Are You "Woke"? #266 By Hank Silverberg Conservatives and their Republican friends have come up with a new slogan, or should I say, insult. Anyone or any policy they don't like or disagree with is now "woke," or someone practicing "wokeism." They failed in their attempt to call those people "far-left-liberals" or "socialists." That didn't stick because the American public was smarter than that. Neither characterization fit the traditional political spectrum charts. So, the right-wing picked up on a phrase sometimes previously used in Black culture and turned "woke" into a dirty word. Dictionaries picked up on the word and provided a definition. But this example from Merriam-Webster goes further in explanation: chiefly US slang 1 : aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice) And the dictionary adds this: