Big Woke Quiz 2022: 22 Woke Politics and Culture Questions

Pope Francis gave a sweeping apology to Indigenous people on their land in Canada on July 25, 2022, for the church’s part in running residential schools that became centers of horrible abuse for over a century until 1996. He called the abuse a “disastrous error” that impaired Indigenous people, their culture, and values. After delivering his speech, Chief Wilton Littlechild of the Ermineskin Cree Nation fitted the Pope with a headdress, its white feathers standing over his white robes. The Pope wore the regalia over his traditional papal head covering until it was removed shortly after by a staff member.

Spastic diplegia is a form of cerebral palsy (CP) – a chronic neuromuscular condition. It usually involves a constant stiffness in the muscles of the legs. The word “spaz” is considered a derogatory reference to the medical term spastic diplegia.

What does Beyoncé have to do with the ableist word “spaz”?

Weeks after rapper Lizzo changed the lyrics of her song “Grrrls” to remove the offensive word, Beyoncé retracted her song “Heated” from her 2022 album “Renaissance” to replace the same term.

Colombia’s Green Wave movement to decriminalize abortion had a winning moment on Feb. 22, 2022, when Colombia’s top Constitutional Court ruled that abortion is no longer a crime under Colombian law. The court’s decision decriminalizes abortions in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in Sept. 2021, and Argentina’s Congress legalized the procedure in late 2020.

Apple introduced Safety Check on iOS 16, released on Sept. 12, 2022. The feature allows users at risk for domestic abuse to manage and revoke access to their location data and reset privacy-related permissions.

Mahsa Amini, 22, was stopped by Iran’s morality police at a train station in Tehran and accused of not following the country’s hijab rules. Three days later, on Sept. 16, 2022, she was killed. Protests in Iran erupted in the weeks following. On Oct. 11, the Norway-based rights group Hengaw reported heavy casualties in Sanandaj, Amini’s hometown, where protests have been particularly intense.

Screenshot: TOLOnews

On May 19, 2022, Afghanistan’s Taliban ordered all female TV presenters to cover their faces on air. In reaction, male TV presenters on Afghanistan’s Tolo News wore face masks in solidarity with their female peers as part of a protest called #FreeHerFace on social media. Tolo news presenters wore facemasks on air for two days, from May 22 to 24, 2022.

You’re looking at the Aboriginal flag, which has been recognized as an official flag of Australia since 1995. The Australian government said on Jan. 25, 2022, it had acquired copyright to the Aboriginal flag from its creator, indigenous artist Harold Thomas for $20 million. The flag can now be freely used, resolving a commercial dispute that had restricted sporting teams and Aboriginal communities from reproducing the image.

On Jan. 31, 2022, Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of “The View,” commented during a discussion about a Tennessee school board’s banning of the Pulitzer winning Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” that the Holocaust was “not about race … it’s about man’s inhumanity to other men.” As a result, she was suspended for two weeks starting Feb.2, 2022. Goldberg expressed remorse over her remarks, saying she realized that they were misinformed and that she had misspoken.

Was the Holocaust about race?

The Nazi ideology was based mainly on a misconception of racism as a science, and specifically Eugenics, as a means to improve the genetic quality of what they called “The Aryan race.” This misconception led to the systematic extermination of what the Nazis saw as “degenerate” sub-humans, such as Roma and Jews (and homosexuals and others). Today both the Roma people and the Jewish nation are not considered a biological race. In fact, in recent years, human geneticists have mostly abandoned the term “race” in favor of  “ethnicity,” “ancestry,” and location-based terms.

Is Whoopi Goldberg Jewish?

Whoopi Goldberg was born Caryn Elaine Johnson to a Manhattan Baptist clergyman and attended a local Catholic school. She adopted the name Whoopi Goldberg as her stage name, stating that “Goldberg is my name—it’s part of my family, part of my heritage, just like being black,” and that “I know I am Jewish. I practice nothing. I don’t go to temple, but I do remember the holidays.” On her Jan. 31 “The Late Show” appearance, Goldberg explained that, as a Black person, she thinks of racism as being based on skin color but that she realized not everyone sees it that way. On Feb. 1’s The View, she said she had learned from the experience. “It is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race,” she said. “I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people, as they know, and y’all know because I’ve always done that.“

On March 29, 2022, President Biden signed a bill making lynching a federal crime for the first time in the United States. The law is named for Emmett Till, the Black boy murdered in Mississippi in 1955. The anti-lynching movement first introduced legislation to criminalize lynching in 1935, but it was repeatedly blocked more than 200 times. The bill, which makes lynching punishable by up to 30 years in prison, finally passed the House in Feb. 2022 with only three lawmakers opposing it and passed the Senate without objection on March 28.

Grammy-winning artist India.Arie posted the hashtag #DeleteSpotify on her Instagram account after a video emerged showing Rogan repeatedly using the N-word. Rogan apologized on Feb. 5, 2022, saying that the slurs were the “most regretful and shameful thing” he has ever had to address and that he hasn’t used the N-word in years.

The emperor is the world’s largest penguin and one of only two penguin species endemic to Antarctica. The emperor penguin is at severe risk of extinction in the next 30 to 40 years as a result of climate change, according to biologist Marcela Libertelli of the Argentine Antarctic Institute (IAA).

