That Word “Woke” Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

For my generation, Black GenX, we first heard and started using the word back in the early 2000s. It was the Black consciousness singers Erykah Badu and Georgia Anne Muldrow who first said it in their 2008 collaboration on “Master Teacher” to be “spiritually awoken” or “to be aware”. To take notice of the people and world around you and not just be a mindless drone getting sucked into what’s comfortable; to be cognizant of the evil forces around you and not get tricked into falling for them. It was a “call to action” from the soul and R&B singers to the Black community to be smart, witty, and always make decisions with purpose and not fall into the traps people will throw at you. Be aware of what people truly are. Your neighbor, may not be your neighbor. Keep your third-eye open. “I Stay woke”.

Growing up in my neighborhood, we had another term for it, that we used even further back in the 90s; we called it “mending”. When you reach a point in your life where you’re suddenly “aware” of how society is around you, and your mind “mends” or adjusts to your new discovery. There’s a moment of realization where you feel detached from reality, as if all you’ve been told is a lie, disillusioned or an actual medical word used in psychology that can somewhat describe it is “depersonalization” or “derealization” and it can actually make you feel like you’re losing your mind. Or if the moment is shocking enough to you, it can even cause panic, anger, fear, paranoia, or even trigger an anxiety attack if you’re not ready for it or have a hard time interpreting, accepting, or difficulty mentally digesting your new-found reality. It’s not a word that just sprang out of Black slang. It is a small word to describe a bigger phenomenon that every human has experienced, and is a very real thing with real-life implications.

And if you still don’t get it, the best way I can describe it is when Adam ate the Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden and became “aware” of his nakedness. Being “woke” or your mind “mending” is that split moment when your mind is literally blown that you’re not in Kansas anymore. And the meaning of ‘stay woke’ is literally achieve to remain in that state of wokeness because becoming woke or your mind mending only lasts a few seconds or minutes, until you get used to it and forget about it, but trying to stay in a woke state, requires work. You can’t fall back to sleep.

That’s the best way I can describe it from my own experience, but until one experiences it themselves, it’s difficult to put it into words. And becoming woke isn’t a one and done. It happens throughout your life as you mature and come in contact with new people and experiences as you gain new information. It can be a pleasant woke, like when I realized my new found high self esteem having learned about my African, Fulani heritage or it can also be an unpleasant woke, like when I suddenly realized my white manager was going around the office lying on me, likely to eliminate me from being future competition. I came to the realization that I had no “white allies” in my “diversity-inclusive” (~98% white) work environment.

When you become woke, and you walk outside, the sun seems eerily brighter and the people walking around you seem more like ghosts, shadows, husks, background-noise or NPCs, but somehow through all the mundaneness, other woke people will stand out to you. There are many levels to being woke and those that are, have gone by different names over time and various levels, but the most common ones I’ve grown up hearing are “The Helpers”, “Indigos” or simply “the enlightened ones”. Additionally, there are also those that go by no names and just prefer keeping to the shadows, because being woke can attract unwanted attention from curious and contemptuous people.

They go by many different names all around the world. Jesus would be considered woke and you see what they did to him. Woke people aren’t particularly liked unfortunately, because they can appear mysterious to others and mystery can beget suspicion, which begets fear, which begets anger, which may even beget violence or even murder. They make people who aren’t, forced to face their weaknesses, even if they don’t say anything to them directly. Woke people also tend to be deep-thinkers and can be found in high abundance in some form of the arts or a field that creates things because they feel compelled to express their ideas or found in disciplines that focus on self-inflection like spiritual leaders or clergymen (not evangelicals or other conservative Bible-thumpers). They can also be your elders like grandparents or even parents as they’ve gained many experiences just through life. Alternatively, woke people can also be grumpy people, because they’ve become so depressed and encumbered by the willful stupidity of people, and the state of the world, that they withdraw from it. Any act of anyone engaging with them, is taken as an annoyance because they’re interpreting the person as just another husk or NPC bringing more vapid, meaningless conversation.

