‘Woke’ has become wildly out of date for a word that was only created a little more than a decade ago and was originally used by a minority.
It’s a word that used to have a lot of clout, first among the African-American community and then rapidly by the Black diaspora in connection to racial injustice. These groups gave the term its modern-day force, but the term has now been hijacked and transformed into something far more demeaning.
Jeremy Vine’s dismissal of the real meaning of ‘woke’ during a live TV debate last week was a clear indication of how useless it has become to others.
Natasha Devon, an author and activist, questioned Vine for his meaning of woke on his Channel 5 show.
‘Well, woke is, you know, you kind of read The Guardian and this and that, yeah,’ he responded with an air of nonchalance.
He continued: ‘I’m woke about three or four days a week, to be fair.’
‘I love that for you,’ Natasha said, before explaining that woke is an African-American term meaning to be ‘awake to injustice in society’.
She added: ‘It just means you’re not racist, homophobic or misogynist, so I’d say you’re a woke person.’
Vine said: ‘Well it does in your definition it means that, but not to everyone.’
Correcting him, Natasha added: ‘Well that’s the dictionary [definition],’ but Vine interrupted: ‘No, no, not to everyone. It’s come to mean something else.’
Vine ignored what could have been a genuinely instructive moment to grasp how significant the word “woke” was to the Black community at the time. You can’t choose whether you’re ‘awake’ three days a week or two, and claiming this is the case conveys the incorrect message.
Unfortunately, he is not the first and most likely will not be the last, as restoring ‘woke’ to its prior grandeur appears to be impossible.
I recall when the term “woke” was used rarely and signified something.
It felt like a novelty when Childish Gambino sang “now stay woke” on his stunning single Redbone in 2016. That was only six years ago, but now the term “woke” sounds strangely out of date due to others using it to demonise certain categories of people.
It feels wrong to hear Piers Morgan and Eamonn Holmes nonchalantly use the phrase when criticising “cancel culture.” When I hear one of them refer to the so-called “woke mob” at any particular time, it makes my flesh crawl.
Using terms like’mob’ conjures up images of furious people charging at a target with pitchforks, and considering that ‘woke’ was popularised by the Black community, it’s not too dissimilar to the ‘angry Black woman’ story.
It’s become a weaponized word, which was never the purpose.
Erykah Badu summed it up best when she said that the term has become a synonym for “black” or “thug.”
‘It doesn’t belong to us anymore. Once something goes out in the world it takes a life of its own. It’s an energy of its own,’ she told MSNBC’s The Beat.
I completely concur that the spirit surrounding “woke” and the substance of what it meant to the Black diaspora has been lost, but it is never too late to attempt to recover it.
Natasha did the right thing in schooling Vine when he tried to redefine the definition of ‘woke,’ and she should do the same in the future.
When the word ‘woke’ is thrown around like a weapon, it’s an excellent chance to question the person what it really means.
They most likely would have no idea.