Some on the left and right have criticized the negative use of the word “woke.” In September, Rep. The same happened to identity politics, miles-hercules said, which was used as far back as 1977 to describe ending oppression against Black women but is also now used as a pejorative by conservatives. miles-hercules told CNN conservatives using “woke” however they want, despite its historical meaning, is an example of “semantic pejoration”: when a word gains a negative meaning over time. University of California at Santa Barbara, linguistics scholar deandre a. The Oxford English Dictionary credits a 1962 New York Times article about how white Americans appropriate Black slang, “If You’re Woke You Dig It,” written by novelist William Melvin Kelley, as the first citation using the word “woke.” “Woke” has been further popularized by modern singers, including Erykah Badu, whose 2008 song “ Master Teacher” contains the refrain, “I stay woke,” as well as Childish Gambino’s 2016 song “ Redbone,” which includes “stay woke” in the chorus. Lead Belly urges listeners to “stay woke, keep their eyes open” at the conclusion of the song. “Stay woke” was spoken in the outro of a 1938 song, “Scottsboro Boys” by Lead Belly, based on the 1931 Alabama case in which nine Black teenagers were accused of raping two white women. In 1923, as part of a compilation of philosophical ideas written by Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey, he declared: “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!” as a call for Black liberation. But former President Donald Trump said at a campaign stop in Des Moines last week he doesn’t like the word “woke” because “half the people can’t even define it”-though he used the term while attacking DeSantis just two days prior for failing to stop Disney from going “woke.” When asked what the term means by NBC correspondent Dasha Burns on Saturday, DeSantis defined “woke” as “putting merit and achievement behind identity politics, and it’s basically a war on the truth.” Haley, also asked to define the term by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, defined it as “a lot of things”-including “biological boys playing in girl sports” and “gender pronoun classes in the military.” Key BackgroundĮarly versions of “stay woke” have been used as early as 100 years ago. The word “woke” has taken center stage on the 2024 campaign trail as Republican candidates use the term as a pejorative to describe everything from LGBTQ-friendly businesses to teaching about race in schools. The conservative redefinition of “woke” has made the term more popular than ever: Google searches for “woke” hit an all-time high as of March 2023, according to Google Trends.
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