Woke

CORE DEFINITION

Woke is a term originating in the 1930s in African American English, originally used as an adjective to denote awareness of racial discrimination and prejudice, often in the phrase 'stay woke'. Since the 2010s, it has been used to describe awareness and concern for left-wing political issues such as social inequality, people of color, LGBTQ communities, and identity politics of women. In the 2020s, many right-wing politicians and some centrists in Western countries began using the term pejoratively to disparage various left-wing and progressive movements. During the protests following the death of Michael Brown in 2014, the term was used by Black Lives Matter activists to promote public awareness of gun violence against African Americans. Subsequently, the term became widely used among white progressive leftists, as well as Millennials and Generation Z, and spread beyond the United States. In 2017, 'woke' was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.