Woke
Political slang
Summary
Woke is an adjective derived from African-American English used since the 1930s or earlier to refer to awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination, often in the construction stay woke. The term acquired political connotations by the 1970s and gained further popularity in the 2010s with the hashtag #staywoke. Over time, woke came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and denial of LGBTQ rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.
Originally created by Gamaliel
12/26/2016, 3:40:36 PM
Modified
5/19/2026, 1:12:29 AM
Recent revisions
Move 2 urls. [[User:GreenC/WaybackMedic_2.5|Wayback Medic 2.5]] per [[WP:URLREQ#fivethirtyeight.com]]
Rescuing 10 sources and tagging 0 as dead.) #IABot (v2.0.9.5
/* United States */ minor ce
/* United States */ Clarifying the subject of this sentence (when I first read it I though "such critics" was referring to critics of anti-wokeness based on the previous sentence), and switch to passive voice to bring emphasis to the general anti-work critique of exaggerating social problems rather than BLM in particular
link police brutality
period after sentence
Undid revision [[Special:Diff/1344188099|1344188099]] by [[Special:Contributions/Johnny Rose 11|Johnny Rose 11]] ([[User talk:Johnny Rose 11|talk]])
Added internal hyperlink.
Reverted 1 edit by [[Special:Contributions/Faronnorth|Faronnorth]] ([[User talk:Faronnorth|talk]]): Ungrammatical
[[Wikipedia:MOSNUMscript|script]]-assisted date audit and style fixes per [[MOS:NUM]]
add wikilink
/* See also */+"[[That one friend that's too woke]]"
/* United States */ Updated "Woke right" section to conform to [[Template:Anchor#Not_above_the_heading|Anchor template formatting]] and [[Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Anchors|the MOS]]
I personally like a reminder for parts of speech because even though I write daily I forget which is which if anyone wants to change this back, feel free
removed [[Category:1940s neologisms]]; added [[Category:1930s neologisms]] using [[WP:HC|HotCat]]
Reverted [[WP:AGF|good faith]] edits by [[Special:Contributions/Mr. Lechkar|Mr. Lechkar]] ([[User talk:Mr. Lechkar|talk]]): [[MOS:CAPSUCCINCT]] – repetition of text contained in the image is not helpful
Image caption
Undid revision [[Special:Diff/1336690888|1336690888]] by [[Special:Contributions/AimanAbir18plus|AimanAbir18plus]] ([[User talk:AimanAbir18plus|talk]]) Rv good faith edit - no discussion or consensus for changing the LEAD img. Please get consensus on the Talk Page.
img in the lead section
