What's WOKE supposed to mean?

As I'm now reading a “Right Wing Revolution” by the late Charlie Kirk, a right-wing propaganda book, in which he tries, or rather seems to struggle in defining woke, without much success to me, he makes me also suspect that he doesn't know either what the meaning of the words he uses really are. What's the real deal and please how should we define woke? 

So, this is the reason for my confusion and as I’m wondering about the true meaning of that word, I forced myself to dig deeper and what follows is what I found. First, I quickly was reassured when I discovered I wasn’t the first to be confused and dissatisfied with Kirk’s muddy interpretation and also that the word has undergone a continuous change over recent years. 

Here’s the clearest, most grounded way to understand “woke” without the political fog, the culture‑war heat, or the vague hand‑waving that often surrounds the term. In the beginning, “Woke” began as African American slang in the early to mid 20th century that simply meant: “Stay awake to injustice.” In other words, be alert, be aware, don’t sleep on what’s happening around you. That referred mainly to racial discrimination, police brutality, and social inequality. 

Woke was perceived as a positive term inside the Black community. Then, around the 2010s, the meaning shifted as it spread into mainstream culture. It became broadened to mean the awareness of social injustices of any kind (race, gender, sexuality, inequality, discrimination, etc.). 

While this meaning was for the most part positive, it was sometimes used humorously or ironically. However, in the 2020s, things changed as the word became politically charged and Woke forked into two different meanings that we’ll explore in the next blog...