Woke, since the 1930s or earlier, is used to refer to awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans and is derived from the African-American English synonym for the General American English word awake. It is often used in the construction stay woke.
Beginning in the 2010s, it came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBTQ rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
The phrase stay woke was uttered in recordings from the mid-20th century by Lead Belly and, post-millennium, by Erykah Badu. The term woke gained further popularity in the 2010s. Over time, it became increasingly connected to matters beyond race such as gender and identities perceived as marginalized. During the 2014 Ferguson protests, the phrase was popularized by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists seeking to raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans...
Evan Prodromou
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