Can someone please explain to me what the right wing meme "woke" means?

[AZLD4Candidate]

Let's go Brandon was beyond stupid and made no sense.
CRT is idiotic and means next to know, only "we don't like it so it needs to be gone."
Cancel culture was inane and meant "how dare you argue with my bigotry, nativism, ethnocentrism, and religious intolerance."

Does "woke" means "you realize I'm full of crap and how dare you make others realize it too?"

What is all of this mean and how does it help Americans keep a roof over their heads, pay the bills, and keep food on the table?

To mean, it all seems like a bunch of right wing whining. "Triggered" as an insult also confuses me. All it seems to mean to me is "you can't handle my bullying."

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. "Woke" can be traced back to the early-to-mid-20th century and was used by Black Americans as a call

to "wake up" about the realities of living as Black people in America. It's not a right-wing meme; they simply use it mockingly.

[AZLD4Candidate]

3. So, if that is true, the Republicans are openly and proudly insulting black people and wearing their

klan hoods in public with no shame?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. They've been doing it for decades.

[brush]

16. Five or six years ago the "wake-up" call was shortened...

to being aware of the racism and the need to work around it to succeed in America—thus the shortened, single word "woke", by younger, political African Americans.

Republicans eventually started hearing the word spoken and didn't really know what it meant but sensed that it was a pejorative directed towards them, and they didn't like it.

They then co-opted it and turned it into a negative towards Dems and the left and everything we stand for, including CRT, AOC, BBB, the foolish defund the police slogan, Biden, Pelosi, liberal school curricula and the alleged socialism we supposedly endorce.

And that's where we are now.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

17. No, the term has always been "woke."

[brush]

22. I personally didn't hear it until the 2010s and I'm Black...

and poltiically active. There was "knowing what time it is", being polotically aware and "knowing what's up", but I didn't hear just "woke" until the 2010s.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

23. That's fine; its documented use goes back decades. Leadbelly used "stay woke" in a song in the late

1930s to mean "stay alert" in hostile lands. Its use ebbs and flows over time, and it has certainly seen a resurgence in the past 20 years as racial issues move to the forefront again.

[BumRushDaShow]

24. I remember when my niece started saying it

along with referring to something being "lit" (she is now 31) and that's when I realized that I was becoming an old fogie (although I did understand the concepts).

And yeah, I think that it was somewhere in the mid-2010s here in Philly but it seemed to have faded out before the RW loons got a hold of it.

(at least some of them still say "dag" - that was my '70s favorite )

[brush]

25. It faded out because, you know, like most Black slang, when they get ahold of it...

we stop using it. And yes, "lit" was right there with it.

[BumRushDaShow]

26. Exactly

Although it boggles the mind that well over 50 years later, they think black people say "honky".

[brush]

31. "Wake up", "stay woke", "stay alert" all have the same...

meaning and go back decades as you say, but technically the use of the single word "woke" seems to have been introduced into the Black community in the 2010s by young, politically active 20-somethings.

I'm talking specifically of the use of the single word "woke" which of course is the same concept, but updated by hip, younger people which is where new slang always comes from.

[anarch]

29. yes, pretty much

[Maru Kitteh]

14. The greatest majority of those using it have no clue of its origins.

Magats mock as a function of their default mode; self-loathing.

[Nevilledog]

34. Just like socialism, Marxism, communism

[uponit7771]

19. +1, GZP appropriates works black people use to demonize knowledge of their horridness

[Siwsan]

2. I haven't got a clue. It seems they are VERY bad a coming up with pejoratives

Antifa and Social Justice Warrior are two of my 'favorites'.

I have 2 uncles who were World War II combat veterans and they were most definitely Anti-Fascist.

And WTF is bad about being a warrior for social justice?

[lpbk2713]

7. And "tree hugger".

What it implies is not a bad thing at all. I never understood
how they could intentionally use that in a derogatory manner.

[LeftInTX]

15. Antifa does not support troops or government entities to combat Nazis

They believe in direct confrontations instead. They also don't support memes of D-Day troops. They support one to one confrontations in the the street instead. Antifa does not really support governments.

Antifa was founded in Germany prior to WWII to combat the Nazi party. Unfortunately, their techniques were not very successful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(Germany)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion

[Demovictory9]

5. "woke" is a left wing term that right wing made into a slur

I consider myself Woke, as aware of injustice and inequities. Rightwingerr call movies that feature "too many" POC, LGBT or women in major roles as "Woke". people use the term regularly in reviews now -- reading reviews of UK crime series "It went woke", I watch and see that an episode had a gay couple.. no mention of gayness... just them existing normally as anybody else... reviews will say "I wish I knew the show was "woke" before I watched it". sigh....

[AZLD4Candidate]

8. So it's coded language for white straight christian power elite?

[Demovictory9]

20. To them a woke person believes racism and sexism exist

And that you believe in trans and lgbt rights. And that you are pro choice, and believe in climate.change

All that used as a slur.

[brush]

37. It' started in the Black community in the 2010s.

It's a shortening of older forms..."wake up", "stay woke", "stay alert", etc. 20-something African Americans introduced it but stop using it when wingers became aware of it. They kept hearing it but didn't really know what it meant but they knew it had something to do with what Dems stand for so they co-opted it and turned into a negative.

Typical.

