In defense of "woke"

As the aughts approached, the term started to lose its racial connotation, becoming instead a catchall for any sort of progressive behavior. You were woke if you recycled, or maybe just retweeted an infographic on the virtues of recycling. White people were deemed woke. Some, painfully, even took it upon themselves to be the arbiters of wokeness.

It was no coincidence that this happened alongside Barack Obama’s political ascent. Being liberal — and communicating exactly how radical you wanted people to believe you were — had cultural benefits. For the first time in my lifetime, you could earn progressive social capital by merely just supporting the commander in chief. “I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could” wasn’t just the most effective joke in the movie “Get Out.” It was the bumper sticker real-life (white) progressives stuck to their foreheads.

And now? Well, woke floats in the linguistic purgatory of terms coined by us that can no longer be said unironically, levitating next to “swag” and “twerk” in the “Words Ruined by White People” ether. What was a compliment just a few years ago has become, at best, an eye roll. If a stranger at a dinner party is introduced — or introduces himself — as woke, I know that I’ll need some whiskey before talking to him.