Maybe it isn’t socially acceptable to say the “n” word with the hard “r” anymore, but that sure as hell doesn’t stop unredeemed colonizers from finding new ways to insult Black folks. And because they have no imagination, they steal our words instead.
We’ve always used a special language to communicate with each other. We had to, to keep safe. “Woke,” coined by Marcus Garvey in 1923, was one such word.
From the 1940s through the Civil Rights Movement, as white terrorists used any way to hurt our community, the phrase “stay woke” was a way to tell our people to stay awake and aware of the dangers around us.
Since then, triggered pundits have intentionally warped the meaning of “woke” into a slur. Everything from the Black Lives Matter movement to anything involving diversity, equity, and inclusion is “woke.”
Like other elements of Black culture, “woke” has been appropriated and distorted. Regardless of how racists try to weaponize our own words against us, it’s essential to know the history of our language and to stay woke, especially when attacks are coming from all sides.