To probably nobody’s surprise, most people in the United States see “woke” as a positive, according to a new USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll released in early March.

Specifically, 56 perent of those surveyed say the term means “to be informed, educated on and aware of social injustice.” That includes not only three-fourths of Democrats, but also more than a third of Republicans, USA TODAY reported.

The story also stated, “Overall, 39 percent say instead that the word reflects what has become the GOP political definition, ‘to be overtly politically correct and police others’ words.’ That’s the view of of 56 percent of Republicans.”

If one goes by the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s definition, “woke” means “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).”

The origins of woke, in this context — as forged by African-American communities — dates back at least to the 1960s, but its mainstream ubiquity is a recent development. 

Fuelled by black musicians, social media and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, the term entered the Oxford English Dictionary only in 2017, by which time it had become as much a fashionable buzzword as a set of values. .

Rather than rejecting the concept of wokeness outright, today’s detractors often claim — and we heartily agree — that, at least in the real world, the word “woke” is a signifier of pretentiousness and “cultural elitism.” 

Wokeness, as we see it, cares less about the skill, talent, and originality of creative practitioners, and cares more about their race, gender and other such identifiers.

Surely, Rony Dolgin, a then-editorial editor for The Harvard Crimson student newspaper, nailed it with the final paragraph of his op-ed piece in 2018 as follows:

“So, I don’t want to be woke. I don’t want to restrict my definition of activism and intelligence to only include those who agree with me politically. I want to be open-minded and engaged. I want to be informed and passionate. I want to be an advocate and a human being beyond political issues. Maybe we can broaden the definition of ‘woke’ to include these characteristics from both sides of the political spectrum, but until then I remain contently un-woke.”

Even better, tech enrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate, said at Vision ‘24 on March 18 in North Charleston, S.C.,  that there is “an opportunity for the conservative movement to rise to the occasion and fill that void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep that it dilutes this woke poison to irrelevance.” 

At Vision’24, “much of the focus was on the pushback by some across the U.S. against what they perceive as affronts to conservative ways of life by efforts characterized as ‘woke,’” The Associated Press reported. And that is terrific news!