it's like you're overarching [00:05:00] to try to make it positive again because it's been co-opted so the fact that he would even raise an eyebrow and say, wait a second is it what I think it is? Because they're trying to make sure through the propaganda and through all these other means that. They actually take ownership and make it as negative as they would like for it to be. And so it's tough to go against the stream, so to speak. And it seems like he's willing to swim that swim and fight that fight.

[00:05:23] **Tony Tidbit:** Yeah, buddy. Listen, at the end of the day you think about it. 'cause you make a very good point. The majority of people listen to something, hear it, don't really understand what it is, but because they hear it from what they think are reliable sources, right?

[00:05:39] **Tony Tidbit:** News, media, our politicians, then they take it as the gospel, right? And , that has happened in a lot of different things. Back in the day you couldn't read the Bible. The priest had to read it for you. You wasn't good enough to be able to decipher it. Okay? So if you [00:06:00] can't read it for yourself, and you are only going by what somebody's telling you that's in it, and if they're not right, what happens to you, right? You end up going off a cliff, but you still think that you're doing the right thing, right?

[00:06:15] **Tony Tidbit:** Because you don't have access. So you really believing that this person who is supposed to be holy and supposed to be making sure they're teaching you the right thing, you are taking them at face value, right? So I totally agree to your point in terms of somebody just I need to find, figure this out and find it out for myself.

[00:06:38] **Chris P Reed:** But I think it's tough, Tony, when we all, at least in our community for sure, have inherited perspectives. So I don't walk under ladders or let people sweep my feet all these country superstitions that I inherited from my grandmother, science has told me none of that means anything broke, mirrors and all that other stuff.

[00:06:56] **Chris P Reed:** But I really have embraced that because that's what I inherited from [00:07:00] somebody who I respected. So if they were told wrong, as you stated, it perpetuates throughout relationships and create cycles of ignorance or, and so sometimes breaking that means to go out on your own and sometimes it's to cast dispersions on the traditions that you've come up around.

[00:07:16] **Chris P Reed:** And that's why I'm applauding his efforts to say, listen, I identify as this. And that was the smart thing. What they did in that clip was they set the scene of who he was, so therefore you know a little bit of his background and his perspective. And then he said. But I realized there may be some holes in the process, there may be some opportunities for me to grow and get better, and I just wanna do that agnostically, I wanna get better regardless of if it hurts people's feelings or whatever. And that tends to be something that we all, I think can share is that inherited perspective.

[00:07:46] **Tony Tidbit:** Yeah. More and curiosity, right? That curiosity that I wanna learn more. So I totally agree. I think it's important to have that curiosity and listen if I was talking to my [00:08:00] daughters who are teenagers they ain't following me across the cliff, right? No matter what I say, they gonna do the opposite anyway

[00:08:08] **Chris P Reed:** against the grain.

[00:08:09] **Tony Tidbit:** So I guess as we get older, we become more followers when we when it comes down to learning new things. Double A, let's go back to Christina. And let's find out what is the definition of woke.

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## [00:08:22] The Historical Context of 'Woke'

[00:08:22] **Christina Kim:** The truth is, the word woke has lived many lives and iterations dr. Damari a Smith

[00:08:29] **Dr Damari A Smith:** right around the early 1960s, seventies when you had a lot of black power movements and kind of civil rights issues going on at that time. It wasn't called woke, it was called consciousness.

[00:08:43] **Christina Kim:** That's Dr. Damari a Smith. He's a professor of rhetoric and media studies at San Diego State University. He says the word stems from the civil rights era.

[00:08:53] **Dr Damari A Smith:** At that time, black people particularly started thinking about what are the ways in which our [00:09:00] government is not

[00:09:00] **Dr Damari A Smith:** necessarily protecting us as citizens.

[00:09:03] **Christina Kim:** For him, the real meaning of being woke is about connecting the dots

[00:09:07] **Dr Damari A Smith:** To me means basically having a consciousness about some of the systemic issues that are taking place, that have unintended consequences, that kind of seem as though it may be a good thing. But again, there's things that we're not necessarily thinking about.

[00:09:23] **Christina Kim:** In other words, it really just means to think critically about issues that impact us all, like education, healthcare, and policing.

[00:09:32] **Tony Tidbit:** There you go. That, so let's back up a little bit.

## [00:09:38] The Weaponization of 'Woke'

[00:09:38] **Tony Tidbit:** Mike Milton, regular US citizen. Hearing this word doesn't know what it is. Christina Kim played a clip saying, somebody said that wokeness is destroying the nuclear family, sounds negative sounds, sounds horrible.

[00:09:57] **Tony Tidbit:** And then Dr. Smith comes [00:10:00] on and talks about that the word started off as consciousness to make sure in the black community, let's be clear first in the black community, to make sure that you were aware of what was going on around you. It was all about awareness and having a consciousness of what's happening, what's going on.

[00:10:24] **Tony Tidbit:** So you can be better prepared to be able to deal as you move forward. So that sounds very positive to me.

[00:10:33] I agree. Once again, it's how you frame it, right? So I think his perspective on it. Was based off of something where he wanted to be forward thinking, uplifting, and understand the ethos around him.

[00:10:48] **Chris P Reed:** There's so many sheep out there telling, let's just keep it real. There's a lot of sheep out there that they're going to check one source. And if that source laziness, really it's, it is psychological laziness. And so if they don't get it [00:11:00] from that source they're not gonna go any further. It's people that'll listen to us.

[00:11:05] **Chris P Reed:** And like you say all the time, don't just listen to me. Go check for yourself. But that involves work. And I'm gonna tell you this about people, whether it be nowadays or back in the days, you lose a lot of people who don't really want it when you start talking about work. You know what I mean?

[00:11:19] **Chris P Reed:** Everybody wants a little, they wanna inherit or just to show up. Everybody wants to obtain and not achieve. And achievement comes from work, right? And so even the achievement of knowledge or understanding of self it's a journey. The fact is it's easier to just say, I heard this as you stated on this outlet or this idiot box representation and that's good enough for me and I'm gonna ride out with it.

[00:11:43] **Chris P Reed:** The danger is when you're so vigilant about something you've not really addressed or really dug into, and then you start perpetuating it with your children's children type of situation. Now you got a half-ass thought process and you acting like it's the gospel as you [00:12:00] stated, and you're willing to have converting conversations with folks and when people disagree.

[00:12:05] **Chris P Reed:** Now it's a lot of this actually know some civil war dynamic, and I think that's the tough part. But I think what he's saying is the positive aspect of it. The great part about what being sig being sensitive and cognizant to the feelings of others or to things going on around you is really just awareness.

[00:12:23] **Chris P Reed:** And maybe you shouldn't have to script what people call things. 'cause it becomes semantics at some point, but we thought this worked as a colloquialism. I remember when I was young my brother went to Seattle for the summer, came back, we were about to go somewhere and he tells my cousin comes out the house, he tells my cousin, man, the outfit is filthy.

[00:12:41] **Chris P Reed:** Cool. About 20 minutes later, we're like, where is Junior? He done went in the house and changed because in Seattle, filthy meant clean. It meant that's a nice outfit. But where we was from, it meant filthy. I'm saying so, so we didn't know. It took us like three weeks to [00:13:00] understand what this dude was even saying because he had picked up the colloquialism from that east coast type of situation.

