WOKE

 I love language.  Of course, mine is the English language.  Language is alive and everchanging.  Each year we add many new words to the lexicon.  In addition, we sometimes add new meanings or usages for old words.  One of those words we hear now is "woke".  

Woke was traditionally the past participle of "wake".  "What time did you wake up?  I woke up at six am."  Everyone gets that.  There is now a new usage for this past participle.  "Woke" now describes a person's state of being aware of social justice, especially racial, issues.  

A person is now 'woke' if he is able to see racism and other injustices in our society.  Those most 'woke' are able to see racism and social injustices almost everywhere.  

My thinking is that after one becomes fully 'woke', other 'woke' folks might actually find racism and social injustices in them.  The fully 'woke' are searching for fairness; fairness in employment, fairness in opportunities of all kinds.  Fairness to a 'woke' person is based mostly on numbers.  Taking merit into the calculus throws a difficult monkey wrench into the problem.  

Surely the 'woke' folks in the National Basketball Association don't really want to force race, color, ethnicity, religion, or political views to be as evenly distributed across their league as they are in the country as a whole.  That might be fair but probably will mean a lower standard of play.  Players are chosen based on merit.  We all understand that.  That seems to be okay for the NBA but not for other businesses, schools, government and other organizations.  

Are we holding back Asian students to allow a greater percentage of other races in our schools of higher education?  If you think this is justified because these favored applicants did not have the advantage of a good education in primary grades; then I want to play in the NBA because I did not have good basketball coaching when I was young and there were not courts available for me to learn on.  

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