"God of the gaps" is a theological concept that emerged in the 19th century, and revolves around the idea that gaps in scientific understanding are regarded as indications of the existence of God. This perspective has its origins in the observation that some individuals, often with religious
inclinations, point to areas where science falls short in explaining
natural phenomena as opportunities to insert the presence of a divine creator. The term itself was coined in response to this tendency. This theological view suggests that God fills in the gaps left by scientific knowledge, and that these gaps represent moments of divine intervention or influence.
This concept has been met with criticism and debate from various
quarters. Detractors argue that this perspective is problematic as it
seems to rely on gaps in human understanding and ignorance to make its
case for the existence of God. As scientific knowledge continues to
advance, these gaps tend to shrink, potentially weakening the argument
for God's existence. Critics contend that such an approach can undermine
religious beliefs by suggesting that God only operates in the
unexplained areas of our understanding, leaving little room for divine
involvement in a comprehensive and coherent worldview.
The "God of the gaps" perspective has been criticized for its association with logical fallacies. The "God of the gaps" perspective is also a form of confirmation bias,
since it involves interpreting ambiguous evidence (or rather no
evidence) as supporting one's existing attitudes. This type of reasoning
is seen as inherently flawed and does not provide a robust foundation
for religious faith.
In this context, some theologians and scientists have proposed that a
more satisfactory approach is to view evidence of God's actions within
the natural processes themselves, rather than relying on the gaps in
scientific understanding to validate religious beliefs.
Origins of the term
From the 1880s, Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part Two, "On Priests", said that "into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God". The concept, although not the exact wording, goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th-century evangelist lecturer, from his 1893 Lowell Lectures on The Ascent of Man. He chastises those Christians
who point to the things that Science has not explained as presence of
God — "gaps which they will fill up with God" — and urges them to
embrace all nature as God's, as the work of "an immanent
God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the
occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology."
Must we then postulate Divine
intervention? Are we to bring in God to create the first current of
Laplace's nebula or to let off the cosmic firework of Lemaître's
imagination? I confess an unwillingness to bring God in this way upon
the scene. The circumstances which thus seem to demand his presence are
too remote and too obscure to afford me any true satisfaction. Men have
thought to find God at the special creation of their own species, or
active when mind or life first appeared on earth. They have made him God
of the gaps in human knowledge. To me the God of the trigger is as
little satisfying as the God of the gaps. It is because throughout the
physical Universe I find thought and plan and power that behind it I see
God as the creator.
During World War II, the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed the concept in similar terms in letters he wrote while in a Nazi prison. Bonhoeffer wrote, for example:
how wrong it is to use God as a
stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the
frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and
that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them,
and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we
know, not in what we don't know.
There is no 'God of the gaps' to
take over at those strategic places where science fails; and the reason
is that gaps of this sort have the unpreventable habit of shrinking.
and
Either God is in the whole of Nature, with no gaps, or He's not there at all.
Coulson was a mathematics professor at Oxford University as well as a Methodist church leader, often appearing in the religious programs of British Broadcasting Corporation. His book got national attention, was reissued as a paperback, and was reprinted several times, most recently in 1971.
It is claimed that the actual phrase 'God of the gaps' was invented by Coulson.
The term was then used in a 1971 book and a 1978 article, by Richard Bube. He articulated the concept in greater detail in Man come of Age: Bonhoeffer’s Response to the God-of-the-Gaps
(1978). Bube attributed modern crises in religious faith in part to the
inexorable shrinking of the God-of-the-gaps as scientific knowledge
progressed. As humans progressively increased their understanding of
nature, the previous "realm" of God seemed to many persons and religions
to be getting smaller and smaller by comparison. Bube maintained that Darwin's Origin of Species
was the "death knell" of the God-of-the-gaps. Bube also maintained that
the God-of-the-gaps was not the same as the God of the Bible (that is,
he was not making an argument
against God per se, but rather asserting there was a fundamental
problem with the perception of God as existing in the gaps of
present-day knowledge).
General usage
The term "God of the gaps" is sometimes used in describing the incremental retreat of religious explanations of physical phenomena in the face of increasingly comprehensive scientific explanations for those phenomena. Dorothy Dinnerstein
includes psychological explanations for developmental distortions
leading to a person believing in a deity, particularly a male deity.
R. Laird Harris writes of the physical science aspect of this:
The expression, "God of the Gaps," contains a real truth. It is erroneous if it is taken to mean that God is not immanent in natural law
but is only to be observed in mysteries unexplained by law. No
significant Christian group has believed this view. It is true, however,
if it be taken to emphasize that God is not only immanent in natural
law but also is active in the numerous phenomena associated with the
supernatural and the spiritual. There are gaps in a physical-chemical
explanation of this world, and there always will be. Because science has
learned many marvelous secrets of nature, it cannot be concluded that
it can explain all phenomena. Meaning, soul, spirits, and life are
subjects incapable of physical-chemical explanation or formation.
Usage in referring to a type of argument
The term God-of-the-gaps fallacy
can refer to a position that assumes an act of God as the explanation
for an unknown phenomenon, which according to the users of the term, is a
variant of an argument from ignorance fallacy. Such an argument is sometimes reduced to the following form:
There is a gap in understanding of some aspect of the natural world.
Therefore, the cause must be supernatural.
One example of such an argument, which uses God as an explanation of
one of the current gaps in biological science, is as follows:
"Because current science can't figure out exactly how life started, it
must be God who caused life to start." Critics of intelligent design creationism, for example, have accused proponents of using this basic type of argument.
God-of-the-gaps arguments have been discouraged by some
theologians who assert that such arguments tend to relegate God to the
leftovers of science: as scientific knowledge increases, the dominion of
God decreases.
Criticism
The
term was invented as a criticism of people who perceive that God only
acts in the gaps, and who restrict God's activity to such "gaps". It has also been argued that the God-of-the-gaps view is predicated on
the assumption that any event which can be explained by science
automatically excludes God; that if God did not do something via direct
action, that he had no role in it at all.
The "God of the gaps" argument, as traditionally advanced by
scholarly Christians, was intended as a criticism against weak or
tenuous faith, not as a statement against theism or belief in God.
According to John Habgood in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology,
the phrase is generally derogatory, and is inherently a direct
criticism of a tendency to postulate acts of God to explain phenomena
for which science has not (at least at present) given a satisfactory
account. Habgood also states:
It is theologically more satisfactory to look for
evidence of God's actions within natural processes rather than apart
from them, in much the same way that the meaning of a book transcends,
but is not independent of, the paper and ink of which it is comprised.
