IN A WOKE WORLD, PEOPLE WOULD STOP WATCHING JOE ROGAN
PUBLISHED ON MAY 20, 2021 BY HILLARY LEBLANC
During his podcast this week Joe Rogan stated that in this newer “woke” world, straight white men are being silenced – or maybe something less eloquent along those lines. The same day that news broke that he had said that, I was reading a series of comments on our Facebook page saying that our podcast was further causing racism, and separating voices by only giving one perspective. So here we are, writing about this BS again. My thoughts here are very similar to my thoughts on white narratives when Black people are telling stories and white people interject: just stop.
This type of conversation is so ultimately damaging. You have white people, specifically cis white men, trying to propagate the idea that they are being marginalised, discriminated against, racialized when they are still the minority and the biggest oppressor to all other groups. The idea that if society got more “woke” straight men would be silenced is not true. I don’t know that most people fighting for equity want that, which is a huge misunderstanding. In speaking around feminism there is also that argument that “feminists want men to die” or lose their jobs, etc. when all feminists want is equity. Feminists want equal pay, sex rights, work place equity, healthcare equity not for men to lose everything they have. In a “woke” world, cis white men wouldn’t be silenced but they wouldn’t consistently lead the narrative.
When white people start framing things in this way, that they are suddenly losing rights when they still have all of them, we start to see the people in charge get angry over losing something they have, when sharing some of it wouldn’t mean they would lose all of it. Like our conversations about Acadians in last weeks blog and podcast, you can share some of your good fortune, resources, wealth without losing your rights or your voice – especially white people who have it all. When the oppressor starts to feel marginalized, that’s when we get comments saying that our podcast which is meant to amplify Black voices is racist because it doesn’t include the white perspective. Almost every media outlet, article, conversation, subject taught has centered around the white men telling the history. Just because we, as a podcast, have finally allowed Black people to tell their stories doesn’t change the fact that white people can and will tell their stories. If you think having Black people tell there story takes something away from you read the hundreds of thousands of history books written by white people about how proud they were to enslave us and steal Indigenous land so you could have the right to even comment something like that on the Internet and then come back to me. This country and the America’s was built on the rapings, murders and slavery of BIPOC people.
Unfortunately, Joe Rogan has figured out that his audience and those who support Donald Trump are essentially a venn diagram. Making comments about white male oppression, and that wearing masks during a pandemic is like living in a police state, are going to go well with a group of people who only want to fly their freedom flags and believe that they are constantly right and that anything done to them that isn’t what they want is a hate crime despite a lot of them inflicting terrorism onto others (the insurrection, for example). I worry when people like Joe Rogan and Donald Trump fuel the fires of people this ignorant because they will run with it, spread hate, incite violence, vote for politicians who agree with them or run for office themselves. For some reason, common sense and love are not as common as ignorance and hatred.
The only straight white man I wish “woke culture” would silence is Joe Rogan. He continues to speak vile non-sense that encourages others to follow this dumbass narrative of white people suffering. White people can suffer, white people can have hard lives but your whiteness is not what makes your life hard and just because other people want their voices to be heard does not mean yours won’t be or that you are losing any rights. This is just a scare tactic to spew more hate. This is why when women joke that if you “listen to the Joe Rogan podcast it’s a red flag” it’s not a joke! It is a legitimate concern if you listen to him for enjoyment and not with criticism, scrutiny and worry for society. Only listen to Joe Rogan if you want to expand your silo of knowledge, otherwise listen to our podcast instead.