I don’t care what anyone says: Being ‘woke’ isn’t a bad thing

I was chatting with a friend recently whom I’ve known for a long time when she used the term woke as if it meant something disgusting.

I was so stunned that I didn’t bother trying to correct her. But I hung up the phone thinking about how the concept has become a political football, with even some Dems kicking it around.

African Americans created this vernacular. It preexisted MAGA’s hijacking of it by decades, dating back to the days of civil rights activist Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. It has long been a part of pop culture, showing up in musical performances by everyone from Depression-era blues singer Lead Belly to Erykah Badu in her 2008 song, “Master Teacher.”

I first heard it during the early 1990s. Back then, if someone said, “You’re not woke,” it was considered the ultimate insult, right up there with being an Uncle Tom — or worse. Being woke refers to being alert to racial transgressions. The opposite of woke is to be asleep, and therefore oblivious to systemic racism and injustice.

No matter how President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attempt to vilify the term, I stand by the notion that being woke is a good thing. As in the exhortation, “Stay woke, brother.”

It’s galling to watch politicians bastardize it. U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently brought it up during an ABC News interview when she said, “I have a local city councilman that has this saying: ‘Woke 1 was crazy.’”

She was talking about Francesca Hong, a progressive candidate running for governor of Wisconsin with a history of making radical statements, and was also quoting New York City council member Chi Ossé, who used the “woke 1” term on social media. I get that Ocasio-Cortez was referring to far-left calls to defund the police — which most Black people never fully supported — among other extremist ideas. But her words still stung.

I found myself wondering: Since when did the concept of being woke become a bad thing for Democrats?

I have an awful lot of respect for Ocasio-Cortez. I recognize she may be weighing a run for the presidency in 2028 and trying to center herself politically. But this kind of virtue signaling won’t be as beneficial as she hopes if it also alienates African Americans.

For insight, I reached out to M.K. Asante, a professor at Morgan State University whose father is Molefi Kete Asante, a renowned professor of Africology at Temple University. “The idea of staying woke became associated with consciousness,” Asante told me, but added that the term was co-opted around 2020 following the widespread uprisings after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer.

Asante pointed out, “Now it does not have the same meaning in the mainstream.”

That’s mainly because of Trump, who, after his return to the White House, immediately began vilifying woke and other things associated with diversity.

He declared an all-out war on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in both federal and private sectors, and has also taken aim at museums he says are “essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’” Trump also has cut funding from key government programs that support DEI.

Even the military hasn’t been immune. Trump summarily dismissed Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., who was the second Black person to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and set about renaming military bases after Confederate generals.

Earlier this year, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X that officials were targeting Stars and Stripes, an independent newspaper that covers the military, in part to “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale.” Since then, the paper’s publisher, editor-in-chief, and a reporter have all been terminated, ending 155 years of editorial freedom, as my colleague Will Bunch reported.

Meanwhile, the United States is at war with Iran, Canada, our closest ally, has announced retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products, and American consumers are wondering if the influx of tariff-free foreign beef imports Trump is pushing will be safe to consume.

Yet, Trump says woke is the enemy.

Despite the president’s best efforts, he can’t stamp the term or its real meaning out.

As Asante pointed out, “You can co-opt a word, but the spirit of what ‘stay woke’ means is alive and well.”