It has been criticized by both theologians and scientists, who say
that it is a logical fallacy to base belief in God on gaps in scientific
knowledge. In this vein, Richard Dawkins, an atheist, dedicates a chapter of his book The God Delusion to criticism of the God-of-the-gaps argument. He noted that:
Creationists eagerly seek a gap in
present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it
is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful
theologians such as Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances,
and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere
to hide.
Black Twitter is an internet community largely consisting of the Black diaspora of users in the United States and other nations on X (formerly Twitter), focused on issues of interest to the black community. Feminista Jones described it in Salon
as "a collective of active, primarily African-American Twitter users
who have created a virtual community proving adept at bringing about a
wide range of sociopolitical changes." A similar Black Twitter community arose in South Africa in the early 2010s.
User base
According to a 2013 report by the Pew Research Center, 28 percent of African Americans who had used the Internet also used X (then referred to as Twitter), compared to 20 percent of online white, non-Hispanic Americans. By 2018, this gap had shrunk, with 26 percent of all African American adults using Twitter, compared to 24 percent of white adults and 20 percent of Hispanic adults. In addition, in 2013, 11 percent of African-American Twitter users said
they used Twitter at least once a day, compared to 3 percent of white
users. BlackTwitter.com was launched as a news aggregator reflective of black culture in 2020.
User and social media researcher André Brock dates the first published comments on Black Twitter usage to a 2008 piece by blogger Anil Dash, and a 2009 article by Chris Wilson in The Root describing the viral success of Twitter memes
such as #YouKnowYoureBlackWhen and #YouKnowYoureFromQueens that were
primarily aimed at Black Twitter users. Brock cites the first reference
to a Black Twitter community—as "Late Night Black People Twitter" and
"Black People Twitter"—in the November 2009 article "What Were Black
People Talking About on Twitter Last Night?" by Choire Sicha, co-founder of current-affairs website The Awl. Sicha described it as "huge, organic and … seemingly seriously nocturnal"—in fact, active around the clock.
Kyra Gaunt, an early adopter who participated in Black Twitter, who also became a social media
researcher, shared reactions to black users at the first 140 Characters
Conference (#140Conf) that took place on November 17, 2009, at the O2
Indigo in London. Her slide deck offered examples of racist reactions to the topic
#ThatsAfrican that started trending in July 2008. She and other users
claimed the trending topic was censored by the platform. She and other Black Twitter users began blogging and micro-blogging about Black Twitter identity. The blogging led to buzz-worthy media appearances about Twitter. Social media researcher Sarah Florini prefers to discuss the interactions among this community of users as an "enclave."
Brown Twitter birds. Shown top left is the original illustration by Alex Eben Meyer that appeared in the Slate
article, "How Black People Use Twitter". The remaining birds are
parodies by Twitter user @InnyVinny illustrating the diversity of the
Black Twitter community. The resulting #browntwitterbird hashtag game
went viral, as users adopted or suggested new Twitter birds.
An August 2010 article by Farhad Manjoo in Slate, "How Black People Use Twitter," brought the community to wider attention. Manjoo wrote that young black people appeared to use X (then known as
Twitter) in a particular way: "They form tighter clusters on the
network—they follow one another more readily, they retweet each other
more often, and more of their posts are @-replies—posts directed at
other users." Manjoo cited Brendan Meeder of Carnegie Mellon University, who argued that the high level of reciprocity between the many users who initiate hashtags (or "blacktags") leads to a high-density, influential network.
A 2014 dissertation by Meredith Clark
explains that users on Black Twitter began to use hashtags as a way to
attract members of society with similar ideals to a single conversation
in order to interact with each other and feel as though they are engaged
in a “safe space”. Clark characterizes the use of Black Twitter as
critically important to the group, as the conversation helps “cement the
hashtag as a cultural artifact recognizable in the minds of both Black
Twitter participants and individuals with no knowledge of the initial
discussion”. She stated that hashtags have transitioned from serving as a
method of setting up a conversation between separate parties to an
underlying reason behind how users outside Black Twitter learn about the
thoughts and feelings of African Americans in the present world.
Manjoo's article in Slate drew criticism from American and Africana studies
scholar Kimberly C. Ellis. She concluded that large parts of the
article had generalized too much, and published a response to it titled
"Why 'They' Don't Understand What Black People Do On Twitter." Pointing
out the diversity of black people on Twitter, she said, "[I]t's clear
that not only Slate but the rest of mainstream America has no real idea
who Black people are, no real clue about our humanity, in general [...].
For us, Twitter is an electronic medium that allows enough flexibility
for uninhibited and fabricated creativity while exhibiting more of the
strengths of social media
that allow us to build community. [...] Actually, we talk to each other
AND we broadcast a message to the world, hence the popularity of the
Trending Topics and Twitter usage, yes?" Ellis said that the most
appropriate response she had seen to the Slate article was that
by Twitter user @InnyVinny, who made the point that "black people are
not a monolith" and then presented a wide array of brown Twitter bird
drawings on her blog site to express the diverse range of Black Twitter
users; the #browntwitterbird hashtag immediately went viral, as users
adopted or suggested new Twitter birds.
According to Shani O. Hilton
writing in 2013, the defining characteristic of Black Twitter is that
its members "a) are interested in issues of race in the news and pop culture
and b) tweet A LOT." She adds that while the community includes
thousands of black Twitter users, in fact, "not everyone within Black
Twitter is black, and not every black person on Twitter is in Black
Twitter". She also notes that the viral reach and focus of Black
Twitter's hashtags have transformed it from a mere source of
entertainment, and object of outside curiosity, to "a cultural force in
its own right ... Now, black folks on Twitter aren't just influencing
the conversation online, they're creating it."
Apryl Williams and Doris Domoszlai (2013) similarly state, "There
is no single identity or set of characteristics that define Black
Twitter. Like all cultural groups, Black Twitter is dynamic, containing a
variety of viewpoints and identities. We think of Black Twitter as a social construct
created by a self-selecting community of users to describe aspects of
black American society through their use of the Twitter platform. Not
everyone on Black Twitter is black, and not everyone who is black is
represented by Black Twitter."
Feminista Jones has argued that Black Twitter's historical cultural roots are the spirituals, or work songs, sung by enslaved people in the United States, when finding a universal means of communication was essential to survival and grassroots organization.
Several writers see Black Twitter interaction as a form of signifyin', wordplay involving tropes such as irony and hyperbole. André Brock states that the Black Tweeter is the signifier, while the hashtag is the signifier, sign
and signified, "marking ... the concept to be signified, the cultural
context within which the tweet should be understood, and the 'call'
awaiting a response." He writes: "Tweet-as-signifyin', then, can be
understood as a discursive, public performance of Black identity."
