Being "woke"

What is marvellous about languaje is that is renewed and reinvented constantly with new words and meanings. 

Nowadays we can often listen to the word WOKE used by politicians, journalist and social networks. 

We all know that it is the past tense of wake= despertar, but it is being used in a different way, it is used as an adjective meaning " despierto, concienciado", the correct word would be "awake" in this sense and it has led to other new words such as "wokeness" (a noun meaning being woke or belonging to this movement) instead of "awakening".

It has good but also a bad meaning at present. But let's make some history. 

The Oxford dictionary defines it as follows:

It was used in this sense for the first time in USA by Afroamericans who wanted people to stand up, be conscious and wake up to the injustice they were suffering, the singer Lead Belly in 1938 used that term in his song " Scottboro Boys", he wanted his brothers to wake up and be alert to being accused of something they hadn't done.

Since that moment it became a symbol of social justice for black citizens and it increased with the movement "Black Lives Matter" in 2014, when the motto " stay woke" was used to rebel against police abuse to black people. 

In recent years it has spread to defend other rights such as women's rights o LGTBI rights and fight against any kind of discrimination, it has been associated to the left and progressive people. 

Conservative people consider them extreme left people who are fanatic, insincere and people who tend to censore anyone who doesn't think in the same way as they do. 

They are also considered to impose their ideas of social justice in films, books etc. (black characters or LGTBI people in traditional books ot films and series) they are thought to follow what is called Cancel Culture

Cancel culture is a cultural phenomenon in which someone suppected of having acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner is boycotted, fired or insulted specially in social media even when there is no proof of it. 

 

 

 

This movement has not only been criticised specially by Republicans such as Trump or Elon Musk, but also by democrats such as Obama when it becomes too extremist or too capitalised. 

Being woke is not so bad as it is meant to avoid discrimination, but we must be careful not to get in the same faults we are criticising.