How political rhetoric has reshaped the meaning of ‘woke’

the word woke has become a polarizing term in the culture wars in recent years but decades before Ron DeSantis declared a so-called war on woke the term was used by some black people as a signal and a warning to be on the lookout for violence and Injustice for more we are joined by NBC News correspondent Tremaine Lee Tremaine it's always great to see you good morning good to be here thank you so much as you mentioned woke for decades and decades has been used primarily in the black community but

now it's become a word that means everything and nothing at all it's loaded it's charged especially in the mouths of some Far right-wing conservatives so I went and investigated the true like meaning and natured history of this uh this word check it out lunacy and over woke beliefs and policies and over again woke has become a Charged political catch-all phrase often used as a battering ram and a Battle Cry and to many a slur it's almost another way of saying black it's another way of saying th

e n-word they weaponize the civil rights movement and said it was a communist movement before it was a pejorative woke was about black safety and empowerment in the early 20th century when Jim Crow had its grip on America white supremacist danger and violence was a constant threat so black folks had to keep their eyes open literally and figuratively they had to stay woke but what's the the real actual definition of the term woke it's to be a way to what's happening around you particularly when i

t comes to sister stomach Injustice the roots of woke Run Deep to the heart of black America's fight for equality in the 1930s Blues Man Huddy Ledbetter AKA Leadbelly penned a protest song in honor of the Scottsboro boys a group of black teens falsely accused in Alabama of raping two white women and since then it has become part of the cultural lexicon and that's what it's always meant to black people for almost 100 years now by the late 80s Wolk was showing up in Black Art like Spike Lee's clas

sic film school days and later given new electricity by Neo Soul artist Erica Badu after the killings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and in 2020 woke crossed over from Black Culture to the mainstream following the murder of George Floyd no one was talking about woke as much as we have in the last two years right this was in speak in the black community I think there was a lot of Terror in seeing what was happening in 2020 seeing the multi-racial multi-ethnic um coalitions of people who real

ly rallied around like understanding more about anti-blackness understanding more about systemic racism today woke has become an ideological lightning rod and dividing line of Warhead and the latest culture wars once it became a political football particularly as we see with the GOP it seemed like a mass message went out and won't miss is what we're targeting they mean it as a slur but the people who are for these policies for these specific goals who think that I want my children to learn about

the history of this country and not just the white history of this country that's not a slur to me and if you call it woke or whatever you call it I am proud of representing those things and I want them in policy politically there's nothing new about fighting over uh the narrative who controls the narrative controls the story but what's concerning for many people in this case with woke is that uh you know one Community created this as a form of resistance and now it's been turned in some ways i

n that very community thanks for watching our YouTube channel follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the NBC News app