Sarah Florini of UW-Madison
also interprets Black Twitter within the context of signifyin'. She
writes that race is normally "deeply tied to corporeal signifiers"; in
the absence of the body, black users display their racial identities
through wordplay and other languages that shows knowledge of black culture. Black Twitter has become an important platform for this performance.
Florini notes that the specific construction of Twitter
contributes to African Americans' ability to signify on Black Twitter.
She contends that "Twitter’s architecture creates participant structures
that accommodate the crucial function of the audience during
signifyin’". By seeing each other's replies and retweets, the user base
can jointly partake in an extended dialogue where each person tries to
participate in the signifyin’. In addition, Florini adds that "Twitter
mimics another key aspect of how signifyin’ games are traditionally
played—speed". Specifically, the retweets and replies are able to be
sent so quickly that it replaces the need for the audience members to
interact in person.
In addition the practices of signifying create a signal that one
is entering a communicative collective space rather than functioning as
an individual. Tweets become part of Black Twitter by responding to the
calls in the tag. Hashtags
embody a performance of blackness through the transmission of racial
knowledge into wordplay. Sarah Florini in particular focuses on how an
active self-identification of blackness rejects notions of a post-racial
society by disrupting the narratives of a color-blind society. This
rejection of a post-racial society gets tied into the collective
practices of performance by turning narratives such as the Republican National Committee's declaration of Rosa Parks ending racism into a moment of critique and ridicule under the guise of a game.
Moments, where the performance of blackness meets social critique, allow
for the spaces of activism to be created. The Republican Party later rescinded its statement to acknowledge that racism was not over.
Manjoo referred to the hashtags the black community uses as "blacktags," citing Baratunde Thurston, then of The Onion, who argued that blacktags are a version of the dozens. Also an example of signifyin', this is a game popular with African
Americans in which participants outdo each other by throwing insults
back and forth ("Yo momma
so bowlegged, she look like a bite out of a donut," "Yo momma sent her
picture to the lonely hearts club, but they sent it back and said, 'We
ain't that lonely!'"). According to Thurston, the brevity of tweets and the instant feedback mean Twitter fits well into the African tradition of call and response.
Black Twitter humor
Humor as a form of social commentary
Many scholars have highlighted how Black Twitter offers a platform for users to share humorous, yet insightful messages.
More recently, Black Twitter spotlighted the "BBQing While Black", incident during which a white woman called police officers on a black family barbecuing in the park. Oakland police arrived; no one was arrested.
When speaking on CNN about her dissent towards former President Donald Trump, CNN commentator Angela Rye stated "[she] will never claim Trump as her bigot president."
Black Twitter and image repair
In their 2018 book, Race, Gender & Image Repair Case Studies in the Early 21st Century,
Mia Moody-Ramirez and Hazel Cole explored how Black Twitter has been
used to repair the image of individuals and corporations using William Benoit's typology of image repair. The popularity of #NiggerNavy provides an example of how social media users used Twitter to call out social injustices. Black Twitter reacted in January 2017 when Yahoo Finance misspelled the word "bigger" with an "n" instead of a "b", in a Twitter link to a story on President-elect Donald Trump's plans to enlarge America's navy, thus unintentionally changing what was meant as a "bigger navy" into a "nigger navy". This is a notable example of an "atomic typo" where a typo is undetected by spell checkers
because the typo happens to be a correctly spelled word. The tweet
containing a racial slur gained more than 1,000 retweets before being
deleted, almost one hour after it was shared. Yahoo
Finance published an apology shortly after, saying it was a "mistake".
It was too late. Black Twitter turned #NiggerNavy into a joke for many
Twitter users.
Black women's experience on Black Twitter
Black Twitter is an intersectional
space, as Black people have intersecting identities that impact how
they engage in spaces. As research shows that college-aged women use
social media more than college-aged men, Black college-aged women also
use social media more than Black-college aged men. Digital spaces like Twitter have been important spaces for students to resist white supremacy. Dr. Marc Lamont Hill has positioned that, Black Twitter. "Is a digital [space] that enable[s] critical pedagogy, political organizing, and both symbolic and material forms of resistance to anti-Black state violence within the United States". It was also mentioned by former CEO Jack Dorsey that Black Twitter is "such a powerful force". Although Black Twitter is used to unite black people in the fight
against white supremacy, it is also a space where Black women face
disproportionate abuse. A study performed by Amnesty International shows that Black women are the most abused group on the platform. The study concludes that Black women are 84 percent more likely to be
targeted than their white counterparts and that they, along with Latinx women, are faced with more abuse on the platform than any other demographic. Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk's
has led to the Black community fear that blocked accounts used for
harassment, abuse, misinformation and violence may be allowed back on
the platform due to Musk's differing viewpoints on free speech, stating
that he will be "very reluctant to delete things".
With Black women spending a lot of time on social media, their resistance to white supremacy and creating counter-narratives
can be seen through hashtags developed like #BlackGirlMagic,
#BlackGirlsMatter, etc. "Social media has become a crucial space for
discussing, dismantling, and organizing against anti-Black racism for
young Black women."
Black Twitter exodus
Due to Elon Musk’s
involvement in Trump’s campaign and ownership of the platform,
accompanying his changes, many Black users have opted to abandon X
(formerly known as Twitter). More than 115,000 accounts deactivated on
the day after the 2024 election,
which was the most dropped accounts in a single day since Musk acquired
the platform. Black users, like many others have been intending to exit
from the app since 2022. This caused a resurgence in ideation to either
find alternatives or join a "Black-owned" social media site similar to
Twitter's experience. Many have opted to join Bluesky, considered Threads or the Black-owned social media site Spill.
Influence
The aftermath of the death of Trayvon Martin brought Black Twitter to wider public attention.
Having been the topic of a 2012 SXSW Interactive panel led by Kimberly Ellis, Black Twitter came to wider public attention in July 2013, when it was
credited with having stopped a book deal between a Seattle literary
agent and one of the jurors in the trial of George Zimmerman.
Zimmerman – who had only been arrested and charged after a large-scale
social media campaign including petitions circulated on Twitter that
attracted millions of signatures – was controversially acquitted that month of charges stemming from the February 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager in Florida. Black Twitter's swift response to the juror's proposed book, spearheaded by Twitter user Genie Lauren, who launched a change.org petition, resulted in coverage on CNN.
The community was also involved in June 2013 in protesting to companies selling products by Paula Deen,
the celebrity chef, after she was accused of racism, reportedly
resulting in the loss of millions of dollars' worth of business. A #paulasbestdishes hashtag game started by writer and humorist Tracy Clayton went viral.
