What It Really Means to Be “Woke”

How did this all get so weaponized?

In the first “Saturday Night Live” after the election, “Weekend Update” co-host Michael Che joked that, now that Trump had been elected, Che was going to start listening to R. Kelly again. “Y’all gonna let a man with 34 felonies lead the free world and be the president of the United States? That’s it, I’m listening to R. Kelly again,” Che said.

The next part of the joke, I thought, was better: “I already do, but I’m gonna stop pretending I don’t.”

There has been a general sense, since the election ended, even among many people whose preferred candidate did not win, that Trump’s victory represents the symbolic end of a certain sort of thinking that has, I’d argue unfortunately, come to be known as “woke.” Che’s joke is indicative of this, the idea that, after years of having to watch what one’s said, or what one supports, Trump’s win is proof that such measures didn’t work and now don’t have to be adhered to any longer. I’m reminded of the infamous clandestinely (and illegally) taped 2021 conversation between then-ESPN broadcaster Rachel Nichols and longtime LeBron James advisor Adam Mendelsohn, in which Mendelsohn (who is white) told Nichols (who is also white) that, “I’m exhausted. Between Me Too and Black Lives Matter, I got nothing left.” Mendelsohn later apologized for his…