[00:13:05] **Chris P Reed:** And maybe it's not to oversimplify it, maybe it's as simple as these people call it this and we call it something else. I'm sure you guys are from different spots. New York and Detroit and all this, y'all might call something there something, but that's the danger of not having a common language.

[00:13:19] **Chris P Reed:** She talked about a common language and when it's something so serious, when it's a topic or a subject that involves us all. We have the onus on ourselves to make a common language or at least understand that other perspective.

[00:13:32] **Tony Tidbit:** So I'm gonna push back a little bit though, bro, so I hear you.

[00:13:36] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay. In terms of the overall, the overarching perspective, which that part I agree with a hundred percent. Okay. And I definitely hear you in terms of the filthy 'cause you're right. Depending on where you grow up, that could mean buddy, you looking good or buddy you really, you dirty, here's some soap.

[00:13:53] **Tony Tidbit:** Right? Absolutely. Here's the thing though, so where I push back a little bit is that [00:14:00] there was no multiple definitions of work woke. Dr. Smith just got finished saying we wasn't using the word woke in, in a multifaceted way. It was to your point about to be aware. That was it. There was nothing else outside of it.

[00:14:19] **Tony Tidbit:** There was nobody adding on to it. There was none of that. And let, and don't take what I'm saying. Let's go through the timeline, because to be fair, Dr. Smith said the civil rights movement where, you know and I get that but there's a, actually a timeline, which a record.

[00:14:38] **Tony Tidbit:** And this was out of the New York Times.

## [00:14:41] The Influence of 'Woke' in Politics

[00:14:41] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay. And you guys have it? I have it. aa, I'll put it up on the screen. So let's go through the timeline of the word woke. And this was in the New York Times, and AA has it up on the screen so you can follow along. So 1923 is when the word finally comes on the scene from a recorded standpoint, [00:15:00] a collection of alms and ideas by the Jamaican philosopher and activist Marcus Garvey included words Wake up, Ethiopia, wake up.

[00:15:13] **Tony Tidbit:** Africa. So in other words, the first time it came out, first time somebody heard it, it was like, wake up. Be aware. 1938 Blues musician. Ledbetter known as, yeah. Known as Led Belly. Okay. He uses a phrase, stay woke in his song, Scottsboro Boys. So again, stay woke and we can dive definitely into what was going 1938, right? 1940, the ni Negro United Workforce launched a strike again in West Virginia against the discriminatory tactics. A black human leader, a black union leader, speaks about the things that they were going through, right? And he says, guess what? We were asleep, [00:16:00] but now we will stay woke. Okay? So again, he's talking about, guess what?

[00:16:06] **Tony Tidbit:** They got us 'cause we didn't understand and we didn't know what was going on. Now we do. We're gonna stay woke or we're gonna stay aware. So they can't get us no more. As we are going through this union negotiations.

[00:16:21] **Chris P Reed:** And as you go further down the timeline, in 1962, the same information William Melvin Kelly's essay, if you're woke, you dig. It appeared in the New York Times. And then 1973, we see another iteration where Barry Beckham uses the word woke in his 1972 Play. Garvey lives about the Pan-African general Marcus Garvey. And then of course 2008, which is probably when I first became cognizant of the term. Erykah Badu had a song called Master Teacher, where he used, where she uses the lyrics stay woke,

[00:16:54] **Adrian Alvarado:** and then it begins to change. In 2010, woke undergoes a dilution. A [00:17:00] dilution, and starts being used broadly as a catchall to describe social justice. It quickly becomes appropriated and transformed into a negative descriptor for anything having to do with inclusivity and anti-discrimination. And then in 2017, the appearance of stay woke as a category on jeopardy. Ruined it all. I think

[00:17:21] **Chris P Reed:** that's right. Mainstream.

[00:17:23] **Adrian Alvarado:** That's mainstream right there. And everybody. And then Mike Milton paid, oh wait, what's this word? So it appeared there in 2017, and then in 2022 the now infamous Mr. Florida, governor DeSantis, who's running for president currently signed signs, introduction, introductory law, stop woke.

## [00:17:46] The Future of 'Woke'

[00:17:46] **Adrian Alvarado:** So he passed the law called Stop Woke. Think about that.

[00:17:49] **Tony Tidbit:** So think about that. Let's be clear now, just so the audience is following along from the first time. It was recorded in 1923, which was a hundred years ago, to be [00:18:00] clear. All right? Up to 2008. It had the same meaning, the same definition. Stay woke, be aware.

[00:18:11] **Tony Tidbit:** Be aware what's going on. Then to double a's point in 2010, it became a whole nother different thing. And what was the key phrase in what you read in 2010? aa, it defined what?

[00:18:26] **Adrian Alvarado:** Social justice.

[00:18:28] **Tony Tidbit:** Now all of a sudden, now all of a sudden it's now diving into the DEI arena, social justice inclusion, the whole nine yards. And was it a positive thing? 2010 aa when it says it start including social justice? No. It was a, it became a, it just ki it got diluted because it was broadly, it started being used very broadly as a catch all to describe [00:19:00] social justice.

[00:19:01] **Adrian Alvarado:** And it became a negative descriptor.

[00:19:03] **Tony Tidbit:** So think about that for a second.

[00:19:05] **Tony Tidbit:** Now all of a sudden it's becoming a word that has a negative connotation. The negative connotation is inclusivity, progressiveness, anything like that, which I don't even get how that was transformed there, but we're gonna, we're gonna dive into that as well. And then I think, which we're gonna speak a little bit more later on in 2022 like you said, aa Rhon de Sanders signs the Stop Woke Act.

[00:19:34] **Tony Tidbit:** All right? So think about that evolution that we, I told you from the beginning that we were gonna dive into how this word, the real meaning is about sta being aware now has gone over to a political negative situation that's now broadly being brushed in anything that has to do [00:20:00] with inclusivity and progressiveness.

[00:20:02] **Tony Tidbit:** And I gotta say this guys, why I wanted to have this conversation about this work. And we talked about over a hundred years of the word being consistent. And then over the last 10, 12, 13 years, it changing drastically. But the reason this was important for me is that, and you guys know this, I wanna make sure the audience follows along as well.

[00:20:29] **Tony Tidbit:** So when black people came here as slaves in the United States, they could not read or write, they were forbidden to be to to be able to read or write. Why was that? Because if they were aware, if they were able to read or write, they would've been aware of their rights. And then when somebody can read and write and they can read and start thinking for themselves, then they're like, oh, we don't [00:21:00] really need to be in this.

[00:21:01] **Tony Tidbit:** Oh, we can come up with something to get us outta this. But if you keep people ignorant. This goes back to your point, Chris, in the beginning, and this is why we were applauding Mike Milton, if you can keep people ignorant and they're not aware, you can control them. Okay? And that's what happened for centuries.

[00:21:23] **Tony Tidbit:** Centuries. And then you think about it and going back to Professor Smith when he said about the civil rights movement. If you think about it, all the people, the African Americans that stood up. To make people, their brothers and sisters aware of what was going on. We can go back to Frederick Douglass.

[00:21:45] **Tony Tidbit:** Frederick Douglass was making people aware that how bad slavery was, not just the, not just black people, but white people all the way up to, to, to Abraham Lincoln. He was making people aware, [00:22:00] which helped come up with the 13th amendment. Then if we continue to move on through civil rights, where people were going out the back in the the the, I forget what they call the train or whatever it was where they were going out, and then they were making people aware their ability, they had the right to vote.