In August 2013, outrage on Black Twitter over a Harriet Tubman "sex parody" video Russell Simmons had posted on his Def Comedy Jam website persuaded him to remove the video; he apologized for his error in judgment.
Another example of Black Twitter's influence occurred in May 2018 after Ambien maker Sanofi Aventis responded to Roseanne Barr, who blamed their sedative for the racist tweet she posted, which resulted in the cancellation of her TV show, Roseanne. Barr explained that she was "ambien tweeting" when she compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to the "spawn" of "Muslim brotherhood & Planet of the Apes." Sanofi responded: "People of all races, religions and nationalities
work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the
world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication." In response to Twitter chatter and criticism, Barr was killed off in Roseanne via an opioid overdose. The show was renamed The Conners.
Demonstrating the continued influence of Black Twitter, a 2019
SXSW Education panel, organized by Kennetta Piper, was selected to
address the topic, "We Tried to Tell Y’all: Black Twitter as a Source!"
Panelists included Meredith Clark, Feminista Jones, Mia Moody-Ramirez and L. Joy Williams.
In 2022, Black Twitter was credited with prompting national media coverage of the killing of Shanquella Robinson, a young American woman who mysteriously died in Mexico.
#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen
The #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen hashtag was created by black feminist blogger/author Mikki Kendall in response to the Twitter comments of male feministHugo Schwyzer, a critique of mainstream feminism as catering to the needs of white women, while the concerns of black feminists are pushed to the side. The hashtag and subsequent conversations have been part of Black
Twitter culture. In Kendall's own words: "#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen
started in a moment of frustration. [...] When I launched the hashtag
#SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, I thought it would largely be a discussion
between people impacted by the latest bout of problematic behavior from
mainstream white feminists.
It was intended to be Twitter shorthand for how often feminists of
color are told that the racism they feel they experience 'isn't a
feminist issue'. The first few tweets reflect the deeply personal impact
of such a long-running structural issue."
#IfTheyGunnedMeDown
After Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson fatally shot unarmed resident Michael Brown, an attorney from Jackson, Mississippi named CJ Lawrence tweeted a photo of himself speaking at his commencement at Tougaloo College with former President Bill Clinton laughing in the background and a second photo of himself holding a bottle of Hennessy
and a microphone. Lawrence posed the question, "If They Gunned me down
which photo would the media use?" The hashtag became the number one
trending topic in the world overnight and was ultimately named the most
influential hashtag of 2014 by Time magazine. This was a direct criticism of the way Black victims of police violence were portrayed in media, with the assassination of their characters as a result of the choices of images used to depict them. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown spread virally in the course of worldwide social media attention paid to the Ferguson crisis.
The hashtag was posted several thousand times in the weeks following
Lawrence's initial use of it. #IfTheyGunnedMeDown is now taught in
universities around the world.Lawrence, the creator, still lectures on #IfTheyGunnedMeDown and has
since established his own media company, Black With No Chaser, to
continue the mission of making sure that Black people control their
narratives.
#MigosSaid
The
call and response aspects of a game where users work to outdo the other
are exemplified in the creation of the blacktag #MigosSaid. Black
Twitter engaged in a public display of using oral traditions
to critique the hierarchy of pop culture. The movement stemmed from an
initial tweet on June 22, 2014, when @Pipe_Tyson tweeted, "Migos best music group since the Beatles."
This sparked an online joke where users began to use the hashtag
#MigosSaid to examine lyrics of the popular rap group. While the game
could widely be seen as a joke it also embodied a critique of popular
representations of black artists. The hashtag made in fun was used to
offer a counter argument to the view the Beatles and other white popular
music figures are more culturally relevant than their black
counterparts.
The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag was created in 2013 by activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi.
They felt that African Americans received unequal treatment from law
enforcement. Alicia Garza describes the hashtag as follows: "Black
Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world
where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for
demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this
society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly
oppression."
#OscarsSoWhite
The #OscarsSoWhite hashtag was originally created in 2015 in response to the 87th Academy Awards'
lack of diversity amongst the nominees in major categories. The hashtag
was used again when the nominations were announced for the 88th Academy Awards the following year. April Reign, activist and former attorney, who is credited with starting the hashtag, tweeted, "It's actually worse than last year. Best Documentary and Best Original Screenplay. That's it.
#OscarsSoWhite." In addition, she mentions that none of the
African-American cast of Straight Outta Compton were recognized, while the Caucasian screenwriter received nominations.
The #SayHerName
hashtag was created in February 2015 as part of a gender-inclusive
racial justice movement. The movement campaigns for black women in the
United States against anti-Black violence and police violence.
Gender-specific ways black women are affected by police brutality and
anti-Black violence are highlighted in this movement, including the
specific impact black queer women and black trans women encounter. The hashtag gained more popularity and the movement gained more momentum following Sandra Bland's
death in police custody in July 2015. This hashtag is commonly used
with #BlackLivesMatter, reinforcing the intersectionality of the
movement.
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody is another hashtag that started trending after Sandra Bland's death.
With the growing tweets following the BLM movement police brutality was
one of the major themes that struck the black culture. Unsure as to the
exact cause of Sandra Bland death the hashtag started as a result. In the tweets, people ask what you would want people to know about you if you died in police custody.
The #ICantBreathe hashtag was created after the police killing of Eric Garner
and the grand jury's decision to not indict Daniel Pantaleo, the police
officer that choked Garner to death, on July 17, 2014. "I can't breathe"
were Garner's final words and can be heard in the video footage of the
arrest that led to his death. The hashtag trended for days and gained
attention beyond Twitter. Basketball players, including LeBron James, wore shirts with the words for warm ups on December 8, 2014. The hashtag saw resurgence in 2020, following the murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed.
The #HandsUpDontShoot hashtag was created after the police shooting of Michael Brown
and the grand jury's decision to not indict Darren Wilson, the white
Ferguson police officer that shot Brown, on November 24, 2015. Witnesses
claimed that Brown had his hands up and was surrendering when Wilson
fatally shot him. However, this information was deemed not credible in
the face of conflicting testimonies and impacted the jury's decision.
