. But what does it mean to be “woke”? The governor’s <DeSantis> office was recently asked. It’s a fair question. His general counsel, Ryan Newman, responded. “Woke” is: The belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them…. To me, it means someone who believes that there are systemic injustices in the criminal-justice system, and on that basis, they can decline to fully enforce and uphold the law. Awkwardly expressed, but essentially the right idea. Differential treatment under the law can be justified so that (for example) the book can be thrown at white Jan-6rs while the blacks who rioted following George Floyd’s death can be handled with kid gloves even though the latter were far more violent and did far more actual damage. Black Lives Matter was joined by more than a few white Antifa members. <...> What you’ll hear if you are able to buttonhole a modestly articulate “woke” activist about what he or she believes, you’ll get something like the first statement above, invoking a difference between systemic as opposed to systematic racism and discrimination. This distinction long predates Michael Brown (shot to death by a police officer back in 2014) or George Floyd (allegedly murdered in 2020). Systematic implies action, e.g., individual acts of discrimination, a refusal, say, by white men to hire or serve blacks, or hire women, out of racism and sexism respectively. Actions against which laws were passed back in the 1960s. Systemic implies structural: large-scale ways society and its institutions have been arranged, perhaps from the beginning, so that the results are unjust differential treatment regardless of any living white person’s actions or intentions. “Woke” appeals to the latter. Were it true, laws would be all but useless against it.