How to Define ‘Woke’

It isn’t hard at all to define “wokeness.” I did it two years ago. The definition, widely shared online after an exchange with left-wing activist Nina Turner, became a meme.

This canard (“It can’t be done!”) is back in the public eye because one of the more likeable people on the political right, Bethany Mandel, just had a rare bad interview on The Rising, Briahna Joy Gray’s program. Apparently following some harsh off-camera comments about motherhood, Gray asked Mandel — a mother of six — to define the W-word. Mandel, after what were actually a few solid remarks about “hierarchies of oppression,” froze up for perhaps 20 seconds. This led to the usual internet feeding frenzy: Touré, to pick just one pundit at this level, argued that conservatives complaining about wokeness are doing nothing more than engaging in racist “dog-whistling.”