What made this particular shooting unique, was that Michael Brown's
deceased body lied in the ground for four hours. Ferguson residents took
to Black Twitter to share images of his body, share the story of
Michael Brown being killed with his hands up, and ultimately the failure
of the state to value his life. As Dr. Marc Lamont Hill puts it, "These
efforts, anchored by the hashtags #MichaelBrown, #Ferguson, and
#HandsUpDontShoot, transformed Brown’s death from a local event to an
international cause." Hands up, don't shoot is a slogan used by the Black Lives Matter movement and was used during protests after the ruling. The slogan was supported by members of the St. Louis Rams football team, who entered the field during a National Football League
game holding their hands up. Using the hashtag on Twitter was a form of
showing solidarity with those protesting, show opposition to the
decision, and bring attention to police brutality. The #HandsUpDontShoot hashtag was immediately satirized with #PantsUpDontLoot when peaceful protests turned into riotous looting and firebombing that same evening.
Black Twitter has also been used as a method of praise.
According to Ayanna Harrison, the hashtag #BlackBoyJoy first
appeared as a "natural and necessary counterpart to the more established
#BlackGirlMagic". The hashtag #BlackBoyJoy appeared following the 2016 Video Music Awards ceremony, after Chance the Rapper tweeted an image of himself on the red carpet using the hashtag.
#StayMadAbby
In 2015, #StayMadAbby surfaced on Black Twitter as Black students and college graduates rallied against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
after he made comments about their supposed inability to graduate from
universities he labeled "too fast". Scalia's comments came in 2015
during oral arguments for the affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas. The suit, filed by one-time prospective student Abigail Fisher, alleged that she was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin because she was white, and that other, less qualified candidates were admitted because of their race.
The hashtag #StayMadAbby took off with hundreds of Black graduates tweeting photos of themselves clad in caps and gowns,
as well as statistics pointedly noting that Black students only account
for a small share of the UT Austin student body. The hashtag
#BeckyWithTheBadGrades also emerged to spotlight Fisher. The hashtag
referred both to Fisher and to a lyric from Beyoncé's song "Sorry".
Recent Developments (2022–Present)
Author: Andreas Eldh
Black Twitter is a group of users on Twitter (now X) who are members
of the Black community and gather together online to talk about,
critique, and celebrate various aspects related to being Black and/or
living within the Black culture. This particular community heavily
influences how we communicate online, including how we create and share
memes, as well as affecting globalization and promoting equitable
treatment across different communities.
In late 2022, Elon Musk acquired Twitter. Following this
acquisition, several users of Black Twitter voiced their concerns
regarding the future of the site. As a result of ongoing issues such as a
lack of content moderation, a decrease in the number of verified
accounts, and increased risk for harassment, several users of the Black
Twitter community began searching for alternative platforms or creating
new accounts on platforms such as Threads, Spill, and Bluesky.
Although still significant today, the presence of Black Twitter
will continue as part of an ever-changing trend in digital culture.
Additionally, memes, comedy, and words generated from within this
community are shaping the way the world communicates and has fun using
the internet, with various media outlets showcasing examples of how the
creativity of people in the Black community has continued to be
cultivated through the emergence of digital platforms.
The development of Black Twitter began in the early 2010s when
Twitter users began connecting as a way to share comedic and cultural
comments on topics in society. Examples of how the user base for Black
Twitter created hashtags included #BlackLivesMatter, #OscarsSoWhite, and
#IfTheyGunnedMeDown, all representative of Black Twitter's ability to
utilize online interaction to address and bring awareness to the issue
of racial injustice and to create discourse regarding this injustice.
Migration and Community Development
While
many users have left X, some have retained the humor, creativity, and
the communally spirited nature of Black Twitter. Furthermore, Black
media outlets suggest that creators and entrepreneurs are using their
departures from X as an opportunity to pivot and create digital spaces
that grow and thrive with community investment, and to ultimately take
ownership of the digital space.
Cultural Impact of Black Twitter
Black
Twitter remains a conduit of contemporary culture, with its memes,
constructs, and conversations migrating to television, film, and news.
The fact that a community can leverage humor and activism to inspire and
foster change in political and cultural developments highlights the
necessity of 21st-century Black digital expression.
Reception
Jonathan Pitts-Wiley, a former writer for The Root, cautioned in 2010 that Black Twitter was just a slice of contemporary African-American culture.
"For people who aren't on the inside," he wrote, "it's sort of an
inside look at a slice of the black American modes of thought. I want to
be particular about that—it's just a slice of it. Unfortunately, it may
be a slice that confirms what many people already think they know about
black culture."
Daniella Gibbs Leger, wrote in a 2013 HuffPost Black Voices article that "Black Twitter is a real thing. It is often hilarious (as with the Paula Deen recipes hashtag); sometimes that humor comes with a bit of a sting (see any hashtag related to Don Lemon)."
Referring to the controversy over the Tubman video, she concluded, "1.
Don't mess with Black Twitter because it will come for you. 2. If you're
about to post a really offensive joke, take 10 minutes and really think
about it. 3. There are some really funny and clever people out there on
Twitter. And 4. See number 1."
Criticism
Labeling
While
Black Twitter is used as a way to communicate within the black
community, many people outside and within that community do not
understand the need to label it. With regard to this concern, Meredith
Clark, a professor at the University of North Texas who studies black online communities, recalls one user's remarks, "Black Twitter is just Twitter".
Intersectionality
Additional criticism of Black Twitter is the lack of intersectionality. One example is the tweets made after rapper Tyga was pictured with the transgender porn actress Mia Isabella. Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, explained the importance of intersectionality and makes it one of the priorities in the movement. She wrote that many
people find certain "charismatic black men" more appealing, which
leaves "sisters, queers, trans, and disabled [black] folk [to] take up roles in the background."
South Africa
Kenichi Serino wrote in 2013 in The Christian Science Monitor
that South Africa was experiencing a similar Black Twitter phenomenon,
with black discourse on Twitter becoming increasingly influential. In a country that has 11 official languages, Black Twitter users regularly embedded words from isiZulu, isiXhosa, and Sesotho in their tweets. In August 2016 there were approximately 7.7 million South Africans on
Twitter – by August 2017, this grew to about eight million users, with
63.8% of South Africans being online. But according to journalism lecturer Unathi Kondile, black people had
taken to Twitter as "a free online platform where black voices can
assert themselves and their views without editors or publishers deciding
if their views matter."
#FeesMustFall
#FeesMustFall
was the most significant hashtag in South African Black Twitter. It
started with a student-led protest movement that began in mid October
2015 in response to an increase in fees at South African universities.
The protests also called for higher wages for low earning university
staff who worked for private contractors such as cleaning services and campus security and for them to be employed directly by universities.
#MenAreTrash
The
#MenAreTrash hashtag was another prominent topic in 2017 on South
African Twitter. Black women took to the social media platform to
address numerous issues such as rape, patriarchy and domestic violence.
