Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain

Wokeish: On Being the One Who Speaks When Silence Is Safer

Violet Jiménez Sims

Keywords: Performative Equity, Women of Color in Academia, Respectability, Transformative Leadership

Abstract

This letter contributes to the Why we need to be heard category by naming and interrogating a phenomenon I describe as “wokeish”—a performative engagement with equity and social justice that prioritizes appearance over action. Drawing from my lived experiences as a Dominican woman with over 20 years in higher education and public education spaces, serving as both faculty and leader, I examine how institutions and individuals adopt the language of justice while avoiding the disruption required to achieve it.

Through narrative reflection, I explore what it means to occupy the role of the “Lonely Only” not solely as a matter of representation, but as a function of action—being the one who speaks when it is inconvenient, uncomfortable, or politically risky. I recount moments in which truth-telling was met with subtle forms of institutional discipline, framed as guidance but functioning as boundary-setting, and consider how such dynamics reinforce cultures of silence under the guise of professionalism and neutrality.

This letter also interrogates the paradox in which minimal gestures toward equity are labeled as “too much,” creating conditions where “wokeish” behavior is both criticized and rewarded. Ultimately, I argue that transformation requires a shift from performative alignment to principled disruption.