[sop]

13. Whatever it means, DeSantis just passed a law against it: "The Stop WOKE Act."

(Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees)

[sop]

6. How about "cancel culture"...WTF does that mean?

[keep_left]

9. The use of "woke" by MAGA chuds works basically like an inverse Godwin's Law...

...such that the minute a chud uses the word "woke" as a snarl word (which is to say, always), they can be immediately dismissed for arguing in bad faith. Just like their use of similar terms--"SJW", "cuck", "soyboy", "degeneracy"--and their obsession with college-aged women with unusual colors of hair. The latter case is basically synonymous with their use of "SJW".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

[Patterson]

10. If I hear someone use it, they are hereafter nothing to me.

No point they ever make will be valid or worthy of consideration.

[brush]

28. Yep, you know immediately they're a winger.

[Mr.Bill]

11. I tell people it means they (republicans)

need a nap and we don't.

[Lunabell]

12. Because they can't spell "enlightened".

That's all.

[haele]

18. When asked the MAGA answer is - if answered- basically anything non-MAGA

Most times there's no definition, just swearing and calling you a Lib or some variation of.
They have no definition of Woke.
If they (sneeringly) ask me what I think it means, I reply "Woke is old slang that means aware of the real world and not continuing to live a dream."
They never have an answer to that. Because if they really believe they are right, that means they are "Woke". Ore they have to admit they're living a lie.

Haele

[ymetca]

21. Buddha vs. White Jesus

All that "groovy" Sixties era psychedelia, which they ruthlessly stamped out using a few choice assassinations, nevertheless slowly crept into the zeitgeist of our physical reality, because the practice just makes more sense, especially from the viewpoint of modern science.

The Solitary Sky God in their minds is in mortal conflict with the ineffable dualism of a Yin/Yang primal dialectic. Buddha is not God.. just "awake". Nirvana isn't Heaven, it's just a state of "non-being" in counterpoint with "being". Mind = Blown!

Hence, they think the Devil uses yoga mats to "groom" your kids.

A certain percentage of our population can't grasp Einsteinian Relativity yet.

[grumpyduck]

27. Just one more instance of grammar-school namecalling.

When all these assholes have left is resorting to grammar-school tactics, well, you know what they are.

[hatrack]

30. "It's something WE DON'T LIKE, LIBTARD!!!!"

That's the gist.

[Torchlight]

32. It's another truncated variation of "We can't run on policy, so we make shit up!"

These simpletons get a lot of mileage by cloaking their foolishness as actual problems.

[BarackTheVote]

33. "Woke" comes out of the African American community

as a call to “wake up” to the unique difficulties facing the Black community in America, the racism and prejudice that are baked into our system as a way to support white privileged at the expense of Black communities, holding them down as a perpetual under-class.

The Right Wing latched into it because they’re racists, they know they benefit from white privilege, they fear Black people entering their spaces, their industries, their workforce, their families. “Woke” is also an example of African American Vernacular English, which the Right and racists demean and make fun of constantly because they think it sounds uneducated—when it’s really just the evolution of language in a segregated community.

CRT, Cultural Race Theory, is an advanced legal theory that has a similar motivation to becoming “woke”—examining our laws, testing them for baked-in racial prejudice, and challenging the laws that are inherently racist in order to create a more equitable society. Obviously, the Right hates CRT for the same reason they hate “woke,” because even they know it’s not cool to be racist, so they don’t like being called out as racist, they don’t like being confronted by the fact that a system that supports whiteness and represses Blackness, and not just their own merits, have helped them get what they have.

To be “Woke” is an aspirational goal. CRT is a just and vital way to examine our laws and society. One of our greatest failures is how we have allowed the Right to sieze and poison our terms and language. It’s like New Speak: the goal of New Speak is to reduce the language down as much as possible to eliminate thoughts that are contrary to the status quo—and that is EXACTLY what the Right has been doing for decades… poisoning “Liberal,” “Progressive,” “Political Correctness,” “Social Justice,” “Woke,” “CRT.” And yet, we continue to let them take the language from us, and usually without a fight.

Stay Woke and fight back against this before we don’t have the language to fight back against them at all!

[brush]

38. Well said, but we have no way to stop them from...

co-opting our slang, misunderstanding the mean altogether, then turning using it as a negative term.

We do what we've always done, when they get a hold of it, we stop using because it's no longer cool, hip or lit...whatever the latest term is.

[Caliman73]

35. It all typically means anything that challenges hegemony.

White, Male, Christian hegemony.

They take words that have actual meaning, and use them to symbolize "going to far" or radicalism. If you think that women and minorities deserve to be treated with equal dignity, then you are "woke". This means that you want to oppress White men and are looking to enslave them.

They project their own desires onto their opponents becaue the power is the issue, Always.

[jmowreader]

36. Conservatives used to have a lovely term for liberals

It was “n-word lover.”

Naturally, you can’t run around calling people that without outing yourself as a racist, so they had all sorts of alternate terms for it.

The current alternate term is “woke.”

I consider anyone using the term to be a racist not worthy of being around or holding any office higher than septic tank pumper.

[brush]

39. Read some of the rest of the entries on this thread.

It was a Black community slang term introduced in the 2010s meaning someone who is aware of the injustices Blacks and POCs face and need to be alert to to navigate around them to succeed. We of course stopped using it when wingers got a hold of it and turned it into a negative, without really understanding what it mean because they don't face those injustices.