Thanks to the commenter who reminded me that it's not bad to be reminded that the term is only a pejorative because conservative racists made it so.
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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The term is a classic instance of "double speak". Twenty years ago, the running joke was of Libertarians calling anyone who still supported the idea of a federal government "Sheeple" and insisting that they needed to "Wake Up!" and come around to Ron Paul and Ayn Rand's point of view.
Ten years ago, "Woke" was a liberal term describing people who recognized the chronic threat of police brutality and state prosecutorial bias towards minorities.
Three years ago, the ultra-reactionary Houston pastor Ed Young launched a Church Awake campaign to counter what he believed was "Woke Culture" in the city.
The Atlantic's columnist thinks it is when you are obsessed with policing language. The ABC's columnists think it means being an educated black progressive. The Heritage Foundation thinks its when you manufacturer grevencies like checks notes the existence of slavery, I guess? The Kentucky AG thinks it means when transgender athletes are allowed to compete in high school sports.
What's it supposed to mean? Everything and nothing. It's a term of enlightenment and a pejorative seemingly both at once.
The meaning is actually pretty clear. Being "woke" means being aware of social injustice, specifically the systemic racism in US society. Being anti-woke simply means that you outwardly deny said systemic racism but in reality it means you're condoning it.
From the left-liberal perspective, sure. But Libertarians and far-right theocrats have also employed the term as a positive self-descriptor, insisting that they had a more enlightened and historical view.
Racists have employed the term to mean they blatantly reject the history put forward by liberal scholars. It's a form of political denialism, not unlike climate change denial or holocaust denial.
The irony is in how reactionaries will embrace the term and its synonyms positively - Dark Enlightenment, Great Awakening, Objectivism, "Wake up Sheeple!" - to imply they're the ones who truly understand the victims of state persecution (inevitably, rich white cis/straight men).
It is in many ways a tribal signifier, and you're going to get different stories about what a tribe is like from its members and from its enemies. It's not that different from "Democrat" or "Republican" in that sense, although at least both Democrats and Republicans usually agree on who is a Democrat and who is a Republican.