You may have seen the word “woke” become popularized beyond trump supporters, republicans, and overall conservatives, using it as an offensive term often to ridicule democrats, leftists, LGBTQ+ individuals, BIPOC individuals, and so forth in the 2020s. Still, the political and cultural use of “woke” goes so much further back than our current timeline, as it was one of the most powerful and impactful terms among Black Americans, and even BIPOC as a whole.
“Woke” originally arose in early 20th-century Black American culture to stay aware of racism, whether it takes form in bold statements or microaggressions, encouraging people to stand up for themselves and never let discrimination pass by easily. One of the first known uses, specifically with the phrase, stay woke, Huddie Ledbetter, also known as Lead Belly (a black-American singer and musician), used the phrase in his song “Scottsboro Boys,” released in 1938. It eventually became popular among black individuals and was used throughout the early to mid-1900s, also with William Melvin Kelley, a novelist, was the first person to mention the word in print in the New York Times in 1962.
By the late 1900s, there had become a resting stage for the term, fading away from fame.
But, thankfully, in the 2000s, woke had awakened once more. With signer-songwriter Erykah Badu using the phrase in her song “Master Teacher”, which features the refrain “I stay woke”, making the hashtag #Staywoke, and entering the Black Lives Matter movement in the early 2010s. But, since this word was originally made to fight racial prejudice, how did it become a word to shame others?
Well, there isn’t a specific reason or person who turned it into an insult; there are broad theories on how it started to arise. Whether it’s because others started to use the word and phrases ironically, with memes expanding among the phrase, or since BIPOC movements may relate to progressivism & leftist issues as well, leading it to become an insult, in the 2020s, conservatives and right-wingers started to use it negatively. Making phrases like “Go Woke, Go Broke”, using it to boycott brands that support leftist ideologies, the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act, abbreviated as “Stop W.O.K.E Act” signed into law by Ron DeSantis, referencing the term, and it spiking in use during Trump’s second and current presidency.
Sources:
What is woke: How a Black movement watchword got co-opted in a culture war | Vox
traces of 'woke' in 20th-century U.S. history - on_education
How Woke Went From "Black" to "Bad": The Meaning of "Woke"
What does the word 'woke' really mean, and where does it come from? : NPR
The hypervisibility and discourses of ‘wokeness’ in digital culture - Francesca Sobande, Akane Kanai, Natasha Zeng, 2022
Woke - Wikipedia
Reclaiming Wokeness and Wokeism: Confronting Political Attacks on Justice and Equity in Canada