The Great Awoke-ning

For an adjective which is defined simply as “alert to racial prejudice”, WOKE seems to attract a lot of controversy...

The phrase “stay woke” first emerged in America in the 1930s. Black singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter used the phrase in the song "Scottsboro Boys", about a miscarriage of justice in the Deep South. For him, “stay woke” meant “keep your eyes open". The term has since been appropriated to connote wider forms of perceived injustice beyond the racial – sometimes it feels as if it applies to everything from LGBT rights to soft drinks and razors. Robert Tombs, Tobias Müller and Aliya Ali join the fray..



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