What Is the Meaning of Woke?

Everywhere you turn, you hear it – anger, accusations, denials, pride, and prejudice around things “woke.” Count on more in 2024. What is the meaning of “woke?” Answering that question is important – but like nailing Jell-O to the wall, hard.

From John Locke, we know words do matter, and meanings change, often through politics. Now, 400 years ago, Locke lamented how words can fail us. “So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words…when we have nothing else but words to do it with.” True enough!

Orwell was more pointed and foreboding. He warned us to pay attention to meanings, like the meaning of woke – if we aim to stay free. He wrote: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

So, what is the real meaning of woke, and why does it matter? Today woke describes leftist priorities, but the word has humble origins. A century ago, it was a warning in the Black community: Be “awake” for threats to life, limb, and liberty.

Scholars say “wake up” and “stay woke” were adopted in the early 1900s by socialists, labor activists, and those pushing communism to organize “working classes” against the “bourgeoisie” class, ignoring American upward mobility.

The term later appeared in blues songs about race, class, and injustice, especially during the Depression. As one scholar described “woke,” it was “a metaphor popularized by the labor movement…borrowed by Black activists…before bursting into blues music in the 1920s.”

All this is ancient history, but context matters. Today, the meaning is broad but not indefinite. Woke connotes a leftist ideology, power consolidation, atheism, socialism, communism, and neo-fascism for social, sexual, racial, or “climate” justice.

In some ways, this is unsatisfactory since the meaning of woke changes according to who uses the word. It is inherently vague, encompassing different types of top-down power consolidation – all of which suppress individual liberties.

What every definition of woke involves is a radical transformation, some kind of replacement for traditional values, culture, constitutional rights, majoritarianism, meritocratic connection, and the checks and balances within our political processes – in favor of top-down mandates pushing left-leaning, collectivist priorities.

As Locke and Orwell knew, words can be slippery. They are used in all sorts of ways, used to trick the mind, change things without officially changing them, and suddenly you wake up – literally – to find that what you had is…gone.

Put differently, woke is hard to define but is an adjective for someone actively against traditional American values – social, cultural, legal, sexual, moral, educational, historical, and scientific understandings that have defined our nation.

The meaning of woke is radical change. Adherents are activists using government and business to push Marxism, socialism, communism, atheism, and anti-liberty. They subscribe to concentrated power for social change, redistributing society’s wealth by identity group and disavowing what made America great, literally.

The woke push leftism based on race, group identity, and a commitment to radical cultural transformation, replacing individual rights, traditions, faith, family, free markets, free speech, and personal responsibility with federal control.

The woke push ideologies like “Critical Race Theory” (CRT), a belief that wealth should be redistributed by skin color because the American Dream – upward mobility through determination, opportunity, and hard work – is dead.

They push “Environmental, Social, and Governance” (ESG) priorities – climate alarmism, minority advancement by group, and corporate activism – over traditional fiduciary action, such as financial returns on pension investments.

They push social dissolution and reduce protection for families, speech, and religion through multi-genderism, anti-faith, anti-historical, and anti-military transformation.

Governor DeSantis calls wokeism “a form of cultural Marxism.” Former Governor Haley calls it “a virus more dangerous than any pandemic.” Many see woke ideology as replacing individual rights with a big government push toward leftism.

So, what is the meaning of woke? How might John Locke and George Orwell, students of history, see this word being leveraged to create an ideological rift?

The real meaning of woke is unsettling, radical change to our society, wholesale reinterpretation of government, replacing institutions – individual and family rights, freedom of speech and religion, and fidelity to constitutional law – with leftist political priorities and top-down, utopian federal control.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.