Trending almost on a daily basis in South Africa is the
#OperationDudula hashtag. The hashtag is used to rally people against
immigration. According to journalist Pumza Fihlani, the movement behind
the hashtag was founded by Nhlanhla "Lux" Dlamini, and became prominent in 2021.
By 2019, the term was widely being used sarcastically as a pejorative by the political right and some centrists, to disparage leftist and progressive movements as superficial and insincere performative activism. The terms woke-washing and woke capitalism
later emerged to criticize businesses and brands who use politically
progressive messaging for financial gain. In the mid-2020s, a number of
political commentators also announced the appearance of a "woke right",
meaning supporters of right-wing views using cancel culture and similar tactics used by left-wing activists to enforce conservative beliefs.
Origins and usage
Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one glorious end of a free, redeemed and mighty nation. —Marcus Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions (1923)
In some varieties of African-American English, woke is used in place of woken, the usual past participle form of wake. This has led to the use of woke as an adjective equivalent to awake, which has become mainstream in the United States.
While it is not known when being awake was first used as a
metaphor for political engagement and activism, one early example in the
United States was the paramilitary youth organization the Wide Awakes, which formed in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1860 to support the Republican candidate in the 1860 presidential election, Abraham Lincoln.
Local chapters of the group spread rapidly across northern cities in
the ensuing months and "triggered massive popular enthusiasm" around the
election. The political militancy of the group also alarmed many
southerners, who saw in the Wide Awakes confirmation of their fears of
northern, Republican political aggression. The support among the Wide
Awakes for abolition,
as well as the participation of a number of black men in a Wide Awakes
parade in Massachusetts, likely contributed to such anxiety.
20th century
Folk singer-songwriter Lead Belly used the phrase "stay woke" on a 1938 recording of his song "Scottsboro Boys"
One of the earliest uses of the idea of wokeness as a concept for black political consciousness came from Jamaican philosopher and social activist Marcus Garvey, who wrote in 1923, "Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!" In a collection of aphorisms published that year, Garvey expanded the
metaphor: "Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one
glorious end of a free, redeemed and mighty nation. Let Africa be a
bright star among the constellation of nations." This sentiment was later echoed by singer Lauryn Hill during her 2002 live album MTV Unplugged No. 2.0, where she urged listeners to "wake up and rebel".
Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly,
used the phrase "stay woke" as part of a spoken afterword to a 1938
recording of his song "Scottsboro Boys", which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women
in Alabama in 1931. In the recording, Lead Belly says he met with the
defendant's lawyer and the young men themselves, and "I advise
everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there (Scottsboro) – best stay woke, keep their eyes open." Aja Romano writes at Vox
that this usage reflects "black Americans' need to be aware of racially
motivated threats and the potential dangers of white America."
By the mid-20th century, woke had come to mean 'well-informed' or 'aware', especially in a political or cultural sense. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the earliest such usage to a 1962 New York Times Magazine article titled "If You're Woke You Dig It" by African-American novelist William Melvin Kelley, describing the appropriation of black slang by white beatniks.
Woke had gained more political connotations by 1971 when the play Garvey Lives! by Barry Beckham
included the line: "I been sleeping all my life. And now that Mr.
Garvey done woke me up, I'm gon' stay woke. And I'm gon help him wake up
other black folk."
2008–2014: #Staywoke hashtag
Through the late 2000s and early 2010s, woke was used either as a term for literal wakefulness, or as slang for suspicions of infidelity. The latter meaning was used in singer Childish Gambino's 2016 song "Redbone". In the 21st century's first decade, the use of woke encompassed the earlier meaning with an added sense of being "alert to social and/or racial discrimination and injustice".
"Master Teacher", a 2008 song by the American singer Erykah Badu (pictured in 2012), included the term stay woke.
This usage was popularized by soul singer Erykah Badu's 2008 song "Master Teacher", via the song's refrain, "I stay woke". Merriam-Webster defines the expression stay woke
in Badu's song as meaning, "self-aware, questioning the dominant
paradigm and striving for something better"; and, although within the
context of the song, it did not yet have a specific connection to
justice issues, Merriam-Webster credits the phrase's use in the song
with its later connection to these issues.
Songwriter Georgia Anne Muldrow, who composed "Master Teacher" in 2005, told Okayplayer news and culture editor Elijah Watson that while she was studying jazz at New York University, she learned the invocation Stay woke from Harlem alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin,
who used the expression in the meaning of trying to "stay woke" because
of tiredness or boredom, "talking about how she was trying to stay up –
like literally not pass out". In homage, Muldrow wrote stay woke
in marker on a T-shirt, which over time became suggestive of engaging
in the process of the search for herself (as distinct from, for example,
merely personal productivity).
"#StayWoke" hashtag on a placard during a December 2015 protest in Minneapolis
According to The Economist, as the term woke and the #Staywoke hashtag began to spread online, the term "began to signify a progressive outlook on a host of issues as well as on race". In a tweet mentioning the Russian feminist rock group Pussy Riot, whose members were imprisoned in 2012, Badu wrote: "Truth requires no belief. Stay woke. Watch closely. #FreePussyRiot". This has been cited by Know Your Meme as one of the first examples of the #Staywoke hashtag.
2014–2015: Black Lives Matter
A 2015 protest in St. Paul by Black Lives Matter supporters against police brutality
Following the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, the phrase stay woke was used by activists of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement to urge awareness of police abuses. The BET documentary Stay Woke, which covered the movement, aired in May 2016. Within the decade of the 2010s, the word woke (the colloquial, passively voiced past participle of wake) obtained the meaning 'politically and socially aware' among BLM activists.
2015–2019: Broadening usage
While the term woke initially pertained to issues of racial
prejudice and discrimination impacting African Americans, it came to be
used by other activist groups with different causes. While there is no single agreed-upon definition of the term, it came to
be primarily associated with ideas that involve identity and race and
which are promoted by progressives, such as the notion of white privilege or slavery reparations for African Americans. According to communication studies scholar Gordana Lazić, woke refers to "a heightened awareness of social inequalities and injustices". Vox's Aja Romano writes that woke evolved into a "single-word summation of leftist political ideology, centered on social justice politics and critical race theory". Columnist David Brooks
wrote in 2017 that "to be woke is to be radically aware and justifiably
paranoid. It is to be cognizant of the rot pervading the power
structures." Sociologist Marcyliena Morgan contrasts woke with cool
in the context of maintaining dignity in the face of social injustice:
"While coolness is empty of meaning and interpretation and displays no
particular consciousness, woke is explicit and direct regarding
injustice, racism, sexism, etc."
