Woke

Woke is an adjective derived from African-American English used since the 1930s or earlier to refer to awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination, often in the construction stay woke. The term acquired political connotations by the 1970s and gained further popularity in the 2010s with the hashtag #staywoke. Over time, woke came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as 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.^[1][2][3]

During the 2014 Ferguson protests, the phrase stay woke was popularized by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists seeking to raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans. After being used on Black Twitter, the term woke was increasingly adopted by white people to signal their support for progressive causes. The term became popular with millennials and members of Generation Z. As its use spread beyond the United States, woke was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017.

By 2019, the term was being used sarcastically as a pejorative among many on the political right and some centrists to disparage leftist and progressive movements as superficial and insincere performative activism. Some leftists criticize wokeness as interfering with working class solidarity. The terms woke-washing and woke capitalism later emerged to criticize businesses and brands who use politically progressive messaging for financial gain.