[00:22:19] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay? And by doing that. People started registering to vote. Okay? We, and then all the people that died or got assassinated because they were making people aware. What about Medgar Evers, where back in 1960, in the 19 early 1960s, he was making people aware of their civil rights. He ended up getting killed in front of his family because they didn't want him to let make people aware.

[00:22:48] **Tony Tidbit:** Martin Luther King Jr. Made people aware, not just black people, but white people of what, how bad civil, right? How bad the South was treating African-American people [00:23:00] and all type of people. Okay? He was making people aware. If we didn't have, and I can go on and on, okay. This situation drives me crazy.

[00:23:12] **Tony Tidbit:** It's because at the end of the day, if we were not aware. We wouldn't be where we are today for people like that. And look, I'm just giving you from an African American viewpoint. Later on I'm gonna give it to you from a white person's viewpoint as well. But do you guys see my point here?

[00:23:31] **Chris P Reed:** The issue with feudalism, they're not letting people understand the laws and the repercussions and the rights that they have or the rights that citizens have, so to speak. Has been a practice that's been going on way before the practicing, but a long time ago, right? Even over there. And that is how you keep people controlled. But you do have the Frederick Douglass of the world that you stated that taught himself how to read. And it goes back to what that woman was saying as far as Christine was saying about a common language he was able to [00:24:00] affect abraham Lincoln and other learned individuals because he was a learned individual. He was meeting them where they were from a vocabulary perspective, from a intellectual perspective. He had to go and make sure that he was armed accordingly in order to move the needle for the folks that he had left behind.

[00:24:16] **Chris P Reed:** That's a tough, once again, just like your guy Mike, that's a tough cross to bear. But it takes that type of courage to say, I wanna know better. I wanna do better. I feel like I can make a difference. And everybody just to have that, that good them guts. So

[00:24:34] **Tony Tidbit:** Exactly that deal. Exactly. I think the key though, to your point is that it's about awareness in everything. Not just from what I just got finished stating and from the African-American community, but it's for all communities to be aware to to be able to understand what's going on. Everyone should be able to stay woke. But unfortunately, back to [00:25:00] what AA said in 2010, the word started to change. So let's go back to Christina Kim and hear a little bit about the word woke changing.

[00:25:09] **Christina Kim:** Smith says he's not surprised to see woke take on yet another meaning

[00:25:13] **Dr Damari A Smith:** you know, Like all words, they can be weaponized

[00:25:16] **Christina Kim:** In this current context, woke has become a catchall for anything deemed progressive or inclusive.

[00:25:21] **Dr Damari A Smith:** And the problem when you hear woke uh, is I would say at least for Fox News, they kind of see it as more like folks who have this like kind of socialist agenda where that at least that's their perspective. And so anything that they don't deem as correct, it's considered woke.

[00:25:43] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay, so we're change now is progressiveness. I think the other thing before we even get there a lot of words or phrases from the black community become mainstream. All right. And [00:26:00] so before we go to the political aspect of it, let's go to.

[00:26:06] **Tony Tidbit:** The words that come from the black community, how they be, how every they become catchalls. Right? And so let me give you some examples. And again, I'm dating myself years ago, black people used to say right on, and then white people are like, right on. All right. Now black people were saying, what's up, bro?

[00:26:24] **Tony Tidbit:** Now everybody, bro, what's up, bro? Yep, absolutely. Okay. And we can go on and on in terms of words and phrases that started in the black community that become mainstream, right? So woke I get that right? And I think Christina was also at she, not in this clip, but she was saying that now white people use the word as a badge of honor, all right?

[00:26:50] **Tony Tidbit:** To say, Hey, I'm woke. I'm progressive too. I'm woke. But again, these are things that start changing right when it starts becoming mainstream. Now, [00:27:00] let's be clear, when. People started using the word right on that definition didn't change when people started saying, what's up, bro? That definition didn't change.

[00:27:15] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay. And we can go on and on in terms of all the other phrases and words that have become mainstream from the black community and they continue to keep their original meaning. But this word took a life a a life of its own.

[00:27:32] **Adrian Alvarado:** Yeah. 'cause you can't really weaponize Right on. It doesn't, you can't use it as a fearmongering tool or what's up bro? Oh wait people say, what's up, bro? You gotta look out now. But woke nowadays, especially when you're looking for power and to suppress people that's that's it, that's the trigger. And it's amazing how they know and how they find it and promote that word. So that Mike Milton can [00:28:00] find out about it 60 years later, it's I'm glad he is doing it it's been around but now he's learned it in a different way.

[00:28:09] **Chris P Reed:** So I think you have to be careful though, because and as an ad guy, as a exec, Tony propaganda is real.

[00:28:17] **Chris P Reed:** That the psychology of propaganda and putting something in front of somebody and forcing it down their throat, that's really real. Even if you look at the swastika, that's obviously signifying, the Nazi party now was an ancient Indian symbol in Hinduism. And they just co-opted it, and then now it has a bad negative connotation.

[00:28:36] **Chris P Reed:** But if you have traditional Orthodox Hindu, people who practice the religion, they don't even pay attention to that because it's been around 4,000. You can take something and make it what you want. You have to be resistant to what you allow people to feed you. Emotionally, mentally intellectually you gotta make sure what if it tastes nasty or you have to ask questions, and I think that's really what [00:29:00] we're talking about is, hey you can't stop bad actors. Let's just be honest about that. Somebody's gonna say, that's not what I meant. Or they're gonna misconstrue things. But when it's something this serious, when it's something that's affecting policies and laws, like you said, it was the stay woke law or the, I'm sorry, the anti woke law.

[00:29:20] **Chris P Reed:** When you start putting this into, to legal documents, it's a different, more scary dynamic. If you just saying something, you just saying something like, I'll come and come here. I gotta halfheartedly respect that because it doesn't really mean anything. It starts to mean something when it, when pen is paper and it's signed and now I'm forced to be converted to your perspective of that term.

[00:29:42] **Chris P Reed:** That's a problem.

[00:29:43] **Tony Tidbit:** Yeah. But here's the thing though, bro it doesn't, it didn't just wake up one day and become pen to paper, okay? So it starts with somebody saying it and saying it in a derogatory negative tone, and they're doing it on [00:30:00] purpose, okay? And then they keep doing it, and then they keep defining it and they keep, then they keep the little snowball rolling down the heel.

[00:30:09] **Tony Tidbit:** Then you get to a stop woke bill. Okay? So at the end of the day, that did, so my point is, it's intentional, right? It's intent when, again, when the other words and phrases went mainstream, there was no stop bra to stop bra legislation or the the anti write on write on agenda.

[00:30:34] **Tony Tidbit:** There was none of that. It, this is intentional, right? Because it's, and here's the kicker. This is why we're talking about this. Its purpose is to divide and conquer people. The word, the definition of woke was never to divide and conquer. It was about stay aware, be aware. We just went through the timeline, okay?

[00:30:55] **Tony Tidbit:** That was never part of it. And then not only that, we just went through a [00:31:00] litany of historical figures who may help make changes in the country by doing what? Making people aware. Okay so that's where I get a little strung up because I know, I see the strategy. The strategy is on purpose.

[00:31:18] **Tony Tidbit:** It's to divide and conquer. And more importantly, it's going back to what we were talking about our boy, Mike Milton, the majority of people don't look nothing up. They do not define stuff for themselves. So what happens? They end up going down a rabbit hole because of who they believe is, right?

