User:Allyborghi/sandbox

I have accidentally put my three topics on my user page here are my topics: Super Bowl LI halftime show  , Woke , and Death of Freddie Gray

In editing woke I would like to better organize the site by creating sections. First I would like to have a section simply defining woke. I believe that the article does a good job defining it but I would like to differentiate between the definition given by uban dictionary and webster's dictionary. I would then like to create a section explaining the root of the word and how it is a colloquial term stemming from the word awoke and how it was originally used in the african american community. I would then like to create a section on its political implications and how its meaning has expanded to the political sphere in the face of the black lives movement and the historical implications now attached to the word. For my final section I would like to discuss how woke has become a common term in pop culture. I believe that the present article has a lot of good material that would fin into these sections but I feel that in addition to better organizing the wikipedia page I could also improve it by adding a more coherent timeline with more in depth information.

For the band, see Woke (band).

Definition of Woke

Oxford Dictionary defines woke as the past tense of wake.

Urban Dictionary on the other hand, defines woke as being aware and knowing what is going on in your community.

The urban dictionary definition is the definition that has been popularized by the black lives matter movement and has subsequently been used in popular culture.

Where Woke comes from

Woke is a word from African American Vernacular English which refers to an awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. Merriam- Webster cites woke as being linked to social awareness for the first time in 2008, when Erykah Badu released his song Master Teacher. The related phrase stay woke refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. Its widespread use since 2014 is also partially a result of the Black Lives Matter movement and became a watch word for people in the black community who were self-aware and fighting for something better than the presently biased social paradigm. The large spread usage of the woke amongst the Black Lives Matter movement followed directly after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson.

Woke in Pop Culture

Oxford Dictionary records early politically conscious usage in 1962 in the article "If You're Woke You Dig It" by William Melvin Kelley in The New York Times and in the 1971 play Garvey Lives! by Barry Beckham ("I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr. Garvey done woke me up, I’m gon stay woke. And I’m gon help him wake up other black folk.")

The first modern use of the term woke appears in the song "Master Teacher" from the 2008 album New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) by soul singer Erykah Badu. Throughout the song, Badu sings the phrase "I stay woke", though the phrase did not yet have any connection to justice issues. Nevertheless, Badu's song is credited with the later connection to these issues. To "stay woke" in this sense expresses the intensified continuative and habitual grammatical aspect of African American Vernacular English, i.e. to always be awake, or to be ever vigilant. Professor David Stovall of the University of Illinois Chicago said “Erykah brought it alive in popular culture. She means not being placated, not being anesthetized." Implicit in the concept of being woke is the idea that such awareness must be earned. The rapper Earl Sweatshirt recalls singing "I stay woke" along to the song and his mother turning down the song and responding "No, you're not."

In 2012, users on Twitter, including Badu, began using woke and stay woke in connection to social and racial justice issues and #StayWoke emerged as a widely-used hashtag. Badu incited this with the first politically charged use of the phrase on Twitter. When she tweeted out in support of the Russian feminist group Pussy Riot, "Truth requires no belief. Stay woke. Watch closely.#FreePussyRiot". From social media and activist circles, the word spread to widespread mainstream usage. For example, in 2016, the headline of a Bloomberg Businessweek article asked "Is Wikipedia Woke?", in reference to the largely white contributor base of the online encyclopedia.

More recently, woke has been adopted as a more generic slang term and has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. For example, MTV News identified it as a key teen slang word for 2016. This has raised concerns that the word has been culturally appropriated. In The New York Times Magazine, Amanda Hess writes "The conundrum is built in. When white people aspire to get points for consciousness, they walk right into the cross hairs between allyship and appropriation."