By Martin Brisland.
Woke is a word used frequently in recent years but where did it come from? How did it transform from its roots in Black American culture to a mainstream term?
It seems to be a word that means different things to different people. While there is no single agreed-upon definition of the term, woke today refers to “a heightened awareness of social inequalities and injustices”.
It is far from a new word, having been in circulation since the 19th century when it was used by preachers in Black churches in America. Originally it simply meant not being asleep to the presence of the Lord.
One early example of woke in the United States was the paramilitary youth organization the Wide Awakes.
They supported Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate in the 1860 presidential election.
The political militancy of the group alarmed many southerners, who saw in the Wide Awakes confirmation of their fears of northern, Republican political aggression and support for the abolition of slavery.
The use of “woke” as a term urging Black people to be aware of the systems that put them at a disadvantage is found as far back as the 1920s. The Jamaican philosopher Marcus Garvey, exhorted members of the Black diaspora in America, Jamaica, and elsewhere to join the cause of Pan-Africanism. He wrote in 1923, “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed and mighty nation.”
American folk blues singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase “stay woke” as part of a spoken afterword to a 1938 recording of his song “Scottsboro Boys”. It told the story of nine Black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931.
Lead Belly says he met with the young men themselves, and “I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through Scottsboro – best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”
The term woke prompted a 1962 New York Times article commenting on Black slang, titled “If You’re Woke You Dig It”. It highlighted the phenomenon of Black American slang being appropriated by White people who distorted the words’ original meanings.
In the 1960s, woke was used in the context of political awareness, especially regarding the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965 Martin Luther King gave a speech “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution” at Oberlin College.
He said: “There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution… The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through this social revolution, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change”.
Erykah Badu’s 2008 track “Master Teacher” is credited with re-introducing “stay woke” to modern vocabulary. The term became popular with millennials and Generation Z.
In a tweet mentioning the Russian feminist rock group Pussy Riot, whose members had been imprisoned in 2012, Badu wrote: “Truth requires no belief. #Stay woke. #FreePussyRiot”.This has been cited as one of the early examples of the #Staywoke hashtag.(1)
Also in 2012, unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin was shot dead in Florida by neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, sparking the Black Lives Matter movement amid a public outcry over the gunman’s acquittal. Under the hashtag “#staywoke”, the term took off again in 2014 after the shooting of two other young, unarmed Black men by police officers.
Woke then increasingly became used as a term to dismiss the concerns of so-called millennial snowflakes.
In May 2016, MTV News identified woke as being among ten words teenagers should know. In 2017, the term was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
In 2021, Piers Morgan complained about “woke idiots” campaigning to ban the 1978 film Grease. Following the #metoo movement, some felt the film’s attitudes no longer had a place in today’s TV schedule.
Florida Governor Ron De Santis said at a Republican campaign event: “We can never, ever surrender to woke ideology. And I’ll tell you this, the state of Florida is where woke goes to die.”
He designed the 2022 “Stop W.O.K.E.” Act, a title that precisely captures what the bill’s architects aimed to do: stop people in Florida from speaking out in ways that challenge all kinds of discrimination.
The terms woke-washing and woke capitalism also emerged to criticize businesses and brands who use socially progressive messaging for financial gain.
In the United Kingdom, the anti-wokeness agenda is driven primarily by Conservative and Reform politicians and right-wing media outlets. Newspapers such as the Daily Mail commonly publish articles critical of what they deem to be woke. The Mail on Sunday publishes an annual Woke List criticising public figures for perceived “virtue signalling”. The television channel GB News declared itself at its founding to be explicitly anti-woke.
In a survey by YouGov, 73% of Britons who used the term said they did so in a disapproving way, only 11% in an approving way.
It would seem that woke has now become a four letter word for many.
Photo by FPD Images.
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