[00:31:39] **Tony Tidbit:** Who they think, why would this person make it up? And then and politicians and leaders and and it's not even them. You even now have stuff in the media. Oh, nine yards. They do that on purpose. 'cause they know, look, Trump said I can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue in front of a bunch of people and say over and [00:32:00] over again, I didn't do it.

[00:32:00] **Tony Tidbit:** And eventually people say, you know what? He didn't do it. So what does that tell you? Okay, so this is my point here. That's the point. And now we're having, we're talking about on this podcast about something that has nothing to do. The definition of it has nothing to do with what we are today. Now let's do this, let's be fair, because these are how they.

[00:32:22] **Tony Tidbit:** They utilize and create this broad brush, and then people start thinking that's what it means. Let's look at some of the things now, which and to be fair, I get it right. So AA said earlier that woke, you know how they defined it now? It is about social issues. It's about progressiveness in the whole nine yards.

[00:32:44] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay? Now let me give you some examples here. Okay, so here's a, here's, and I put this together because I wanted to make sure that we're clear. So it's not that the audience can think that Tony and double [00:33:00] A and Chris. They're just making this stuff up. Okay? So here, do you know the, because the conservative redefinition of woke has made the term more popular than ever.

[00:33:15] **Tony Tidbit:** It was one of the word for woke for Google searches hit an all time high in March of 2023. Okay. The word woke has taken center state, and this is by Forbes. Okay. Alright. So let me back up a little bit because I wanna make sure that we're all on the same page, so just to give you an example of where we are right now and how people have defined this word.

[00:33:44] **Tony Tidbit:** And now it's all about a movement and it's about ex what's the word I'm using? Inclusiveness and progressiveness, right? Okay. [00:34:00] This was in the wall Street Journal, December 2nd, 2023. It says Trump's second term plans, anti woke University and Freedom Cities.

[00:34:14] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay, so this is what, and I'm reading This is directly outta the Wall Street Journal. Okay. This article was written on December 2nd. The former president is laying plans to wield his executive authority to influence school curriculum, prevent doctors from providing medical interventions for young transgender people and pressure police departments to adopt a more severe anti-crime policies.

[00:34:41] **Tony Tidbit:** He said he would establish a government back anti woke university create a national credential body to certify teachers who embrace patriotic values and erect freedom cities on federal [00:35:00] land. Think about this for a second. This is part of, this is what he's saying that he's gonna do or he's going to implement as part of his administration and part of his strategy, his plan, if he becomes, if he gets become, he gets reelected to president.

[00:35:18] **Tony Tidbit:** So think of, so this ain't 1923 where or 1938 or 1940 was just like, stay woke. Be aware, this is somebody now who's now taking this and now saying, I'm gonna make this legislation. From a federal standpoint, how do we get here?

[00:35:41] **Chris P Reed:** I think we get there because of what you said previously, the idea of not allowing people to read and understand and be aware is a mechanism for power.

[00:35:50] **Chris P Reed:** So when you have people that are in power or perceived to have power, they wanna do everything they can to get a foothold and grasp of that power. And the more you know, the more dangerous you are [00:36:00] to usurp their power. And so he realizes if I wanna stay in charge or if I want to keep my position, I have to keep him confused.

[00:36:08] **Chris P Reed:** If you look at the art of war or any kind of military strategies the idea of confusion and disarray is prominent in these type of situations. And so when you can halfway say something, because the one thing he didn't do was that he said anti woke universities and anti woke snap, but he didn't use the opportunity to define what it's, or to define what woke is.

[00:36:33] **Chris P Reed:** He didn't define the definition or the antithesis. And that's dangerous when you are making policies where you haven't even told me what the hell I'm signing up for. You haven't told me what you really believe in, you're just saying stuff and you're putting the feeler out there and seeing how much emotion you can elicit and emotion is dangerous. We wanna be a logical nation. We wanna be, I have no choice but to believe, and I know this is a totally different podcast, right? I have no choice to believe [00:37:00] that the design is division. I have no choice but to believe that the that the way that we are established, we wanna have clear delineations of us and them, and this and that. There is no real money in unity. Chris Rock said, there's no money in the cure, right? There's only money in the treatment. If we cure everything then what's the pharmaceutical companies gonna do? So the idea of keeping that disarray, keeping us on our toes is turned into a financial mechanism for those who are in these positions of power.

[00:37:31] **Chris P Reed:** And the hypocrisy is just outta control. We can, once again, that's a whole nother conversation. But when we give these people a platform. Or a opportunity to influence those who might not have the chance to see other things. My man, Mike wanted to see it a different way. He wanted to get the big picture.

[00:37:50] **Chris P Reed:** Some people, they'll take the first thing smoking and when Trump gets up and says that they realize he's on this reputable outlet or this internet [00:38:00] source. And he said this, and if he said it, it must be somewhat correct. 'cause they wouldn't just, it is like with meat and things like that from the USDA, if I see it in the grocery store, they have to have approved.

[00:38:10] **Chris P Reed:** It says, must be okay for me to eat because they're sitting in the grocery store. But that's, it's not that simple and when you have those people in those positions, especially the highest position in the land, which is supposed to be the most respected position in all the world, the president of the United States, and you don't have the ability to be responsible with your rhetoric.

[00:38:31] **Chris P Reed:** You don't have the ability to be teaching the people or leading or guiding the people. You're just taking it as a pet project where you're just doing what you wanna do and backbiting and fighting amongst your own folks. A lot of that's going on as well. So a lot of this is what's getting the most noise.

[00:38:48] **Chris P Reed:** What if I hit something, I need to hear it come back. And when they get that, that echo chamber type of response. They're going, whether it's good, bad or indifferent, they're going to where the thumbs up are or the likes are, [00:39:00] no matter how the diaspora of the people that they are trying to reach if it's good, bad, or different, they're always catering to their base.

[00:39:09] **Chris P Reed:** Yeah. And that's dangerous.

[00:39:10] **Tony Tidbit:** So listen I hear all that and I use Tim as an example and you just saying, Hey, at the highest land. But that's not, it's not just him, it's everybody. It's article after article. It's the low level person and even now people who walk the street.

[00:39:26] **Tony Tidbit:** So let's pivot a little bit. Let's talk about the everyday US citizen now who has this negative, who sees woke as being, like you said, destroying the nuclear family and stuff of that nature. Let's talk a little bit about some of the things that's now thrown under the broad brush.

[00:39:43] **Tony Tidbit:** Of woke, right? So some of those, what we call cancel culture. Okay? So this is a big thing where, you know, people on the left now, because back to the mainstream I'm woke, right? I believe in inclusivity and stuff of that nature where [00:40:00] now because if you say something wrong, they cancel you out.

[00:40:04] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay? Or I remember it was the the what was it? The baseball announcer? I believe it was for the Oakland A's. This was, I think back in the summer where he was on a telecast, him and his co-panelists. And they were saying, Hey, we're over here at the Negro Leagues, right? And you wouldn't believe it.

[00:40:28] **Tony Tidbit:** And then he said the N word, right? On national tv. Okay. And it came out it came out real and his co-host was shaking his head like, didn't even, they didn't even blink. Okay? And so came up. They suspended him and then next thing you know, they fired him. Okay. And I remember saying I put this post on LinkedIn that he shouldn't have been fired.

