But to be woke, essentially, is to recognize and reject the damage power inflicts on the most vulnerable. There was the Tommy Hilfiger one, where we shouldn’t buy his clothes because he went on Oprah and expressed disgust at black people wearing them. (Tommy Hilfiger hadn’t even appeared on Oprah’s show before that rumor circulated, the Timberland rumor apparently came from a poem wrongly attributed to Maya Angelou.) Also, while the people who can genuinely be considered woke are increasingly less inclined to use that word to describe themselves, perhaps we’re witnessing it undergo another shift. Like “virtual signaling” and “ social justice warrior,” woke now says more about the politics of the speaker than it does about the object.

Source: New York Times November 29, 2019 10:52 UTC