Woke

Implicit in the concept of being woke is the idea that such awareness must be earned. Rapper Earl Sweatshirt recalls singing "I stay woke" along to the song and his mother turning down the song and responding: "No, you're not."[19]

In 2012, users on Twitter, including Badu, began using "woke" and "stay woke" in connection to social and racial justice issues and #StayWoke emerged as a widely used hashtag.[2] Badu incited this with the first politically charged use of the phrase on Twitter; she tweeted out in support of the Russian feminist performance group Pussy Riot: "Truth requires no belief. / Stay woke. Watch closely. / #FreePussyRiot."[20]

From social media and activist circles, the word spread to widespread mainstream usage. For example, in 2016, the headline of a Bloomberg Businessweek article asked "Is Wikipedia Woke?", in reference to the largely white contributor base of the online encyclopedia.[21]

The 2020 TV series Woke features fictional San Francisco black cartoonist Keef Knight, played by Lamorne Morris.[22]

Aja Romano argued that the word woke did not garner much notice during the 2000s and early 2010s and remained in a less polarizing context, but grew in popularity from around 2008 within African-American communities through music and social media as either a political term, or as street slang to refer to having suspicions about a cheating partner or to literally mean staying awake. Romano claims the word subsequently gained wider attention as a political term among the American population following the death of Michael Brown in 2014 when stay woke became a phrase used by Black Lives Matter activists admonishing people to keep watch for police brutality, but that the word woke has also evolved into a "single-word summation of leftist political ideology, centered on social justice politics and critical race theory."[11] By the late 2010s, "woke" had taken to indicate "healthy paranoia, especially about issues of racial and political justice" and has been adopted as a more generic slang term and has been the subject of memes.[2] For example, MTV News identified it as a key teen slang word for 2016.[23]

In The New York Times Magazine, Amanda Hess raised concerns that the word has been culturally appropriated, writing, "The conundrum is built in. When white people aspire to get points for consciousness, they walk right into the crosshairs between allyship and appropriation."[18]

In an article for Time, journalist Alana Semuels detailed the phenomenon of "woke capitalism" in which brands have attempted to include socially aware messages in advertising campaigns. In the article she cited the example of Colin Kaepernick fronting a campaign for Nike with the slogan “believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything,” after Kaepernick caused controversy by refusing to stand for the US national anthem as a protest against racism.[24] The term "corporate wokeness" has also been used by conservative writer Ross Douthat.[25] Feminist writer Helen Lewis wrote a long article for The Atlantic criticizing the minimal efforts some companies make to feign progressivism while maintaining existing power structures.[26] Bonny Brooks accused large corporations such as Pepsi (who in 2017 released an advertisement campaigned titled "Live for Now" inspired by the Black Lives Matter protests) of hypocrisy for including woke messages in adverts and social campaigns while exploiting workers or using child labor in global supply chains.[27] Similarly, conservative commentator Rita Panahi has accused corporations such as Nike of promoting woke campaigns in the Western world while choosing to ignore cases of modern slavery and human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in China so as not to upset business interests.[28]

In 2018, science fiction author John Ringo published a paper in which he argued that brands using overt political commentary in their advertising ran the risk of losing market reach and having profits decline. The idea has been encapsulated by the expression "go woke, go broke."[29]

Both the word woke and the concept of wokeness[11] have been subject to parodies and criticism by commentators from both conservative and progressive backgrounds[30] who have described the term as becoming pejorative or synonymous with radical identity politics, cancel culture, race-baiting, extreme forms of political correctness, internet call-out culture, virtue signalling and as part of a general culture war. Other observers have commented that while the concept of woke may have good intentions, its associated style of activism and philosophies have harmed rather than helped the advancement of social causes. Writer and activist Chloé Valdary has acknowledged that the concept of being woke is a "double-edged sword" that can "alert people to systemic injustice" while also being "an aggressive, performative take on progressive politics that only makes things worse."[11] Owen Jones has criticized what he termed "woke-washing", the use of woke terminology and token gestures in corporate advertising and the media in order to avoid making more substantial improvements.[31]

In June 2018, in a New York Times piece, political commentator David Brooks argued that the goal of wokeness isn't to solve the issues woke people are concerned about, but to maximize perceived injustices:[32]

There is no measure or moderation to wokeness. It’s always good to be more woke. It’s always good to see injustice in maximalist terms. To point to any mitigating factors in the environment is to be naïve, childish, a co-opted part of the status quo. [...] The problem with wokeness is that it doesn’t inspire action; it freezes it. To be woke is first and foremost to put yourself on display. To make a problem seem massively intractable is to inspire separation — building a wall between you and the problem — not a solution.