[00:40:53] **Tony Tidbit:** This was an opportunity for him to learn and not only that, for him to be [00:41:00] able to share with others his mistake. So to be fair, we are in a situation now today where if you make one mistake, you say something wrong, you get wiped out. Alright? But now that's under the blanket umbrella as woke.

[00:41:17] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay. Now, I wasn't around, but I remember I read about it. 'cause I'm a histor historical book. I remember when, back in the fifties when they had the the Russian, I forget the the congressman was pulling people in and saying that they were communists, right? I forget his name.

[00:41:35] **Tony Tidbit:** McCarthy. It was McCarthy. Thank you. Thank you. Absolutely. Yes sir. Thank you. Thank you. And he was doing all that. I didn't hear woke come up. That wasn't woke. That was crazy.

## [00:41:47] Understanding the Concept of 'Woke'

[00:41:47] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay. So I get it. These are some of the things that people say they're woke because now they're pushing the envelope too far.

[00:41:58] **Chris P Reed:** Let me push [00:42:00] back on that just a little bit because we tend to want to believe conveniently that we're all in the same level or of the same religion or in the same genre. America is not a monolith. The great thing about us is we're a melting pot of different liberties. But you shouldn't take liberties with definitions of terms.

## [00:42:17] The Impact of 'Woke' Culture on American Society

[00:42:17] **Chris P Reed:** So if you go back to there was a situation where like you said, the cancel culture, bud Light situation where Kid Rock and all these folks came out and boycotted Bud Light because they had a transgender influencer that was part of a commercial campaign. And I. Forbes had it listed that they their profits dropped by 30% in that report, and their sales went down by 34%.

[00:42:40] **Chris P Reed:** From an ordering perspective, according to the New York Times they didn't fold because they were too far in. Let's just be honest about that. They were too far in, they didn't fold. But I think that if you went back and asked the people that wasn't, were no longer ordering a Bud Light while they were doing it, it was a lemmings type of situation.

[00:42:57] **Chris P Reed:** It's just sheep, man. It's, it is. Somebody [00:43:00] told me we don't do Bud Light over here anymore. And and you don't have any idea the real reason or rationale as to why? Because the one thing is when it comes to black folks, transgender, any identification of individual, we all six degrees of separation from somebody. And so it the idea of, I want to have it this way, or whatever the case may be, when they talk about these values and all this other stuff when you say values, the first thing you, the first thing I think, I'm not gonna put aspersions on you guys. The first thing I think is.

## [00:43:32] The Role of Identity and Religion in 'Woke' Culture

[00:43:32] **Chris P Reed:** White American, male, heterosexual Christian, right?

[00:43:35] **Chris P Reed:** That's the baseline. And then we go from there. But not every white male is Christian active, right? Not every white male is heterosexual active. I was looking at something for September 20 23. A Gallup poll stated that 47% of US citizens, Americans identify as religion. And of that 69% say that they're [00:44:00] Christian.

[00:44:00] **Chris P Reed:** But if you really press them on that the active understanding is they just wanna belong to something. When you say, how active is your Christianity, how much do you tithe, how much do you go to church, and all this and all that, they just wanna belong. And that's the danger of the belonging is that this is how that January 16th jumped off.

[00:44:20] **Chris P Reed:** So many people now in retrospect say, I was just there to see what would happen. So you have money to get on a plane to go to see what would happen. This is crazy, man. And that's the danger of when you have these type of things go off in society. And like you said, we have to understand this cancel dynamic. It can't be zero tolerance all or nothing because people do have the right. America is the country of second chances for some people, ? Correct. But I at least need to understand you have a right to represent yourself and you have a right to explain yourself. The problem with this woke ism thing is when pressed, I've not heard one good explanation because they [00:45:00] don't know what the hell it is.

[00:45:00] **Chris P Reed:** You that's what we're doing here today.

[00:45:02] **Tony Tidbit:** When you say this woke is thing, they haven't had one good explanation. What do you mean

[00:45:07] **Chris P Reed:** when they say I'm trying, I'm anti woke. Okay, explain that to me. Define that for me. Help me understand what anti woke is. I'm not trying to have values and this, that, whose values.

[00:45:17] **Chris P Reed:** When you start asking more layers of why and what , you're a asshole because you cornering people right? And you making them feel bad because they never really thought it out. They were just parakeet, whatever they had heard previously.

[00:45:29] **Tony Tidbit:** Here's the thing though. So I think some people do define it though.

## [00:45:32] The Influence of 'Woke' Culture on Consumer Behavior

[00:45:32] **Tony Tidbit:** They do define woke is as cancel culture. They do define it as being too progressive and too liberal. And the only reason they define it that way because that's what they've been told back to your people being sheep, alright? And so for their, so their definition is totally wrong.

[00:45:51] **Tony Tidbit:** Alright, so here's the kicker. This is why I bring up history because my pastor of my church taught me this years ago [00:46:00] and he said, he's like, Tony, there's nothing new under the sun. All right there's nothing new. So I can give you a million examples. So you're talking about Bud Light, all right.

[00:46:10] **Tony Tidbit:** You think Bud Light. Was the only commercial that ran. I went, there's a litany of commercials 30, 40, 50 years ago that was trying to be progressive and this and that. They didn't call them woke. This is my point here. We can talk, we can go on and on. This is a strategy to divide and conquer.

[00:46:32] **Tony Tidbit:** And they've taken it and they and they've co-opted it and they've made it into a what's what? Not a mission. They've made it into a following. That's where, to your point, people now define it as this, when it's not that. And here's the kicker. Lemme give you some examples.

[00:46:52] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay.

## [00:46:52] Historical Perspective on 'Woke' Culture

[00:46:52] **Tony Tidbit:** Let's just look back at history. Okay. So before we became a a country. [00:47:00] Okay. Who, who foot was we sitting under?

[00:47:03] **Chris P Reed:** The British Empire?

[00:47:05] **Tony Tidbit:** The British Empire. Mother England. Okay. Mother England. And then all of a sudden we were like. We ain't taking this no more. We had the Boston tea part.

[00:47:14] **Tony Tidbit:** Was that woke? Was the British Empire saying, I can't believe they're woke over there. Are you kidding me? Because we were like, we became aware and we're like, we wanna do our own thing. We need to be our own country. And guess what? That's what we became. Okay. Yeah. When Paul Revere was riding around on a horseback going through saying, the British are coming.

[00:47:37] **Tony Tidbit:** The British are coming. Was somebody was somebody, a farmer looking out and say, what's all this whoa noise going on? There's Paul Re no. They were like, thank you Paul. Thank for making us aware. Okay, we can go on and on. But now it's woke. It's this progressive, it's this and that. When Henry Ford said, you know what, I don't [00:48:00] think people should ride horses no longer.

[00:48:03] **Tony Tidbit:** I think we can make the horseless carriage. Was they walking around saying he woke? Why would he do that? That's he's stretching it too far. We, that didn't happen. When the the economy collapsed in 1929. Okay. Where people were in lines of food soup kitchens and people lost their savings and lost all that, and the banks closed oh nine yards.

[00:48:28] **Tony Tidbit:** And then FDR came out with Social security and the new deal. They, that was, whoa, alright? But now people are like, oh, even today you can't touch that social security.

## [00:48:39] The Misinterpretation and Misuse of 'Woke'

[00:48:39] **Tony Tidbit:** So my point is, throughout history, there's always been progressiveness. There's always been let's push the envo a envelope.

