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Woke Post About Staying Woke

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28 June 2017

By Alex Khalil

Unsurprising, actually.

The Oxford English Dictionary has endured some right tosh, hasn’t it? From having the word ‘Selfie’ inducted into its pages, to ‘Bromance’ and even ‘D’oh’ in the dictionary now. Well, we’re getting political for this next bit, as the term ‘Woke’ is being added to the dictionary.

The term ‘Woke’ used to just mean being awake, the act of getting out of sleep, but given its social connotations, its definition is being redefined. The OED said:

“By the mid-20th century woke had been extended figuratively to refer to being ‘aware’ or ‘well informed’ in a political or cultural sense.”

This was partly due to the political unrest in the US at the time of the election in 2016. Many people used the term ‘post-truth’ too, meaning “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping political debate or public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.

Not only was the election to blame for this kind of thinking, but issues around race, the vast number of police shootings and xenophobia also contributed to this idea of ‘staying woke’. It certainly sounds a lot cooler than saying ‘stay informed’.

It fits with the general political and social awareness most young people possess today and is often used in liberal terms. Things labelled as ‘woke posts’ will creep up every now and then on Twitter and Tumblr, detailing things like police brutality or the ongoing water crisis in Flint Michigan US, where the water is still unsafe for use.

Given the current climate of the world, it wouldn’t be such a bad suggestion for everyone to ‘stay woke’.

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