President Donald Trump was sworn into office this January as part of a promise to make the United States “woke no longer”. Using the word “woke” synonymously with left-wing indoctrination, his administration has promised to purge all “woke” remnants from our country’s schools, companies, and even its institutions. Democrats have responded to these movements with widespread alarm, fearing the consequences of an ideological crackdown by the Trump administration. For the most part, their fears are legitimate; anti-woke directives have already been used to attack the Smithsonian, Ivy League universities, and similarly non-partisan institutions, threatening their long-held reputations for integrity. Many on the left long for an earlier era, where many saw wokeness as a force for good–even a rallying cry for the oppressed peoples of this country. However, in many ways, the word’s power was lost long before the election of Donald Trump.
The History of Wokeness
Woke is an umbrella term of sorts–its meaning can shift so dramatically in different contexts that it is largely contradictory. Yet its adoption by three separate communities, each with their own interpretation of the word, has led to three wholly distinct understandings of “wokenesses” as it has developed over time. The first of these is not a recent creation; use of the word “woke” goes back to the early-20th century, where Black Americans were being urged to “wake up” to the injustices around them. It was a rallying cry, not a blanket term by any means, and largely not intended for use by any outside communities. Its in-group status kept it hidden to those outside Black communities, at least for a time. In a 1962 New York Times essay titled “If You’re Woke You Dig it”, writer William Melvin Kelley critiqued the appropriation of black culture by white people, who often failed to grasp its relevant context. To him, the adoption and subsequent misuse of black slang words had become an inevitable part of the white man’s desire to be “hip”. Perhaps it is fitting that this criticism would serve as a prescient warning of what was to come.
The word “woke” never disappeared in the decades after its introduction, but it wasn’t until 2008 that it exploded rapidly into the mainstream. The release of Erykah Badu’s track “Master Teacher”, which featured the phrase “stay woke”, as well as her use of the word in social media advocacy, gave rise to wokeness #2. Through no fault of her own, Erykah Badu introduced entirely new communities to the concept, who co-opted it into a broader social-justice lexicon. This wider adoption wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but led to a far more muddled definition of the word; one which quickly lost sight of its roots. Wokeness #2 became a catch-all term for progressive social stances, representing someone who’s “woke” to issues of race, gender, and class. The shift not only disconnected it from black empowerment, but its prior role as a form of counter-culture. Wokeness #1 was by design supposed to be uncomfortable, representing a push for fundamental, systemic change. Wokeness #2, however, represents a sanitized version of the word, becoming palatable to all by losing this very edginess that gave it power. During wokeness #2’s heyday, wokeness #1 had its resurgences; the 2014 Ferguson Black Lives Matter Protests saw calls to “stay woke” to the injustices still faced by African-Americans today. Yet this only served as another nail in the coffin for wokeness #1, as those outside the movement, especially online, quickly reproduced the word through wokeness #2’s superficial understanding. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that wokeness #1 would lose almost completely to the hegemony of wokeness #2 in the years to come.
It was this era that was, fundamentally, wokeness’s downfall. Billed as a trendy new slang word, “woke” joined a legacy of Americans co-opting words from African American Vernacular English (AAVE) without proper recognition of their roots. Everyday misuse, though, wasn’t enough to obliterate the word’s meaning completely. Its decline began when corporate America hopped on the bandwagon. Sensing its trendiness, companies from Gillette to Nike hopped on the “woke train”, making sure to hop off before any meaningful change was made. Pepsi’s now notorious ad with Kendall Jenner perfectly exemplifies the superficiality of corporate contributions, in which she ends a standoff with protestors by handing a police officer a can of Pepsi. Wokeness #2 lent itself to this corporate use and abuse, in the process hollowing out all of its remaining revolutionary fervor. Following close behind, online influencers co-opted the word to signal their “support” without committing to the fundamental, systemic change that birthed the word. They propagated an increasingly vapid meaning of wokeness, using internet “slacktivism” as a means of staying “hip” in the internet age. Needless to say, this did little to restore the integrity of wokeness #2. Corporate campaigns and influencer virtue-signals tied the word to a performative notion of identity-politics, something Americans were beginning to abhor. Wokeness #2 was a performance; not a call to action, nor a push for any fundamental change. These circumstances perfectly set the stage for the rise of wokeness #3.
Wokeness in Contemporary America
Wokeness #3 has seen the word at its most pervasive, and simultaneously its most divisive. In 2025, “woke” has come to represent anything remotely subversive, edgy, or against the status quo. Conservative lawmakers wield the word without rhyme or reason, lambasting all sorts of “woke” institutions as part of a broader political witch hunt. Included in the same breath as DEI programs, the GOP’s anti-woke crusade has created an atmosphere of fear in higher education, and even placed ordinary air traffic controllers in the crosshairs of controversy. Yet wokeness has reached a level of critical mass never seen in its prior iterations. Its Google search results have increased threefold in the past few years, and most Americans have at least heard of the term.
