Letters: Here's what 'wokeness' really means
This is a definition of woke I found in the Merriam dictionary: “Having or marked by an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those involving the treatment of ethnic, racial, or sexual minorities.” If this is the definition of woke, what’s the problem?
The problem is ignorant racists, bigots and xenophobes. Haters that the government has to keep creating laws against to protect innocent citizens. To me there is no such thing as “woke.” What “woke” or “wokeness” boils down to is this: People of all walks and persuasions only wanting what every other citizen living in the U.S. wants — freedom. They want to live their lives free of persecution and prejudice.
Remember why people came to the New World? Why the Revolutionary War was fought? So we as a people and a new country could live proud and free and not under the thumb of prejudicial authoritarianism.
So, the next time you see someone or something you don’t like, think what you want, just don’t be a hater. That’s all it takes. Because guess what, the U.S. will never be white again, it will never be straight again and it will never be one religion. Because it never was any of those things right from the get-go.
Martin Horvath
South Bend
It's the way
We residents of the Princess City hear a lot about doing things “The Mishawaka Way.” At the police department this appears to be a knockoff version of The Chicago Way — special treatment for insiders with clout, corruption of police standards, whitewashing internal scandal and stonewalling public access to information and comment.
In the wake of reports his armed son received preferential, deferential treatment by police department leaders during a late-night DUI stop last October, Mayor Dave Wood claims to be a law and order leader. How so? Especially when the city has quietly sat on this information for six months and sought to block release of damaging police records?
The police chief, meanwhile, isn’t talking — which is what untouchable and unaccountable public figures do all the time.
Clearly the city and its police leaders cannot be trusted to investigate an egregious breakdown of standards in this traffic stop. A captain on the scene gave the suspect a ride home! There are no written reports of the stop!
The Indiana State Police or another outside agency with credibility needs to examine what happened here and whether this debacle is evidence of more significant problems inside the MPD.
Brett McNeil
Mishawaka
Worthy of respect
Jamea Harris.
Jamea Harris.
Jamea Harris.
She was killed after she turned down the advances of a basketball player from the University of Alabama on Jan. 15. A player from the team allegedly handed the pistol to someone else, who fired the fatal shot. Still another player, Brandon Miller, has been named as a cooperating witness.
Nate Oats, Alabama men’s basketball coach, said Miller was in the “wrong spot at the wrong time” and “did nothing wrong.” To be clear, by his own testimony, Miller brought a gun to a place where a woman lost her life. He did so after his teammate requested that he bring his gun. However, Brandon Miller is still playing.
Jamea Harris.
Jamea Harris.
Jamea Harris.
She was an African-American woman, a mother to a 5-year-old son. She was loved and had dreams and goals. Why is this student-athlete still allowed to play? The reality is that African-American women are not viewed as worthy of life, respect and safety.
Malcolm X once said, “Truth does not change, only our awareness of it." For our country to continue its growth, we must dig into the depths of the challenges other people face with a focus on love while understanding that each of us has the right to liberty, life, health, opportunities, love and acceptance.
Maxie Duane Bolden III
South Bend
This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Woke means people of all walks and persuasions want to live free