— David Brooks, The Problem with Wokeness, The New York Times

Fictional internet personality and social activist Titania McGrath, who was created by comedian and writer Andrew Doyle, has been described as a parody of a stereotypical woke figure who promotes identity politics and political correctness. In March 2019, Doyle published a book under McGrath's name titled Woke: A Guide to Social Justice which parodies woke thinking and ideas on race, politics and gender.[33] Doyle himself has criticised the idea of woke politics as being in a "fantasy world."[34]

In May 2019, Brendan O'Neill, editor of Spiked, described individuals who promote woke politics as people who tend to be identitarian, censorious and puritanical in their thinking or a "culture warrior who cannot abide by the fact there are people in the world who disagree with him or her." He also claimed woke politics to be a "more vicious form of political correctness."[35]

British conservative author Douglas Murray expressed criticism of modern social justice activism and "woke politics" in his 2019 book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity. In December 2019, Murray has also argued that woke is a movement with reasonable goals in mind but that it has become "kind of overstretched, and so a lot of people have been taking the mickey out of the woke in recent years, and a lot of people themselves aren't so keen to be described as woke."[3]

In October 2019, former United States President Barack Obama expressed comments that critiqued woke culture, stating: "This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're politically woke, and all that stuff – you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws."[36][37]

In October 2019, Australian singer, author and composer Nick Cave penned a critique of woke culture in which he described himself as "repelled" by its beliefs and tactics. He argued that while woke had "virtuous intentions," it also "finds its energy in self-righteous belief and the suppression of contrary systems of thought" and wokeness, "for all its virtues, is an ideology immune to the slightest suggestion that in a generation's time their implacable beliefs will appear as outmoded and fallacious as those of their own generation."[38]

In November 2019, New York Times opinion columnist Timothy Egan argued that woke culture had pushed the Democratic Party to be insulting and condescending with average swing-state voters.[39]

In July 2020, historian Niall Ferguson stated that woke politics was destroying academia and US history.[40]

In July 2020, Australian journalist and commentator Rita Panahi accused both woke individuals and corporate campaigns of preferring to "obsess about historical grievances that happened hundreds of years ago" in the Western democracies, while downplaying or turning a blind eye to contemporary cases of slavery, racism and human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in non-Western nations such as China.[41]

In September 2020, in a Wall Street Journal article, Stanford scholar, feminist and author Ayaan Hirsi Ali compared "Wokeists" with Islamists by asserting that adherents of both ideologies refuse to engage in debate and demand submission.[42]

In November 2020, comedian Bill Maher argued that "woke" people were to blame for the underperformance of the Democratic Party during the 2020 US elections. Maher stated that Democrats were being "hypersensitive" and too concerned about political correctness.[43]

Similar observations were made by Greg Nash in an article for The Hill analyzing the results of the 2020 US elections. Nash argued that the Democrats saw a weaker than anticipated performance, compared to poll predictions and media expectations, due to the party becoming synonymous with woke politics, while the Republicans ended up increasing their support among ethnic minority and gay voters. Nash stated that while American history has had genuine chapters of racism, the woke movement has frivolously accused all American institutions of being products of white supremacy, and the Democrats veered into echoing this narrative in the run-up to the election. Nash further opined that by enabling a public perception of shifting away from issues that impact on all Americans, and economic matters such as unemployment, to pander to identity politics, far-left activism and woke beliefs "which divide Americans by race, gender and sexual orientation," the Democrats cost themselves wider support in swing-states. He concluded by arguing that a backlash against woke activism had "helped install Trump in the White House in the first place" and that the woke-left "must consider how the continuation of their alienating ideology sets the stage for a far more dangerous demagogue than Trump" in future elections.[44]

In December 2020, British author and trade union activist Paul Embery stated that middle class woke people were damaging the British Labour Party's support among working class voters, and that by incorporating wokeness into its election campaign, Labour was responsible for leading itself into a heavy defeat during the 2019 general election. Embery claimed that woke party members and MPs in Labour had deliberately sidelined blue-collar voters and working class communities by giving the party an image of being both anti-British and demeaning towards voters concerned about law and order and immigration, as well as choosing to focus more on "fretting over stuff like LGBT rights, climate change, human rights, migrant rights, gender identity, Palestine." Embery furthermore criticised wokeness for pushing the political left towards authoritarianism, particularly on issues such as freedom of speech.[45]

• African-American culture
• Dear White People, TV show based on the acclaimed 2014 film of the same name
• Me Too movement
• Political hip hop