 | This articleneeds moresources forreliability. Please helpimprove this article by addingreliable sources. Unsourced material may bechallenged or removed. Find sources: "Woke" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Woke (/ˈwoʊk/WOHK) is a word which originally referred to awareness aboutracism anddiscrimination. It later came to include an awareness of other issues ofsocial inequality, for example regardinggender andsexual orientation. Since the late 2010s it has also been used as a general word forleft-wing political movements and viewpoints which emphasise theidentity politics ofpeople of color (those who are notwhite),LGBT people, andwomen.
The phrase "stay woke" began within the everyday language of someAfrican Americans in the 1930s, because inAfrican-American Vernacular English (AAVE)woke is instead ofwoken, the usualpast participle form ofwake.[1]
After theshooting of Michael Brown inFerguson, Missouri in 2014, the word was used byBlack Lives Matter (BLM) activists who wanted to raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans in the US.[2] It became an Internetmeme and was increasingly utilised by individuals who were not African American to show that they supported BLM. Popular amongmillennials, the word spread worldwide and was added to theOxford English Dictionary in 2017.
The word ended up being used as a catch-all term to describeleft-wing ideologies, often centred on theidentity politics of minority groups and informed by academic movements like critical race theory, which identified themselves as being devoted tosocial justice. This included BLM, anti-racism, and campaigns on women's and LGBT issues. By 2020, parts of thepolitical right in some Western countries wereironically using the word "woke" to describe left-wing movements and ideologies they disagreed with. In turn, some left-wing activists came to consider it an offensive term used tobelittle those campaigning againstdiscrimination.[3]
