Woke (/ˈwoʊk/ WOHK) is a political term originating in the United States referring to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice.^[1] It derives from the African-American Vernacular English expression "stay woke", whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.

First used in the 1940s, the term has resurfaced in recent years as a concept that symbolises awareness of social issues and movement. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics, the social justice movement and socially liberal causes such as LGBT rights and feminism (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has also been the subject of memes, ironic usage and criticism.^[2][3] Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.^[1][4]

The term wide awake first appears in political culture and political ads during the 1860 presidential election in support of Abraham Lincoln.^[5] The Republican Party cultivated the movement to primarily oppose the spread of slavery as described in the Wide Awakes movement.^[6]

Oxford Dictionaries record^[7] early politically conscious usage in 1962 in the article "If You're Woke You Dig It" by William Melvin Kelley in The New York Times^[8] and in the 1971 play Garvey Lives! by Barry Beckham which reads: "I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I'm gon' stay woke. And I'm gon help him wake up other black folk."^[9][10] Garvey had himself exhorted his early 20th century audiences, "Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!"^[11]

Earlier, J. Saunders Redding recorded a comment from an African American United Mine Workers official in 1940, stating: "Let me tell you buddy. Waking up is a damn sight harder than going to sleep, but we'll stay woke up longer."^[12] Lead Belly^[13] uses the phrase near the end of the recording of his 1938 song "Scottsboro Boys", while explaining about the namesake incident, saying: "I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go along through there, stay woke, keep their eyes open."^[14][15]

The first modern use of the term woke appears in the song "Master Teacher" from the album New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008) by soul singer Erykah Badu.^[16] Throughout the song, Badu sings the phrase: "I stay woke." Although the phrase did not yet have any connection to justice issues, Badu's song is credited with the later connection to these issues.^[1][2]

To "stay woke" in this sense expresses the intensified continuative and habitual grammatical aspect of African American Vernacular English: in essence, to always be awake, or to be ever vigilant.^[17] David Stovall said: "Erykah brought it alive in popular culture. She means not being placated, not being anesthetized."^[18]

Implicit in the concept of being woke is the idea that such awareness must be earned. The 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]

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.^[22] 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.^[23] The term "corporate wokeness" has also been used by conservative writer Ross Douthat.^[24] 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.^[25] 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.^[26] 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.^[27]

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."^[28]

Both the word and the concept of woke culture or woke politics have been subject to parodies and criticism by commentators from both conservative and progressive backgrounds^[29] who have described the term as becoming pejorative or synonymous with radical identity politics, race-baiting, extreme forms of political correctness, internet call-out culture, censorship, virtue signalling and as part of a general culture war. It has also faced a backlash for its perceived negative influence on academia,^[30] corporate advertising and the media.

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^[31]:

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

In March 2019, fictional internet personality and social activist Titania McGrath, who was created by comedian Andrew Doyle, has been described as parodying ideas promoted by woke thinking on race, gender and politics.^[32] Doyle himself has criticised the idea of woke politics as being in a "fantasy world".^[33]

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."^[34]

In September 2019, British conservative author Douglas Murray expressed criticism of modern social justice activism and "woke politics" in his 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 is "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."^[35][36]

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.^[37].

In July 2020, historian Niall Ferguson affirmed that woke politics was destroying academia and US history.^[38].

In July 2020, Australian journalist and commentator Rita Panahi accused woke individuals and corporations of preferring to "obsess about historical grievances that happened hundreds of years ago" in the Western world, while turning a blind eye to contemporary examples of slavery and human rights abuses against ethnic minorities in non-Western nations such as China.^[39]

In September 2020, in a Wall Street Journal article, Stanford scholar Ayaan Hirsi Ali compared "Wokeists" with Islamists asserting that adherents of both ideologies refuse to engage in debate and demand submission.^[40]

In November 2020, liberal political commentator 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.^[41]

Similarly, Greg Nash argued that the 2020 election results saw a weaker than expected performance from the Democrats while the Republicans saw a rise in support from ethnic minority and gay voters due to the Democrats becoming synonymous with far-left woke activism in an article for The Hill. Nash concluded by arguing that a backlash against woke activism had "helped install Trump in the White House in the first place" and that the political left "must consider how the continuation of their alienating ideology sets the stage for a far more dangerous demagogue than Trump" in future elections.^[42]

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