The Coca-Cola Company is ranked as the world’s top plastic polluter for the 4th consecutive year, according to the 2021 Break Free From Plastic report. In each year since 2019, Brand Audit found Coca-Cola branded products represent more pollution than the next two top polluters, PepsiCo and Unilever, combined. Claims about plastic packaging being eco-friendly made by big brands, including Coca-Cola and Unilever, are misleading greenwashing, according to a report by the Changing Markets Foundation. Case on point: The world’s largest plastic polluter, Coca-Cola, has spent millions promoting the notion that its bottles are 25% marine plastic.

According to NASA, the ozone hole topped 10 million square miles (26.4 million square kilometers, more than the size of North America) on Oct. 5, 2022, the largest it has been since 2015. It’s the third year in which the ozone hole peaked at over 9.5 million square miles. Despite recent data, the hole is still shrinking.

Figures from the Small Arms Survey – a Swiss-based leading research project – estimate 390 million guns in circulation in the US in 2018. That’s a ratio of 120.5 guns per 100 people, making the US the only nation on Earth with more civilian firearms than people. In comparison, Canada has a ratio of 34.7 guns per 100 people, there are 12.9 guns per 100 people in Mexico, and The UK has a rate of 5.03 firearms per 100 people.

What happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas?

An 18-year-old shooter killed at least 19 children and two adults on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas – the deadliest American school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, decade ago.

How do mass shooters acquire guns in the US?

From 1966 to 2019, 77 percent of mass shooters obtained the weapons they used through legal purchases, according to data compiled by the National Institute of Justice, the research wing of the Justice Department.

A week after a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in their classroom in Uvalde, Texas, Canada’s government introduced legislation to implement a “national freeze” on the sale and purchase of handguns (and some toys that look like guns.) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters, “We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and gets more difficult to counter.”

Why is Canada banning toy guns?

As a result of the new laws, some toys that resemble real guns will be banned, for example, the above airsoft rifles. Because they resemble real firearms, police have to treat them as such. This kind of mix-up has caused tragic results, as Canada’s Justice Minister Lametti told reporters.

“Ms. Marvel,” based on the 2014 comic-book series, tells the story of Kamala Khan, Marvel’s first Muslim superhero, a Jersey City high schooler who admires the Marvel superheroes from afar — until she is granted powers that allow her to fight alongside them. Ms. Marvel started streaming on Disney+ on June 8, 2022.

According to the Pew Research Center, around 62% of the world’s Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region (from Turkey to Indonesia), and just about 20% live in the Arab world – including the middle-east. The largest Muslim population lives in Indonesia, home to 12.7% of the world’s Muslims, followed by Pakistan (11.1%), India (10.9%), and Bangladesh (9.2%).

The Arab World Vs. India

Qatar. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iran issued official protests against India (Pakistan and Afghanistan also reacted strongly) on June 6, 2022. The protest refers to remarks made on TV and Twitter by two prominent spokespeople from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. The comments bad-mouthed Islam’s Prophet Muhammad and his wife, Aisha.

How many Muslims live in India?

Muslims comprise 14% (around 200 million) of India’s 1.4 billion people. Anti-Muslim attacks have risen across India amid Modi’s regular silence about such attacks since he was elected in 2014.

The 2022 Toy Story prequel, Lightyear, features Disney/Pixar’s first onscreen same-sex kiss. In the film, starring Chris Evans as the real-life inspiration for the “Toy Story” character Buzz Lightyear, Buzz’s close friend is a female space ranger who marries another woman. A scene showing milestones in the couple’s relationship includes a brief kiss. As a result, Disney has been unable to obtain permission to screen “Lightyear” in 14 Middle Eastern and Asian countries, and it’s unlikely to open in China, according to a June 14 Reuters report. Lightyear premiered on June 17 in theaters. Watch the trailer.

Gender-affirming (or confirming) care is transgender health care – preventing, diagnosing, and treating physical and mental conditions among transgender individuals. It often involves hormone treatment, puberty blockers, and, sometimes, surgery.

Where is it illegal?

On Oct. 17, 2022, the first US trial on a state’s ban on gender-confirming care for children began in Arkansas. Doctors who give gender-affirming treatment to anyone under 18 years old or even refer patients to such treatment could lose their licenses if the law takes effect.

Transgender women will not be allowed to compete in international competitions unless they have begun medical treatments to suppress testosterone production before puberty or by age 12, the international swimming federation FINA announced on June 19, 2022. In March, Lia Thomas became the first transgender woman to win an NCAA swimming championship. The new rule means she can’t qualify for the US Olympic team in 2024.

According to an Anti-Defamation League survey released on June 21, 2022, members of LGBTQ+ communities were more likely than any other group to experience harassment on social media. Two-thirds of LGBTQ+ respondents said they had been harassed online, and 53% said the harassment was a result of their sexual orientation. 39% of Asian American responders reported harassment in 2022, up from 21% in 2021, and women, in general, were more than twice as likely to report experiencing sexual harassment online than men (14% versus 5%).

A TikTok video posted on Oct. 9, 2022, featured Madonna playing basketball with pink pants and a trash can. The pop star captioned the video, “If I miss, I’m Gay.” When missing the shot, Madonna waved a peace sign.