Unfortunately, awareness does not always breed understanding. Many of these same people struggle to even define wokeness, let alone explain its nuanced history. This is no coincidence; wokeness #3 has evolved into a word without any substantive meaning. It is as a political wrecking ball, made to demolish anything and everything infested by the scourge of “woke ideology”. There is no coherent definition–meritocracy is “anti-woke”, but any people of color who succeeded in a meritocracy must be the benefactor of “woke” policies. There is a cognitive dissonance implicit in wokeness #3, where book bans are necessary to protect free speech and religious freedom requires the primacy of Judeo-Christian values.
Wokeness #3, then, is malleable, devoid of any real meaning as it morphs to fit the GOP’s villain of the week. This mutation of wokeness, and its anti-woke responses, are inextricably linked to each other. Above all else, wokeness #3 is an alarming manifestation of the Right’s increasing flirtations with authoritarianism. Erykah Badu herself remarked how “woke” has come to represent anything “Black”. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, she mourned how the word “doesn’t belong to us anymore… it takes on a life of its own”. Wokeness #3 is a weapon of control; the death knell of wokeness #1 and #2, as well as all they represent.
Entering the Post-Woke Era:
The rise of the “anti-woke” at the hands of wokeness #3 has left Democrats spiraling. Calls for the party to capitulate to conservative social forces are prominent, if misguided. They assume, for one, that elections are a perfect reflection of a people’s political views. That is, the resounding victory of Trump and his coalition in 2024 means that the American people are tired of anything resembling “woke”, in any of its forms. However, it is worth reminding ourselves of the vast differences in the term’s different meanings. Wokeness #3 has emerged as a vehicle for conservative Americans to vent their frustrations with 21st century America. For those who feel left behind, the finger-pointing towards anything remotely “liberal” provides a bogeyman for those feeling our precipitous decline in quality of life, for instance. Democrats’ electoral losses are not a sign to abandon any social progressivism; rather, to accept some hard truths about “woke”. First, that wokeness #3 is here, at least for the present moment. Yet there is a second truth here, one far harder for many run-of-the-mill Democrats to accept: wokeness #2 was never the answer. It was performative. Before dreaming up ways to replace wokeness, it’s worth asking ourselves one question: do we even need to?
It’s important to remember that different conceptions of social justice have always-coexisted. Independent of wokeness, activists and scholars have crafted their own lenses for understanding social ills. One of the most durable has been that of intersectionality, a concept which has its roots in the Combahee River Collective. They believed that systems of oppression could interlock together to form new, unique forms of oppression. A black woman, for instance, may not only face issues of racism and sexism, but deal with a racist sexism as well. This convergence of misogyny and xenophobia forms distinctly harmful stereotypes, such as the Reagan-era’s “welfare queen”, which are oftentimes unrecognized by other activist groups and inadequately addressed by legal protections against discrimination. This concept of intersectionality extends far beyond race and gender, however. It inextricably links the fates of oppressed groups in this country, who face many of the same oppressive forces. The economic transformation of disadvantaged Americans, then, cannot be exclusive to a particular ethnic or religious group. Lasting progress requires systemic change, not stop-gap solutions that try to atomize social ills.
Accepting this worldview thus means accepting that we cannot pick and choose the social ills we fight for. And unlike wokeness #2, it means committing to these battles beyond the superficial. However, this does not mean that wokeness needs to be replaced by some other broad-tent philosophy. It’s both plausible, if not, ideal for multiple conceptions of the post-woke era to co-exist simultaneously. This includes, among others, the recent “dark-woke” phenomenon. Beginning its run on social media, the term now serves to represent a more “unapologetic” type of Democratic behavior. For its proponents, this means embracing more honesty, and even vulgarity, but crucially, avoiding the buzzwords of wokeness #2. Members of the “dark-woke” are trying to galvanize the same anger that put Trump into office, by any means necessary, in the pursuit of better answers to American’s pressing issues. If imperfect, it’s certainly a start.
There’s value, too, in reclaiming wokeness #1’s spirit. The NAACP recently passed a resolution to recognize the connection of “woke” to the fight for black liberation, and the danger of its appropriation under wokeness #3. This is fundamentally different from the calls to return to wokeness #2, or to abandon social justice altogether. Instead, it is an acceptance of the co-opting of wokeness by ill-intentioned actors, from the GOP to corporate interests, and a recognition that this does not have to represent the end of everything organizations like the NAACP have fought for. The word “woke” is only a vessel; regardless of its transformation, the values of wokeness #1 can survive in other forms.
Wokeness #2’s greatest problem has always been its catch-all approach. By trying to encompass every social issue, it loses its nuance. Anyone looking to directly replace the term is sure to run into the same problems. Instead of trying to recapture the perceived magic of a “woke” America, perhaps it’s worth taking the fight for social justice back to its roots. In our effort to dream big, it’s crucial that we remember to start small. Lasting change has historically come at the behest of communities demanding it themselves, not top-down bureaucratic politics. It may look like “dark-woke”, it could follow in the footsteps of the Combahee River Collective, or it might look like nothing that has come before. For this to happen, however, we must let grassroots communities speak on their own terms; not ours.
So it’s time to stop mourning the dead. There’s only so much time to listen to the living.
Featured Image Source: Associated Press
