This might be a niche problem but maybe some people relate too haha. I have an issue with touching certain textures, mainly specific kind of fabrics. Sometimes it makes me feel like throwing things.
when you know that the word woke is aave and refers to someone who’s informed about systemic antiblack racism all those conservative rants about “the woke mob” are that much more transparent. whether or not they know what it actually means, the effect of misusing it in the way they do is the same. most people will end up thinking it just means “the radical left” or some other nebulous and vague anti-conservative movement, and whatever topic du jour is considered “woke” ends up completely sweeping any discussions about the antiblack systems that the us is built upon under the rug
“Woke” is indeed AAE and in its original context does refer to awareness about antiblack racism, but the analysis above skips a middle step that took place around 2014-2016. In the mid-‘10s, nonblack liberals of the buzzfeed/upworthy/everyday feminism stripe started using “woke” more or less as a substitute for the previous term “PC”/“politically correct,” which had become a term no one could take seriously anymore. (Edited to add: this is also around when “sj”/“sjw” [social justice/social justice warrior] fades out of popularity as an identification and later as a pejorative.) “Woke” broke containment when the nonblack progressive-leaning social media user speech community started saying/writing it and “woke” got more broadly applied to other oppressions. Most conservatives are responding to the escaped sense.
I think it’s important to acknowledge the middle step because it’s part of a larger phenomenon where AAE words and phrases that have existed since like the 1930s get memeified online, enter the nonblack mainstream, explode, and are then treated like last year’s internet slang by the nonblack mainstream. Remember “no cap”? It’s not online zoomer slang, it’s an idiom that’s been around since before your grandmother learned to talk.
