Thread by @JeffRoushPoetry

The use of the word “woke” to mean aware of and awake to the realities and effects of social injustice and racism is far from new. You can go back to at least 1938 and Lead Belly to hear it used that way.
#ResistanceRoots
#LiveBlue

Of course conservative whites have worked to co-opt the word, reframing it to refer to rampant political correctness, or really any idea or slice of humanity they don’t support. That tactic is also not new, as the brilliant @michaelharriot describes here:

theroot.com/weaponizing-wo…

The right has turned lexicological acrobatics into an art form, playing word games to dissociate meaning and ideas entirely from their politics. It’s labels, mockery, and schism-creation, all to avoid reckoning with the cruelty and callousness of every policy they support.

The more we can force them to pull back the curtain, the better our chance to move this country forward. I don’t care about embarrassing the right, but about whether we let them keep dividing the nation rather than attempting to lead. If that exposure embarrasses them too, fine.

We need to keep digging past the labels and catch-phrases to find ideas to help Americans. Until we do, they will continue to be the party of McCarthy and Greene and Trump and DiSantis: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing—and making Americans’ lives worse.