Are you woke to "woke"? Seems pundits and politicians can’t stop talking about it.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Republican response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address warned of "woke mobs." Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, in announcing her GOP presidential candidacy for 2024, promised a country that wasn’t "weak and woke." And Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., started an "anti-woke caucus" in the House.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made anti-"wokeness" a rallying cry for his 2022 reelection campaign in Florida, often saying, "This is where woke goes to die." DeSantis even signed a "woke" law — the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act, which would outlaw classroom teaching in Florida that would cause students to "feel guilt, anguish or any form of psychological distress" because of their race, color, sex or national origin. A federal judge blocked it in November.
Biden, who has faced conservative flak for denouncing "MAGA Republicans," can’t escape "woke," even if he’s not in the room. At a Feb. 14 White House press conference, James Rosen, a reporter from the right-leaning broadcaster Newsmax, asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre whether the president was "woke." Jean-Pierre deflected the question.
Just what is "woke," anyway? Definitions seem to vary by speaker, and that makes it hard to understand how people really feel about it, polling experts say.
CBS’ Margaret Brennan and NBC’s Chuck Todd both asked guests to define "woke" on their Feb. 12 television shows. Definition seekers have also wanted answers; on Feb. 16, they’d pushed "woke" to the top of Merriam-Webster’s most searched terms list. (The dictionary’s website, m-w.com, defines "woke" as "aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).")
Many sources trace "woke" to Black vernacular. In 1923, Jamaican political activist Marcus Garvey wrote, "Wake up, Ethiopia! Wake up, Africa!," to call the Black diaspora to social activism.
The blues singer Huddie Ledbetter, aka Lead Belly, used the term in his 1938 song "Scottsboro Boys," as a warning to Black people to stay wary of racism.
Perhaps prophetically, William Melvin Kelley in 1962 highlighted "woke" in a New York Times essay about white people appropriating Black slang terms and mangling their meanings.
"Woke" seems to have lost its place as a Black community signal. In February, University of California, Berkeley law professor Khiara M. Bridges, who is Black, wrote, "Slang amongst Black people is a love language. ... There’s something really sinister about this term not only being taken from us but also deployed against us. It’s a double violation."
And "woke" has gone beyond racial social justice to also apply to LGBTQ rights and feminist causes.
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