In late August, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made headlines with a dubious declaration. “Florida is the state where ‘woke’ goes to die,” he said at a Republican Party event in his US state, celebrating a slate of conservative victories in school board elections.Given the governor’s policies over the last few years – including hostility to anti-COVID measures such as vaccines and masking – DeSantis’s Florida is indeed a prime destination for anyone with a death wish. But this declaration represents more than just a snappy sound bite. Rather, it is a wilful distortion of the reality of “woke” activism and history, and an attack against both the concepts of justice and equality that underlie wokeness and the people who advocate to make these ideals reality.The terminology of being “woke” – waking up to a new awareness of the world and particularly the oppressions around us – has a long tradition in African American Vernacular English. The term has been used by Black musicians for nearly a century, from 1930s blues singer Huddie William “Lead Belly” Ledbetter to 21st-century hip-hop and neo-soul artists like Childish Gambino and Erykah Badu. The more overtly political connotations of the term were popularised by the Black Lives Matter movement during campaigns in places such as Ferguson, Missouri, before being adopted, or coopted, by non-Black activists in real life and on social media.
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