This past week, the Department of Justice filed multiple charges against Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey, who is Black, after she and other Democrats inspected an immigration detention facility in her state.
The charges were derided by McIver and other Democrats as “purely political,” with Republicans attempting to obscure anti-immigrant operations ordered by President Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, Trump was asked by reporters for his reaction to the charges.
“The days of ‘woke’ are over. That woman—I have no idea who she is—that woman was out of control,” Trump said.
For years, Trump and other Republicans have invoked the term “woke” as an insidious force in the United States without clearly defining what it actually is.
Leading up to the 2024 election, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly spoke about how his office was going to “fight the woke.” And Elon Musk spoke about a “woke mind virus” while Trump claimed that the military no longer wanted to fight and protect the United States from “some very bad people” and instead “they want to go woke.”
Rep. LaMonica McIver, Democrat of New Jersey
Fox News, the quasi-official propaganda arm of the Republican Party, has labeled more than 200 things “woke,” according to Media Matters for America. Apparently, “woke” is anything from female M&M cartoons and Bud Light to My Little Pony and corporations like Disney and Target.
Many Republican voters supported Trump in the 2024 election in opposition to “woke,” which they were told was a threat to their way of life.
But what does “woke” even mean?
The term comes from the Black community and is tied to the long fight for racial justice and equality. It has been traced all the way back to “Scottsboro Boys,” a protest song recorded by Lead Belly in the 1930s advising Black people to “stay woke” and be aware of racist policies in the deeply segregated South.
Usage of the term increased following the protests against police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri, after the police murder of Michael Brown in 2014. And it became even more widespread in 2020 after the protests triggered by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Trump, who rose to political prominence for promoting the racist “birther” conspiracy theory about President Barack Obama and racist stereotypes about Mexican immigrants, hates the Black Lives Matter movement. So opposing Trump and bigotry from other Republicans was seen as “woke,” of which the right quickly took notice.
Being against “woke” has become the right’s new definition for opposing social justice, as it has always done—opposing women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial justice.
It’s no mistake that the war on “woke” has manifested itself in the form of Trump administration policy, rules, and executive orders meant to roll back civil rights and erase the achievements of people who aren’t straight, cisgender, white men.
The right can no longer openly use racist slurs as it so willingly did in the 1950s and 1960s, nor can it openly use slurs against women and LGBTQ+ people as it could do as late as the early 2000s. So now, “woke” is invoked.
But the meaning behind Trump and other Republicans’ use of the term is clear. McIver has not only been speaking out against Trump’s harsh anti-immigrant stance, but she also did so while being Black and a woman—two things that Trump despises.
That’s why he immediately declared that the “days of woke” are over. Surely he would have preferred to use another term, but “woke” will have to suffice for now.
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