A conversation has unfolded on social media—and God help us all—it has the audacity to be about the concept of being “woke,” “staying woke,” and all matters “wokeness”-related. This idea of staying woke was created by Black people and until recent years was regarded exclusively in our communities as a word of warning from sister to sister, brother to brother. Keep your head on the swivel. Be on the lookout for racism in disguise, racial profiling in disguise, white supremacist messaging in disguise. Stay vigilant. Stay educated. Stay woke.

Vox magazine writer Aja Romano narrowed down the originating use of the phrase to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 after police expressed discontentment with Brown walking in the street. Romano wrote that “‘stay woke’ suddenly became the cautionary watchword of Black Lives Matter activists on the streets, used in a chilling and specific context: keeping watch for police brutality and unjust police tactics.”

Then like many a phrase before it, white people caught on to the warning and ruined it. The challenge to stay woke, or to educate yourself on injustices hidden in plain sight—like police brutality—became isolating reminders to some that not only were they uneducated, but uncool and incapable of keeping up with popular lingo, Black lingo. So they have apparently retreated to that warm and cozy place of resenting Black people, America’s favorite scapegoat. 

In a PBS Newshour rant Wednesday, Democratic strategist James Carville blamed election losses— including Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s recent loss to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial race—on “stupid wokeness.”

“Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey,” Carville said of McAuliffe’s loss and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s close-call victory in New Jersey. “Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis. Even look at Seattle, Wash.” Carville called the activist movement to use a portion of law enforcement budgets to fund social and mental health services “‘defund the police’ lunacy.” He reprimanded school boards acting to rename schools once named after former presidents who owned slaves. “People see that,” Carville said, “and it’s just really (having) a suppressive effect all across the country, and Democrats, some of these people, need to go to a woke detox center or something.

“I mean they’re expressing a language that people just don’t use, and there’s a backlash and a frustration at that.”

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The funny thing is I don’t disagree with Carville’s observation, but I part ways with him on what we should do about that observation. Although relying on coded language, Carville shared a certain truth about a portion of white Democrats. Black people are expressing a language that white people don’t use, and there’s a backlash and a frustration with that.

After decades of ignoring racism, downplaying it with phrases like “pulling the race card” and rendering it practically nonexistent in mainstream news media, George Floyd’s violent death at the hands of a white Minneapolis cop forced a national conversation about racism in America. White people had to sit with it as they had their morning coffee. They had to have conversations with their children about it, some for the first time, and now these same white people are sick of it because they have the luxury of being sick of it. They can turn off their cellphones and television screens and not have to encounter racism anymore. Black people cannot. 

Reecie Colbert, a political commentator and founder of the social media haven Black Women Views Media, pointed out in a soul-affirming and profanity-laced video that McAuliffe didn’t run on defunding police or renaming schools. “This is gaslighting, and you know I have to say that whether it’s Republicans or Democrats, y’all know how to talk in your code speak,” she said. “So wokeness is a euphemism for Blackness, is what you’re trying to say.”

She added: “What you’re saying is recognizing racism and offering prescriptions against white supremacy is creating a backlash, and well, that would actually be somewhat accurate, but guess what? You don’t have a motherf—ing choice but to do it because you’re not going to keep the base of the Democratic party, which is Black people and people of color, by siding with the racists, with the white supremacists.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones ”warned journalists on Twitter Sunday not to engage. “Say what you mean, and more importantly, make the people you are interviewing say EXACTLY WHAT THEY MEAN. Do your jobs,” in a tweet.

Hannah-Jones has been targeted by Republicans for her "1619 Project" in The New York Times Magazine and her correct assertion in the piece that slavery has had an undeniable effect on American society. Her advice to journalists came after CNN State of the Union co-anchor Dana Bash asked Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Sunday: “Are Democrats too woke, senator?”

Thankfully he didn’t answer that question, but he also didn’t have the opportunity to answer the more specific questions I would have preferred Bash press Warner on—how important should addressing racism be to the Democratic Party, and if addressing racism is a priority, how does the party plan to marry that priority with Democrats like Carville who feel reporting on racism or “wokeness” is overdone? 

Warner didn’t have to answer those questions. He instead got to focus on the branding of the “defund the police” movement. “Listen, I don’t support defund the police,” he said, while also championing a call of the movement for more community-based approaches to policing. 

“This is how propaganda works,” Hannah-Jones tweeted with video of the interview. “Mainstream media normalizes murky, dog-whistle terminology that is used to stoke white resentment. What is woke here @DanaBashCNN and how was the extremely moderate candidate who did not run on CRT ‘too woke’?”

On the campaign trail, Youngkin emphasized his opposition to critical race theory in schools, a nonexistent threat Houdini-like Republicans have made appear real. The theory is a framework for interpreting law that maintains racism has an undeniable effect on the legal foundation of American society, and fittingly, it is usually taught at the graduate or law school level. That, however, didn’t stop Youngkin from promising support of a ban on critical race theory in K-12 schools and tweeting a campaign video featuring the outrage of a white mom who years earlier tried to get author Toni Morrison’s classic novel, Beloved, banned from her son’s Advanced Placement English curriculum. 

Morrison’s novel has nothing to do with critical race theory. It does, however, focus on the devastating effects of slavery, which Republicans have also deemed inappropriate for schools in a toxic rebranding of critical race theory to mean anything related to racism or Blackness. The only enlightening element of Carville’s political analysis is the reminder that Republicans aren’t the only ones who feel that embracing Blackness equates to political sabotage. 

“And before people disingenuously complain ‘woke’ is denigrating to older people, it’s actually pundits like Carville using terms like ‘woke’ to insult voters under 45 that’s denigrating,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Don’t wonder why youth turnout falls when Dems talk about them like this.”

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