What does 'woke' mean and why are some conservatives using it?

The definition of «woke» changes depending on who you ask.

The term has recently been used by some conservatives as an umbrella term for progressive values, often using it with negative connotations.

However, the term was originally coined by progressive Black Americans and used in racial justice movements in the early to mid-1900s. To be «woke» politically in the Black community means that someone is informed, educated and conscious of social injustice and racial inequality, Merriam-Webster Dictionary states.

A historical recording of the protest song «Scottsboro Boys» by Lead Belly in the 1930s — as captured by Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the National Museum — is often cited as one of the earliest uses of the term. The Scottsboro Boys were nine Black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a Southern Railroad freight train in northern Alabama in 1931 in a case that lasted decades, according to the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

In the recording of the Lead Belly song several years after the incident, «stay woke» urged Black Americans to be aware of the potential for racist violence in the South.

The term, in one of its contemporary meanings, began to gain more popularity at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The Ferguson, Missouri, protests that year spotlighted the social injustices and police brutality faced by the Black community following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown.

Brown's death was shortly followed by the fatal police encounters of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and others — which continued the growing popularity of the phrase and its use in protest and activist circles for many