What’s being “woke”?

These days, we hear the term “woke” all the time used with a variety of intents and, in many instances, it ends up being quite confusing. I remember how taken aback and shocked I was two years ago, when a new neighbor, dual American-Israeli citizen I encountered asked me if I was “woke”. 

Since that time this word has been used and abused, particularly in political circles. 

The “woke” terminology goes back to an early American Blues artist named Lead Belly. According to some, he coined the term "stay woke" in his music. Black people use it to mean "stay aware"...don't forget that you can be a victim of discrimination at any moment. Back in the 1920s, that meant blacks could be lynched at any moment. Today, they can be murdered by cops or people won't hire them because they have dreadlocks. In my view, this is not unreasonable. 

Then the white progressive Americans discovered and adopted that word during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and used it to mean "stay aware of systemic injustice and fight against it". In some instances, some got criticized because the use of the word was viewed as a cool way to express anti-racism, but by and large its use there was in line with the word’s original meaning. 

This said, the most common use today is the bastardized, co-opted version that right-wing conservatives use as a way to demean it. While they cannot define its true meaning, they feel that "woke" sounds pejorative, so they use it to dismiss anything that vaguely sounds like basic human right or decency. It's offensive and intellectually lazy, and it's been turned into a political dog-whistle for right wing extremists.

I hope I made that word a bit clearer.