The term “woke” means “I woke up” and is the past tense of “wake”, which means to wake up. This word is often used in American slang to refer to an ideological stance against injustice. Its use arose within the black community from the United States and originally meant be alert to racial injustice.
“The person many people consider to have coined it was [el novelista] William Melvin Kelley“he told the BBC Elijah Watson, news and culture editor at American music website Okayplayer and author of a series of articles called “The origin of woke.”
The word “woke” and its political implication
“In 1962 he published an essay in the New York Times titled If You’re Woke, You Dig It (‘If you’re awake, you understand,’)” Watson said of Kelley. The term resurfaced in the last decade with the movement Black Lives Matterwhich was born in rejection of police brutality towards people of African descent after the arrest of citizen George Floyd during the Covid pandemic.
But this time its use spread beyond the black community and It began to be used to mean something broader. In 2017, the Oxford Dictionary added this new meaning of “woke”, defining it as: “Be aware of social and political issues, especially racism”.
But it is also used to refer disparagingly to someone who maintains politically liberal ideas on these types of matters. The Oxford Dictionary itself makes the distinction since in the definition it adds: “This word is often used with disapproval on the part of people who think that other people are too easily upset by these topicsor they talk too much about them in a way that doesn’t change anything.”
The term, then, advocates for social issues such as racism, feminism, the LGBT movement, the use of gender-neutral pronouns, multiculturalism, the use of vaccines, ecological activism and the right to abort, among others.
Javier Milei against “the woke trash”
President Javier Milei recently targeted the woke movement in a message posted on his X account. “To the woke trash (cool socialism) the change is starting to arrive. In their fatal arrogance they have done a lot of damage and good people have woken up. New winds are coming…”, he expressed.
He did it in a repost of Spanish politician from the Vox party Juan Carlos Girautawho in a video defended magnate Elon Musk after being called a Nazi for his greeting at Donald Trump’s inauguration. The Spaniard stated that there is a bias “towards the left.”
Trump anti woke
Definitely, the woke agenda is something that Donald Trump does not take seriously. During his inauguration ceremony he stated that “there are only two genders, male and female,” in a nod to the trans community. In one of his executive orders, Trump ended all government programs, policies, statements and communications that promote or support “gender ideology.”
It also ended all “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programs within the federal government. The order affects all federal agencies and includes those that receive federal grants or have federal contracts.
Regarding immigration, attacked the granting of automatic citizenship for those born in the US to undocumented immigrants and signed the suspension of the US refugee resettlement program for four months, although without clear details. He also ordered the military to “seal the borders” citing the flow of illicit drugs, human smuggling and crossing-related crime.
Source: Ambito
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