The Dig on What The F*ck is Woke?

We look at the history of the term woke and how it became a pejorative

Show Notes

Just the other day, Newly elected U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy took the gavel promising to fix “woke indoctrination in our schools.” And then announced they would look to cut the military budget to weed out woke policies in the military. Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Victory channel, Greg Gutfeld, Trump, most everyone on the right uses the word religiously. In his re-election speech, Ron DeSantis said “Florida has rejected woke idealology!”  But what is Woke?

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Every week we introduce you to an event in American History, policy, and media, then discuss how that historical event impacts the socio-political issues America faces today. We give you The Dig on US History and offer political commentary and opinion, as well as discussion of current news from Progressive perspectives.

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Woke (/ˈwoʊk/ WOHK) is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination".[1][2] Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism, and has also been used as shorthand for American Left ideas involving identity politics and social justice, such as the notion of white privilege and slavery reparations for African Americans.

The phrase stay woke had emerged in AAVE by the 1930s, in some contexts referring to an awareness of the social and political issues affecting African Americans. The phrase was uttered in a recording by Lead Belly and later by Erykah Badu. Following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the phrase was popularised by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists seeking to raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans. After seeing use on Black Twitter, the term woke became an Internet meme and was increasingly used by white people, often to signal their support for BLM, which some commentators have criticised as cultural appropriation. Mainly associated with the millennial generation, the term spread internationally and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017.

The terms woke-washing and woke capitalism were coined to describe companies who signal support for progressive causes as a substitute for genuine change. By 2020, members of the political center and right wing in several Western countries were using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various progressive or leftist movements and ideologies perceived as overzealous, performative, or insincere. In turn, some commentators came to consider it an offensive term with negative associations to those who promote political ideas involving identity and race.