'Woke' has been weaponized to label those fighting oppression the oppressors

If you’ve read Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” — and haven’t just accepted the book-banners’ synopsis of the novel — you’ll remember that Sixo, one of the men enslaved on Sweet Home plantation, decides to stop speaking English. Because, the omniscient narrator explains, “there was no future in it.”

Sixo’s rationale for eschewing English — it being his oppressor’s tool, not his — must resonate with Black people from the ivory tower down to the streets who find it near impossible to communicate with the white majority when that white majority has the power...