The term woke became increasingly common on Black Twitter, the community of African American users of the social media platform Twitter. André Brock, a professor of black digital studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology, suggested that the term proved popular on Twitter because its brevity suited the platform's 140-character limit. According to Charles Pulliam-Moore, the term began crossing over into general internet usage as early as 2015. The phrase stay woke became an Internet meme,[16] with searches for woke on Google surging in 2015.
The term has gained popularity amid an increasing leftward turn on various issues among the American Left; this has partly been a reaction to the right-wing politics of U.S. President Donald Trump,
who was elected in 2016, but also to a growing awareness regarding the
extent of historical discrimination faced by African Americans. According to Perry Bacon Jr., ideas that have come to be associated with "wokeness" include a rejection of American exceptionalism; a belief that the United States has never been a true democracy; that people of color suffer from systemic and institutional racism; that white Americans experience white privilege;
that African Americans deserve reparations for slavery and
post-enslavement discrimination; that disparities among racial groups,
for instance in certain professions or industries, are automatic
evidence of discrimination; that U.S. law enforcement agencies are
designed to discriminate against people of color and so should be defunded, disbanded, or heavily reformed; that women suffer from systemic sexism; that individuals should be able to identify with any gender or none; that U.S. capitalism
is deeply flawed; and that Trump's election to the presidency was not
an aberration but a reflection of the prejudices about people of color
held by large parts of the U.S. population. Although increasingly accepted across much of the American Left, many
of these ideas were nevertheless unpopular among the U.S. population as a
whole and among other, especially more centrist, parts of the Democratic Party.
Placard criticising media mogul Rupert Murdoch at an environmentalist protest in Melbourne, Australia in 2020
The term increasingly came to be identified with millennials and members of Generation Z. Les Echos lists woke among several terms adopted by Generation Z that indicate "a societal turning point" in France. In May 2016, MTV News identified woke as being among ten words teenagers "should know in 2016". The American Dialect Society voted woke the slang word of the year in 2017. In the same year, the term was included as an entry in Oxford English Dictionary. By 2019, the term woke was increasingly being used in an ironic sense, as reflected in the books Woke by comedian Andrew Doyle (using the pen name Titania McGrath) and Anti-Woke by columnist Brendan O'Neill.[40] By 2022, usage of the term had spread beyond the United States, attracting criticism by right-wing political figures in Europe.
2019–present: emergence of pejorative use
By 2019, opponents of progressive social movements were using the term mockingly or sarcastically, implying that "wokeness" was an insincere form of performative activism. Woke has been used ironically by the right wing to ridicule perceived left-wing "social justice warriors" and "snowflakes", in connection with mockery of Millennials and Gen Z. Author Sergio C. Fanjul [es] writes that some leftists, such as writer Daniel Bernabé [es] and philosopher Susan Neiman, criticize wokeness as a form of tribalism which divides the working class and distracts from the universalist class struggle. The term performative wokeness has been used to refer to social media activity perceived as a self-serving and superficial form of activism, i.e. "slacktivism". British journalist Steven Poole comments that the term woke is used to mock "overrighteous liberalism". This pejorative sense of woke means "following an intolerant and moralising ideology" according to The Economist.
Americas
Canada
As in the United States, the term woke is used by those on the
political right wing in Canada to discredit individuals and policies
they consider to be overly progressive. During a debate in 2023 on the Law Society of Alberta's 2020 adoption of a rule which made certain Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training courses on Indigenous Canadian history obligatory, a lawyer from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms wrote an op-ed arguing that the course was a form of "wokeness" in the 2025 Canada federal election, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievreweaponized the term in his campaign, characterizing "social justice advocacy as an authoritarian threat".
Latin America
Brazilian federal deputy Kim Kataguiri has accused the government under president Lula da Silva of promoting a "woke agenda" with a proposal to tax streaming services and social media
networks while requiring a certain amount of content to come from
Brazilian companies with 51% of capital and shareholders belonging to
"identity groups".
United States
Among American conservatives and centrists, woke has come to be used primarily as an insult.Members of the Republican Party have been increasingly using the term to criticize members of the Democratic Party,
while more centrist Democrats use it against more left-leaning members
of their own party; such critics accuse those on their left of using cancel culture to damage the employment prospects of those who are not considered sufficiently woke. Perry Bacon Jr. suggests that this "anti-woke posture" is connected to a long-standing promotion of backlash
politics by the Republican Party, wherein it promotes white and
conservative fear in response to activism by African Americans as well
as changing cultural norms. Such critics often believe that movements such as Black Lives Matter exaggerate the extent of social problems.
Among the uses by Republicans is the Stop WOKE Act,
a law that limits discussion of racism in Florida schools. A program of
eliminating books by LGBT and black authors from schools was conducted
by the Florida government and by vigilantes calling themselves "woke busters". Florida governor and former presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has frequently used the term, referring to his state as a place "where woke goes to die".
Linguist and social critic John McWhorter argues that the history of woke is similar to that of politically correct,
another term once used self-descriptively by the left which was
appropriated by the right as an insult, in a process similar to the euphemism treadmill. Romano compares woke to canceled as a term for "'political correctness' gone awry" among the American right wing. Attacking the idea of wokeness, along with other ideas such as cancel culture and critical race theory, became a large part of Republican Party electoral strategy. Beginning in the first presidency of Donald Trump, commentators from the alt-right, religious right, moderate liberals, and libertarians have attacked "woke" ideas and the "woke mind virus", a phrase popularized by Elon Musk, as existential threats to American society. Trump stated in 2021 that the Biden administration was "destroying" the country "with woke", and Republican Missouri senator Josh Hawley used the term to promote his upcoming book by saying the "woke mob" was trying to suppress it. According to USA Today, the term woke has been "co-opted by GOP activists".
"Woke right"
By 2025, conservative commentators such as Rod Dreher and James A. Lindsay had begun using the term "woke right" to characterize far-right beliefs as a mirror of the far left. Political commentator Jonathan Chait has described paleoconservative commentator Pat Buchanan, who criticized the liberalism of the Obama era in a way that prefigured Trumpism, as the "godfather" of the "woke right". Linguist John McWhorter writes that semantic broadening
of the term "woke" resulted in a shift in its meaning to "a
conspiracy-focused and punitive orientation to social change",
regardless of left–right orientation. The term "woke right" has also been used by pro-Israel sources to describe American conservatives who became increasingly critical of Israel during the Gaza war.
Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk,
right-wing activists and the U.S. government undertook a wide-reaching
campaign to punish critics of Kirk for allegedly celebrating his death
that soon turned into policing any criticism of Kirk or his ideology. Author Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution has characterized it as a "woke right" campaign paralleling earlier efforts to suppress right-wing speech on college campuses.