[00:48:49] **Tony Tidbit:** Let's do this, let's do that. And guess what it was celebrate it. But now. Because it has something to do with inclusiveness. [00:49:00] Okay? It has something to do with diversity, it has something to do. Now it's woke, it's a new definition. And now the average person outside of your boy, Mike Milton, is already running with this and saying, this is what it is

[00:49:20] **Chris P Reed:** in that same token note, Tony history is written by the victor, right? And so if you look at from a British perspective, so one of my degrees in history, and from a British perspective, captain George Washington was the greatest traitor in the history of the world, right? Because that's their side of it, right?

[00:49:39] **Chris P Reed:** Bre, captain George Washington, how dare he. He's right. We gave him a job and gave him an opportunity, and he turned on us. So it becomes a situation where everybody, I'm not gonna say everybody, that's stupid. Many people want growth. But don't want change. And that's oxymoronic.

[00:49:57] **Chris P Reed:** That's oxymoronic. So even when you said like the Henry Ford [00:50:00] thing, there was some people that made money off horses that was hatin' on Henry Ford that was back in, they blow your stuff up. You know what I'm saying? The Carnegies and those folks, the rock.

[00:50:08] **Tony Tidbit:** But they called them woke though. They wasn't calling them woke. They see, this is my point though. Yeah. Some people like, he gonna pull us outta business. Absolutely. But there wasn't, that's my point, my friend. That's the point I'm trying to make. There's always gonna be some people that push back or who say we shouldn't do this and that.

[00:50:25] **Tony Tidbit:** I get that. But they wasn't defining it to create a divide and conquer culture. That's my point here. Not everybody ung the roses. Not everybody was like, kumbaya. Yeah, let's do it. There's always gonna be people who don't see the, don't have the vision. They didn't define something. Yes. To divide people.

[00:50:44] **Adrian Alvarado:** So innovation didn't become woke. So just because now you invent something.

[00:50:49] **Tony Tidbit:** Exactly.

[00:50:50] **Adrian Alvarado:** Now you're woke the light bulb.

[00:50:53]

[00:50:54] **Tony Tidbit:** So that's today. Now it's about anything we just, you just talked about Bud Light Target, [00:51:00] stop. And this is the key with the audience. Please do me a favor. Do not take what I'm saying as the gospel.

[00:51:06] **Tony Tidbit:** Look it up. You can look up and so you see all the controversial commercials that has happened since television has been on, and you'll see that there's stuff that, that was racist. There was stuff that was Dylan or whatever her name, what is it, Dylan? Uh, uh, uh, The Bud Light like, what, what was the person's name?

[00:51:27] **Tony Tidbit:** Yeah. Last name to get. Yeah. I get you. That's not the first time. That was something like that happened. Okay. And they didn't define it as, whoa, this is my point. Okay. This is a strategy that is really about doing it. Now, let's be clear. Do I believe in cancel culture? No. Okay. You've talked about January 6th.

[00:51:51] **Tony Tidbit:** Was that woke? People jumping up in the Congress. Think about that for You don't hear that, that comes across as, those are Patriots. [00:52:00] Patriots. Okay. They're Patriots. Patriots. But if it would've been a bunch of black people storm in the capitol, let's be fair let's say it like it is. You kidding me?

[00:52:10] **Tony Tidbit:** Here,

[00:52:10] **Adrian Alvarado:** it would've been the woke walkers.

[00:52:12] **Tony Tidbit:** Exactly. That's right. That's okay. I look how that's, they, that's where they're written by the victors. This country over. They're they climbing the wall. Alright. They're scaling. Okay. We gotta get where Army mean National Guard.

[00:52:25] **Tony Tidbit:** Absolutely. Let's stop 'em.

[00:52:26] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay. Let's be fair here, right? I can sit back and say, yes. Are there are companies going a little too far in terms of their policies and stuff like that? But that's been all the time. That's nothing new. Okay. That is nothing new. Always have, and guess what? It always will. But when it comes to inclusiveness, right?

[00:52:47] **Tony Tidbit:** When it comes to people of color. Okay. And look, let me give you an example here real quick because you know I can talk about this, but I wanna move on because we talked about political weapon.

## [00:52:59] The Political Weaponization of 'Woke'

[00:52:59] **Tony Tidbit:** So let's do this [00:53:00] double A. Why don't you play the next clip? Play the play the DeSantis clip. And let's hear this.

[00:53:06] **Tony Tidbit:** When we talk about political weapons,

[00:53:09] **DeSantis:** we have embraced freedom. We have maintained law and order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers, and we reject woke ideology.

[00:53:28] **DeSantis:** We fight the woke in the legislature, we fight the woke in the schools, we fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke.

[00:53:45] **DeSantis:** Now

[00:53:48] **Adrian Alvarado:** I know that's Florida. We all go to die in Florida, but now the world go

[00:53:51] **Tony Tidbit:** to die in Florida. Funny.

[00:53:54] **Tony Tidbit:** Now let's hold on. Let's make sure everybody's on the same page. This was [00:54:00] his victory speech, his inauguration when he won reelection to the governorship. Okay? And I get it.

[00:54:09] **Tony Tidbit:** You want to come out, you wanna say, Hey, we did look what he's talking about. We fight the woke in the legislator. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke, wherever. Think about Florida's a place where the woke come, comes to die from 1923 to stay woke to be aware. Now, in 2023, we fight the woke.

[00:54:37] **Tony Tidbit:** And then here the crowd ah and here's the kicker. Here's the kicker. Let's do this. Let's re-say what he said, but let's do it by the true definition of the word. The true definition is to be aware. Okay? So if we replayed [00:55:00] his thing with those thousands of people listening, he says, we fight the people who are aware in the legislator we fight the people who are aware in the schools.

[00:55:14] **Tony Tidbit:** We fight the people wherever they're aware at Florida is for people who are aware comes, that goes to die. So he's telling you flat out that they don't want you to be aware. And guess what? The people are cheering. Just think about that, okay? Think about that. That's the point. That's why we're having this conversation.

[00:55:42] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay. This has now become some movement. He, his speech had nothing to do with, Hey, I'm gonna build more roads. Hey, I'm gonna lower the taxes. Hey, I'm gonna bring more companies to Florida to I'm gonna help him build innovation. I'm gonna make sure that our schools are the [00:56:00] 21st century schools where, you know, none of that, his speech is about woke.

[00:56:06] **Tony Tidbit:** That's where we are today.

[00:56:09] **Chris P Reed:** Never. I think that's because the political platforms are about emotion. It's about eliciting emotion and not solving anything. It's about just a feeling. It was a situation where he gave a DeSantis, gave a commencement speech, and in that speech he said the woke mind virus represents a war on merit.

[00:56:26] **Chris P Reed:** It represents a war achievement. It's a form of cultural Marxism that seeks to use identity politics to divide Americans. He said that at Liberty University the idea of something could be a war on merit, the definition of merit. This is where you start to bastardize terms and things like that.

[00:56:43] **Chris P Reed:** The definition of merit is we had an equal and equitable platform to earn the same opportunity. That's what merit based things are. But I think that what he meant, like you said, is this manifest destiny or he deserved the right, the first right of refusal. And so [00:57:00] if you're woke, you're letting everybody in to get an opportunity.

[00:57:03] **Chris P Reed:** And he doesn't want that. He wants it for him and his catering to his base. And that's where the fear mongering comes in. That's where, hey, if they're doing it this concept of if we give it, if we give these people, whomever, these people are an opportunity. By definition is taking away right an opportunity.

