To easily, or perhaps coherently, define this four-letter word — which sounds short even when stripped of important context — stung a political commentator this week. Bethenny Mandel also co-wrote a book on “enlightenment” and what she believes to be negative. The influence of left-wing politics on children in American schools. Mandel, a conservative cultural critic and columnist whose Twitter profile says she homeschools, titled the book “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.” But Mandel herself suggested in a web interview with Hill’s “Rising” that many African Americans “consider themselves liberal, but fewer consider themselves woke,” when co-host Briana’s Joy Gray asked her to define what “woke” was. Struggled to give. It makes sense to him. And that struggle went viral. Mandel, suggesting that on-air jitters and sleep deprivation as a working mom with young children played a role, later tweeted her book’s explanation. In fact, “woke” is a decades-old, sometimes casually used, bit of black American vernacular. But given its widespread, often lazy interjection into political, cultural, and satirical use cases today, “woke” has too many definitions and enough examples to elevate it, or at least cushion it in a reasonable context. Or is it simply the natural evolution of “wake up” from “cancel culture” and “political correctness”? There has been an official reaction in the word world. The Oxford English Dictionary has expanded the definition of “walk” not only as a verb but now as an adjective. “I wish it would just go away. Black people essentially stopped using ‘awake’ a long time ago, except maybe as a side-eye,” photographer Jessica Kelly, daughter of the late novelist and essayist William Kelly, told MarketWatch. “A Different Drummer” And the senior Kelly, known for other works, addressed co-opted cultural language in a 1962 New York Times essay, “If You’re Wack, You Dig It.” In it, the then-Harlem-based writer pointed out that “beatnik” slang (“dig ,” “chic,” “cool”) originated with African Americans. (Here’s a recent podcast by Elijah Watson exploring Kelly’s writing legacy and “woke” origins.) Turns out my father wouldn’t have imagined,” Kelly said in an interview. She recalled the author perhaps using the term an extra time, in the novel, and in the context of relationships, not politics. For her, “Wake Up” is probably the latest. , though admittedly widespread, is an example of language appropriation which Sansk is a subset of moral appropriation. New users “first make fun of it, make fun of it, and then it’s part of the public language,” she said. “Eventually, it becomes something else and is used out of context.” To a large extent, “wokeness” has mostly been appropriated by right-wing politicians and critics to point to programs, policies and priorities they dislike, such as inclusive education – and perhaps more surprisingly, the actions of the Walt Disney Company. DIS, -1.16% and even the FBI and the US military. There is a difference in the word itself. At the 2020 Republican National Convention, Florida’s Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz raised the alarm over American “woketopians,” grouping him with socialists and supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a presumptive Republican presidential contender in 2024, said earlier this year that his state would “never surrender to the ‘woke’ mob” as he said the state’s pension-fund money would be siphoned off from the world’s largest fund firm. BlackRock avoids environmental, social and governance, or ESG, investments. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a fellow Republican, has also made public his desire to curb the “woke agenda” by ordering state agencies to eliminate diversity-driven hiring. On some programs on Fox News, whose parent Fox Corp. Outrage over the alleged “gas-stove ban,” which shares common ownership with News Corp., the parent of Dow Jones, the publisher of MarketWatch, gave way to a “woke” crowd to pull those appliances out of American. Homes (Here’s what’s really going on with safety studies around stoves and incentives to switch to electric.) and Wall Street as the SPX rallied -1.10% in recent days after the rapid demise of Silicon Valley Bank — the largest U.S. since Bank failure The financial meltdown of 2008 – Some social-media users joined cable-news pundits in pinning the collapse on its social awareness or “woke” agenda. It was a claim that prompted a fact-check by The Associated Press. Related: The House Republican crusade against the ‘walk’ meant subpoenas for former school-board officials on the political left, to be “awakened” in modern parlance, to identify as a radical social-justice advocate, but specifically, one in sync with the contemporary. Political concerns. True enough, one can be labeled as such whether or not one has ever claimed such a title. As expected, defensiveness around “awareness” invites an ironic blow. A 2020 Hulu comedy series — called, what else, “Walk” — attempted to deconstruct the identity politics behind its current use. But the series drew its own criticism for attacking outdated and too-centrist political views — namely, as Vox reported, for not being “woke” enough. In fact, the term was first used in a historic recording of blues musician Lead Bailey’s protest song “Scottsboro Boys”, about nine black teenagers in the 1930s who were falsely accused of raping two white women. In that recording, he was used to be aware of the potential for racist violence as a black person in America. Many young people first heard “woke” in its current context during the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. In Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, citizens marched overnight to protest the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager shot by a white police officer. As they did, social media included calls to “stay vigilant” against police action and other threats. It is also true that culture can be a conduit of activism, and vice versa. Childish Gambino, the musical stage name of actor Donald Glover, used “Walk” in the chorus of 2016’s “Redbone”, which was also featured in the 2017 horror film “Get Out”. And Erykah Badu sings “Staying Awake” on “Master Teacher.” Jessica Kelly emphasized her belief that as a nation it is important to keep the study of linguistics alive and to preserve cultural language, because a lack of understanding means we can use language to separate people and weaponize words. In the 1940s and 50s, Americans, especially black Americans, worked hard to eliminate all regional or colloquial accents, a more relaxed practice these days. But there is great harm in stripping language of cultural significance and forcing it to change faster than organic, generational shifts might naturally allow. Kelly added that increasingly, efforts are being made to respect African American Vernacular English (AAVE). AAVE, a field of study and a form of linguistics with its own verbs and unique verbs, derives from English, French, many African languages, and all the influences that shaped the language the first enslaved Africans brought to the New World. To overcome their own differences and seek refuge from oppression, she said. As for “Woke” and its legacy, “I’ve given up trying to fix people,” Kelly told MarketWatch. “I mean, if I had a dollar for every time I looked on Twitter and could link to my dad’s work — well, I’d be rich.”
