“Woke” entered common usage alongside “Black Lives Matter” and “critical race theory”. Being “woke” meant being alert to the ways in which racism can be subtle. This was necessarily inextricable from politics, but the extent it became entwined with partisanship was remarkable. After Donald Trump’s inauguration, Fox News began focusing heavily on the purported threat of critical race theory in schools. Over the next 20 months, the phrase “critical race theory” became a catchall phrase for ridiculous stuff. The term “woke” was applied to a broad range of things generally embraced by the left.