Being woke pretty much surrounds itself around obtaining knowledge, so you won’t find willingly ignorant people as being woke. The un-woke who viciously attack the ones who are, are typically bitter people who live in a shell and are jealous of those, or indoctrinated to hate, those who have found a way out. It’s just their sheer knowledge of them existing that they hate them, and that’s where we are now in America. An irrational fear and irritation of people who don’t fit or refuse to go along with the status quo. That status quo being white, male and Christian and now you could probably even add “rich” to that list.

However, the problems, the time-wasters or distractions the other NPCs around you bring, are like the Woman in the Red Dress and can block or prevent you from reaching wokeness, keeps you in a sleep state, and lands you in a lot of trouble or missed opportunities. The movie The Matrix puts being woke in perfect visual context when Neo Anderson wakes up from his battery chamber and becomes aware of the “real world” in which he’s just an energy source to the Machines. He then has another awakening of his inner strength at the end of the movie, when he realizes he’s “The One” and achieves enlightenment. This is what being “woke” is. It is simply a word to describe reaching a state of enlightenment.

But in 2016, in the early days of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Black civil rights activist DeRay McKesson went to Baton Rouge, Louisiana to protest the murder of Alton Sterling by cops and was arrested while wearing a “#STAY WOKE” T-shirt. Immediately, like wet fish in hot grease, the white racists of America groveled their way from their underground holes and bridges, and pounced on the moment to demean the activists, like they always do. But this time, the racists saw DeRay’s shirt and began using the word “woke” as a racial slur towards him and the other Black activists.

And THAT was the moment when woke was hijacked by white racists and for the last decade, right-wing pundits and shills have regurgitated it, time and time again, recycling slurs reimagined by racists. They likely don’t even know how “woke” started (or maybe they do) or its turning point, but they damn sure have the same reasons when using it.

Fast-forward to now, the word “woke” is used by not only right-leaning white people anymore, but it has spilled into the lexicon of the general public to describe anything that is anti-right belief. And since we’re living in a society of sheeple who can’t think for themselves, people keep using it. It’s now used to diminish any person or movement that fights for rights that the right doesn’t like, such as civil rights, immigration, abortion, gay and trans rights, calling them “woke policies” and labeling those who fight for them as “woke”. The way woke is being used now, is actually the opposite of what it actually means.

To be “anti-woke”, as the right likes to call themselves, means to want to stay asleep. It means you want to stay blind-folded, have people tell you what to do, where to go, when you do it, what to think, and not be a sovereign, self-directed person. It means to be and stay indoctrinated by whatever the status quo wants you to be. Being anti-woke means essentially wanting to be and stay a slave. I’m not sure why anyone would want to be this way, so when MAGA-supporters say they’re anti-woke, the people who know the actual meaning of woke, cringe. Hearing MAGA-supporters say this is like watching some dystopian nightmare unfold before your very eyes. How are people this gullible?It’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” being played out in real life. Or even like Sponge Bob’s Opposite Day; backwards means forwards.

Thanks to racists that get a pass in this country, the word “woke” went from a positive word of enlightenment, to a negative word added to the dictionary of slurs used against marginalized groups and ideologies that white people don’t like. Even the way they say it is like nails scratching down a blackboard to me, because they don’t even say it properly as they pronounce it as “woLk”, like egg yolk, and not just “woke”. Where is this hard “L” sound coming from?

The word is completely corrupted and polluted now and has become yet another casualty of white pessimism and white racists’ obsession with Black people and their urge to spend their entire lifetime poking their noses in our business, micromanaging and commanding how people move and bullying us. All it does is flag people who use it as self-centered, narcissists and screams, “Hey, I’m intolerant of others and hate people who don’t look or act like me”. They have taken a word to mean enlightenment and dummied it down into some basic, cave man, primitive, tribal, low-vibration context that serves nothing to the greater good.

I permanently would like the word “woke” banned from the general public because if you can’t use it correctly, then I want everyone to just not to use the word at all. 🦉