[00:57:23] **Chris P Reed:** And that's how you really elicit that emotion. That's how you know when you're doing these campaigns and you get the coal miners and the people who feel like they're losing something in this thing, they don't realize how much of abundance is there and they just wanna hold on and hoard whatever they have.

[00:57:37] **Chris P Reed:** And so you poke the bear and especially if you bring up the children. That was the whole thing about the critical race theory. You bring up the children and these people are trying to indoctrinate our children. And so you create a whole school, like a PR university or something like that where you're trying to beat them to the indoctrination process.

[00:57:53] **Chris P Reed:** And once again, I don't believe in the sentiment of a fair playing field or [00:58:00] having a just outcome. I believe that this is them trying to meet their agenda for their own positions of power in the political spaces. And this is why you end up having a understood and unfortunately accepted disdain for politicians. It shouldn't be that these people are elected and we hate 'em all, and we don't believe 'em all. If I say, is a politician a liar? Everybody's gonna say yes and be okay with it. That's sad. That's sad.

[00:58:27] **Tony Tidbit:** Buddy I'll say it even more plainly.

[00:58:31] **Tony Tidbit:** This is a strategy to divide and conquer they'll use the zero sum game, you just talked about it. If they're trying to take away from you, okay? And so they know, to your point, the fearmongering, they know that will elicit some type of response, a negative response, a us versus them response.

[00:58:56] **Tony Tidbit:** Without people defining or looking or understanding [00:59:00] anything. And to be fair that emotion is already there, this is not about bringing people together. It's not okay.

[00:59:10] **Chris P Reed:** Correct. Absolutely.

[00:59:10] **Tony Tidbit:** If it was about that, he wouldn't have did that speech. And it was not just him Sarah Huckle, B Sanders, right?

[00:59:17] **Tony Tidbit:** Absolutely. She gave, absolutely gave the what was it? The the response to this to the State of the Union. Okay. That's when Biden's in office, he's a Democrat. He says what he's gonna do, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this and that. And then the Republicans get, come on and give their response, right?

[00:59:33] **Tony Tidbit:** Instead of counteracting or speaking, saying, you know what? I don't believe he's gonna do this. This is what we are gonna do. We're gonna save you money. We're gonna do this. We think you should have your own, your taxes are too much. They, she didn't talk about that. She came on and talked about woke.

[00:59:47] **Tony Tidbit:** Alright. It's a strategy. These are not coincidences and the thing that I want people to be aware of, okay? To be aware of.

## [00:59:58] The Danger of Divisive Rhetoric and the Importance of Awareness

[00:59:58] **Tony Tidbit:** They're trying to divide [01:00:00] and conquer us. That's all this is. It's not all you gotta do If you don't hear any politician, any leader if corporate leader, your own boss, if they're not talking about bringing people together and people working together and doing, coming up with solutions together.

[01:00:21] **Tony Tidbit:** If they're saying us versus them, if they're saying, Hey, they are destroying this and that, that tells you right off the bat , there's a zero sum game, and they're trying to divide people. Okay? And it's the oldest trick in the book. And they're using a term that, has nothing to do with that.

[01:00:44] **Tony Tidbit:** It's the opposite of that. It's to be aware. And the thing for me is that I want more people to understand that, look, at the end of the day, if you still wanna Tony, I get it. It [01:01:00] means aware you don't get it. They've gone over this and that. Okay? Every human being can decide what's best for them, all right?

[01:01:07] **Tony Tidbit:** But at least understand the facts first. And not what somebody is telling you. Look it up. Go to multiple sources, right? Because unfortunately today you can go here. Oh, that's what it mean. And what did Google say? It was the most searched term. So as human beings we want for my life, I want to bring people together.

[01:01:32] **Tony Tidbit:** That doesn't mean we're gonna agree on everything. That doesn't mean that that's fine. That's how we learn that's how we learn. But when we get to a point where it's us versus them, we're co-oping stuff. And every word that comes out, the majority of them is they're gonna take from you.

[01:01:52] **Tony Tidbit:** They're destroying this. They, versus what can we do to come together as a country? All [01:02:00] people, what can we do? So we can have discourse and we don't agree, but we can come to a compromise. What, what is about, what can we do in terms of let's hear everybody's ideas, how we can really navigate these challenges and we can come up with ways that will benefit everybody.

[01:02:18] **Tony Tidbit:** Right? There's, you don't hear that. And so we have to as as citizens, we have to hold our politicians accountable, okay? To, because at the end of the day, yes, I elected you to represent my district. Alright? But I didn't represent you to be a dictated in my district, or I didn't represent you to say us versus them.

[01:02:41] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay? I represented you to talk, bring ideas and things from our district to the table. That we can all, that you can sit down and discuss with all the other people who represent the other districts, and then we come up or you come up with ideas and [01:03:00] solutions that's gonna be the best for everybody so we can continue to move forward.

[01:03:04] **Tony Tidbit:** That's not what's happening. Okay.

[01:03:09] **Chris P Reed:** Let me help frame this Tony, because I know you enough to know your perspective and your position, and so I'll do it for the sake of the audience. When you say these dog whistles are determined to divide and conquer us, when you say us, you don't mean black males, you don't mean black folks, you mean American upstanding citizens.

[01:03:30] **Tony Tidbit:** That's correct.

[01:03:30] **Chris P Reed:** And so you should have on a shirt that says American Upstanding Citizen to establish a baseline is

[01:03:35] **Chris P Reed:** that's who they're after. It's easy for you to think they're after Tony the good guy, but they're after the American Institution of Liberty. The American institution of a community.

[01:03:47] **Chris P Reed:** And that's the danger here. I think that when one person says it, it's too easy to be like, ah, that's just them, like you said, us against them. That's just them. And they don't they're just crying or whining or whatever the case may be. [01:04:00] But we're talking about the institution of what America was built on, the sweet land of liberty and the idea to not try to infringe on the liberties of others to be L-G-B-T-Q or to be

[01:04:13] **Chris P Reed:** black, or to be Hispanic, or whatever the case may be.

[01:04:16] **Chris P Reed:** You should have the liberty. It was founded as a religious refuge, to be able to practice what you want to practice and do your thing. But when you have people that are in power that feel threatened by that for, by the parades and by the get togethers and by all the, and they wanna shut down and they wanna do torches and all this other stuff, when you're trying to infringe on liberties, that's anti-American,

[01:04:38] **Chris P Reed:** that's unpatriotic.

[01:04:40]

[01:04:40] **Tony Tidbit:** Buddy, go ahead. You said it. Look you see, but again, though, you have to be aware to figure that out, right? If you're not aware, then the thing that you said that you are patriot about and what you believe in, you actually stomping on. Alright? So you buddy, [01:05:00] very well said. Okay.

[01:05:01] **Tony Tidbit:** Very well said. But again, if they're saying us versus them, I don't care in any context, okay? It's a divide and conquer. And I'm gonna, we're gonna end it here, but I wanna real tell you guys a and I don't know Chris if you was involved in this, but I had a session at work and we talked about how does stereotypes work, how do they start?

[01:05:25] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay? And it was really great. It we all talked about 'em. But you know how they start though. Really and we'll go to the simplistic terms when p and these are things that we all do as human beings, okay? We say those people from Texas, they're all of them can't drive all of them.