Asia
India
In India, the term is used as a pejorative by Hindutva activists and Hindu nationalists
to refer to the critics of the Hindu nationalist ideology who are
deemed as anti-Hindu by the Hindu nationalist organizations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.The term is also synonymous with leftism in news headlines[70] and is commonly used in social media circles by critics of secularism in India.
Europe
Central Europe
In Hungary, politician Balázs Orbán stated that "we [Hungary] will not give up fighting against woke ideology".
In Switzerland, members of the youth wing of the right-wing populist Swiss People's Party have criticized Swiss bank UBS for its diversity policies, calling them "woke".
France
The phenomenon le wokisme (sometimes translated 'wokeism') has also been used in French politics to criticize anti-racist movements and leftist scholarship, particularly since the 2022 French presidential election. Much of the opposition to le wokisme sees it as an American import, incompatible with French values. Mohamed Amer Meziane reported that then-education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer,
organized a conference at which he argued "woke" ideology "plots
against the greatness of a white European civilization" and is therefore
an "anti-Republican political religion". Blanquer established an "anti-woke think tank" in opposition to what is perceived as an export from the English-speaking world. This view also includes a conspiracy theory connecting "wokism" with
pre-existing right-wing conspiracy theories of "Islamo-leftism",
suggesting that leftists are manipulated by Islamists to replace European white-Christian civilization
with Islam. In this context, "woke" is used pejoratively to describe
progressive, anti-colonial, and anti-racist positions that are seen as
incompatible with traditional French values.
According to French sociologist and political scientist Alain Policar, woke originated from African American communities to describe awareness of social injustices
and has been used pejoratively by French politicians from the former
republican left, the right and the far right to label individuals
engaged in anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQ, and environmental movements. This derogatory usage gave rise to the noun wokisme, suggesting a homogeneous political movement propagating an alleged woke ideology.
French philosopher Pierre-Henri Tavoillot characterizes wokeism as a corpus of theories revolving around "identity, gender and race", with the core principle of "revealing and condemning concealed forms of domination",
positing that all aspects of society can be reduced to a "dynamic of
oppressor and oppressed", with those oblivious to this notion deemed "complicit", while the "awakened (woke)"
advocate for the "abolition (cancel) of anything perceived to sustain
such oppression", resulting in practical implementations such as
adopting inclusive language, reconfiguring education or deconstructing gender norms.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, anti-wokeness discourse is driven primarily by Conservative Party politicians and right-wing media outlets. Conservative papers such as The Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail commonly publish articles critical of what they deem to be woke. The Mail on Sunday publishes an annual "Woke List" criticising public figures for perceived "virtue signalling". The right-wing television channel GB News was proclaimed at its founding to be explicitly anti-woke. Its onetime chairman Andrew Neil has presented a regular segment on the channel entitled "Wokewatch", which aims to be a counter-voice to "woke warriors".
The term woke is often used as a pejorative by conservative figures. During the run-up to the 2024 general election, the governing Conservative Party attracted criticism for attempting to create a culture war based on the woke concept. While promoting her book The Abuse of Power in 2023, former Conservative prime minister Theresa May declared herself to be woke, in the sense of "somebody who recognizes that discrimination takes place".
In a survey by YouGov,
73% of Britons who used the term said they did so in a disapproving
way, 11% in an approving way and 14% neither used it in an approving or
disapproving way. Columnist Zoe Williams writes in The Guardian that public discourse around cycling
has become "the perfect microcosm of the wokeness split in all its
forms", with anti-cycling voices portraying cyclists as a "lunatic
fringe".
In March 2025, Peters declared a "war on woke" during his "State of the Nation" speech, taking aim at DEI, sexual education programs at schools, and "Cultural Marxism".
Reception and legacy
Scholars Michael B. McCormack and Althea Legal-Miller argue that the phrase stay woke echoes Martin Luther King Jr.'s exhortation "to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change".
Writer and activist Chloé Valdary
has stated that the concept of being woke is a "double-edged sword"
that can "alert people to systemic injustice" while also being "an
aggressive, performative take on progressive politics that only makes
things worse". Social-justice scholars Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith, in their 2019 book Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter,
argue against what they term as "Woker-than-Thou-itis: Striving to be
educated around issues of social justice is laudable and moral, but
striving to be recognized by others as a woke individual is self-serving
and misguided." Essayist Maya Binyam, writing in The Awl,
ironized about a seeming contest among players who "name racism when it
appears" or who disparage "folk who are lagging behind".
Linguist Ben Zimmer
writes that, with mainstream currency, the term's "original grounding
in African-American political consciousness has been obscured". The Economist
states that as the term came to be used more to describe white people
active on social media, black activists "criticised the performatively
woke for being more concerned with internet point-scoring than systemic
change". Journalist Amanda Hess says social media accelerated the word's cultural appropriation, writing, "The conundrum is built in. When white people aspire to get
points for consciousness, they walk right into the cross hairs between
allyship and appropriation." Hess describes woke
as "the inverse of 'politically correct' ... It means wanting to be
considered correct, and wanting everyone to know just how correct you
are".
In 2021, the British filmmaker and DJ Don Letts
suggested that "in a world so woke you can't make a joke", it was
difficult for young artists to make protest music without being accused
of cultural appropriation.
The term woke capitalism was coined by writer Ross Douthat for brands that used politically progressive messaging as a substitute for genuine reform. According to The Economist,
examples of "woke capitalism" include advertising campaigns designed to
appeal to millennials, who often hold more socially liberal views than
earlier generations. Abas Mirzaei, a senior lecturer in branding at Macquarie University,
says brands "without a clear moral purpose" who use social-justice
messages in advertising have been increasingly perceived as inauthentic,
damaging the concept of wokeness and spawning the meme "get woke, go broke".
Cultural scientists Akane Kanai and Rosalind Gill
describe "woke capitalism" as the "dramatically intensifying" trend to
include historically marginalized groups (currently primarily in terms
of race, gender, and religion) as mascots in advertisement with a message of empowerment
to signal progressive values. On the one hand, Kanai and Gill argue
that this creates an individualized and depoliticized idea of social
justice, reducing it to an increase in self-confidence; on the other
hand, the omnipresent visibility in advertising can also amplify a backlash
against the equality of precisely these minorities. These would become
mascots not only of the companies using them, but of the unchallenged neoliberal
economic system with its socially unjust order itself. For the
economically weak, the equality of these minorities would thus become
indispensable to the maintenance of this economic system; the minorities
would be seen responsible for the losses of this system.
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