[01:05:48] **Tony Tidbit:** We use the word them, those and all. And when you do that, you put everybody in a bucket and it's not even [01:06:00] true. It's a us versus them. No matter where I lived at, and I've been fortunate, I've been in 46 out of the 50 states in the United States, 46, I can tell you flat out every state. Now, I didn't chat with everybody in every state about this issue, but I've heard of from enough people in different states saying, those people from that state, they can't drive.

[01:06:23] **Tony Tidbit:** Think about everywhere, right? And that's as when we use those terms. We're basically saying us versus them. And it so easily happen when I remember when, if you divide up a room and play a game and say, okay you guys are the blue shirts, you are the red shirts, right? And we're gonna play this game, all right?

[01:06:44] **Tony Tidbit:** Immediately people go to us versus them, okay? And at the end of the day, they only care about us and they only care about them, right? So this is where this, I'm just telling you, it's a button, it's something that we do. And at the end of the day, [01:07:00] if you are hearing people say those people, they're trying to take this from you, that is a, that's all about division.

[01:07:10] **Tony Tidbit:** It's very important to, for everyone, black, white, Hispanic, LGBTQ. Everyone understand when you hear that, or more importantly, be careful saying it yourself. In anything not just in terms of race. What, like I said, those drivers or this not. That is exactly, that's where we get to where we are today.

[01:07:33] **Tony Tidbit:** Final thoughts?

[01:07:34]

## [01:07:34] The Power of Informed Decision Making

[01:07:34] **Chris P Reed:** We talked about the inherited perspectives and how you have to go and check for yourself or see for yourself but that it does take work and that it does take some, give a damn like I said.

[01:07:45] **Chris P Reed:** But it's important. There's no greater thing that you can do than to inform yourself if you're gonna be involved. You get what I'm saying. And the idea of the concept of walk is on this road of life, the absolute best thing you could [01:08:00] do is stay, walk behind the wheel. So as you travel down this road of life, stay woke behind the wheel, be aware of what's going on.

[01:08:06] **Chris P Reed:** That's why the windshield is way bigger than the rear mirror, because you gotta make sure you know exactly what's going on in front of you if you're gonna be progressive. And I think that the term progressive. That's a whole nother conversation where they start misconstruing terms. Because like I said, everybody wants to grow, but nobody wants to change.

[01:08:24] **Chris P Reed:** And that's just silly. I think these type of conversations help to at least grease the wheels of the mind a little bit and make you at least think, wow, did I understand that? Did I know that? Is that something I can then go forward and try to understand for myself? Because if you're not representing yourself for yourself, then you're losing anyway.

[01:08:42] **Chris P Reed:** Like Tony always says, go check for yourself. Just so you know. Check a couple sources, don't stop at one. Don't stop at Fox News or don't stop at CNN. And the good thing about smart people, they can feel it. And I think that if we just take the opportunity to take a step back and do that and call BS on some of these folks who are spewing this [01:09:00] rhetoric, I know for a fact that's what's gonna come of this conversation more than anything else. Is that when somebody gets in front of a large crowd or on the television or whatever the case may say, and they say the us and them people are gonna think of you.

[01:09:11] **Chris P Reed:** Sir, you done planted the seed, so congratulations.

[01:09:14] **Tony Tidbit:** Double a.

[01:09:16] **Adrian Alvarado:** Yeah. Just, it's just when folks start using the word it's just, they're just scapegoating vulnerable communities. When politicians start using the word they're just scapegoating people who can't really defend themselves or trying to right.

[01:09:33] **Adrian Alvarado:** They never say, this is too conservative. I never hear that. We can't this is too, no, we gotta loosen up a little bit. But just be aware and stay woke.

[01:09:47]

## [01:09:47] Conclusion: The Importance of Staying 'Woke'

[01:09:47] **Tony Tidbit:** I love that. And look, I'm not gonna say not too much that you guys haven't' already , stated , everybody should be woke.

[01:09:55] **Tony Tidbit:** That's what makes us a great society. That's the key, is being aware. [01:10:00] I want my friends and family to be aware of what's going on the news media where they have exposes and dove into to scandals, because they wanted us to be aware. Alright, so it's important as an American citizen, as a human being to always be aware, is everything perfect?

[01:10:21] **Tony Tidbit:** No. Are there things that drive us all crazy? Absolutely. But those things don't have to be called a certain term because somebody's trying to define it to you. But more importantly, they're trying to use an us versus them strategy. I hope you really enjoy what we were talking about on this episode. What is woke and why is it a bad thing? The things that we want you to walk away from is it's important to be aware in all things. , if you do not know what somebody, what a term or a phrase that you hear over and over again and that somebody is [01:11:00] defining it for you, stop. Check it out.

[01:11:04] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay? Check it out. You still may come to the same conclusion. I don't know, but at least do your own due diligence. Jim Jones was able to get 900 people to sell their possessions and move to Guyana, all right? And then drink Kool-Aid or what they thought was cool, they thought was Kool-Aid to kill themselves.

[01:11:23] **Tony Tidbit:** So it's easy for people to follow. People they think is the Messiah or they think they know. And guess what? You're gonna go, you'll end up right down the rabbit hole. So define things for yourself is very important. And then the final thing, be very, have your ears open. When you hear people who supposedly have your interests they're saying, Hey, I really care about you.

[01:11:51] **Tony Tidbit:** I I'm gonna change things for you. If you hear the US versus them. If you hear these people are doing this, then I would take [01:12:00] a step back because at the end of the day, that person doesn't really have your interests. They have their own interests, and what they want to do is divide us, right? So they can stay in power.

[01:12:11] **Tony Tidbit:** So that's not a leader to me, that's not somebody that, for me, that I look up to, that's gonna help take this country to a whole nother level that's going to make sure that all people are heard. So keep your ears, your antennas shall go up. If you hear us versus them, or a zero sum game. So I think this time, I think we came to the point now where it's time for what?

[01:12:37] **Tony Tidbit:** Tony's tidbit. There we go. It's time for Tony's tidbit. The tidbit today is by Joshua Ferris. And Joshua says, it is forgivable to say nothing outta ignorance. It's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns.

[01:12:58] **Tony Tidbit:** Okay? And [01:13:00] that's by Joshua, and that's my man. He hit it around in the head, right? You don't know. Then you gonna follow right down on the rabbit hole. But once you become aware, there's no more excuses. Okay? So thank you Joshua Farris, and thank you. For tuning in to this episode of a Black Executive Perspective podcast.

[01:13:18] **Tony Tidbit:** What is Woke and why is it a bad thing? I hope you really enjoyed it. Please give us a rating wherever you are watching, you are listening to this podcast, or if you're watching it, give us a raid rating, a review. Tell us your thoughts. What do you think when we talk about what is woke and is it a bad thing?

[01:13:38] **Tony Tidbit:** You can also follow a black executive perspective on all our social channels. From X to Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube at a Black Exec. So for my Tony Tidbit and Friends group, I'm Tony Tidbit. We talked about it.

[01:13:56] **Tony Tidbit:** I love you all and we're out. Thank you [01:14:00] for tuning into this episode of Tony Tidbit, a black executive perspective, and for joining in today's conversation with every story we share, every conversation we foster and every barrier we address, we can ignite the sparks that bring about lasting change. And this carries us one step closer to transforming the face of corporate America.

[01:14:24] **Tony Tidbit:** If today's episode resonated with you, consider subscribing and leaving us a rating or review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Share this episode with your circle and with your support, we can reach more people and tell more stories.