I have been trying to understand how it came to be that the word “woke” is being used in a derogatory manner. Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, even attributes an infectious quality to “woke” in recently accusing Netflix of being infected by the “woke mind virus.” (In mentioning Elon Musk I am tempted to refer to him as an “American oligarch,” but would that make me “woke”? ).

Apparently some think there ought to be a law against it! (that “woke” thing). Florida Governor DeSantis recently signed into law the "Stop Woke Act" to "give businesses, employees, children and families tools to stand up against discrimination and woke indoctrination.“ Now this really confuses me as I thought being “woke” included being against discrimination.

Perhaps Musk is on to something in calling it a virus. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley thinks so, recently describing being woke as "a virus more dangerous than any pandemic, hands down.”

Let’s go all center for disease control and track down the origins.

It might help to start with the original meaning. In that context, the use of the adjective “woke” in a disparaging or even contemptuous manner makes absolutely no sense. The logical inference being that it is preferable to be unconscious or asleep. It is in the cultural context that the word acquires political meaning and emotional affect. It is therefore necessary to examine historical usage.

The use of the word for political communication originates, like much of our best music, in the Black community. Internet sleuths and researchers find early origins of ‘woke’ in Marcus Garvey’s summons “Wake up Africa!”, his call to Black citizens to become more socially and politically conscious. The phrase “stay woke” turned up as part of a spoken afterword in the 1938 protest song “Scottsboro boys” by blues musician Lead Belly.

The late Harlem author Willam Melvin Kelley used the term in his 1962 New York Times essay “If You’re Woke You Dig It.” Kelley is sometimes credited with invention of the political use of the word, but his article is actually only pointing out a use of the word already taking place at that time. What he should be credited with in the article is the commentary that Black slang is continually reinvented in response to its appropriation by white people.

Before 2014, the call to “stay woke” was not appropriated in the white community. The idea behind it was well understood within Black communities at that point — the notion that staying “woke” was a basic survival tactic. White community usage broadened the meaning, the Oxford English Dictionary now defining it as “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.” USA Today released a poll that found that 56% of Americans said woke means "to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices.Yet 39% of those surveyed agree with the Republican definition, "to be overly politically correct.”

“Politically correct” might be an early variant of the woke virus, and if Elon and Nikki can’t blame the Black community for its origins, it must surely be the Democrats’ fault.

If you’re looking for origins though, it can’t be just Biden. LBJ’s Great Society was very woke, as was John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s New Frontier. You might think that the origin was surely in Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. If you follow the trail of dead presidents, though, the greatest Republican president, Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation proclamation was so woke that it almost tore the country apart.

You may as well go back to the founding fathers, and realize that the United States Constitution is the woke document that underlies it all. The Bill of Rights is woke on steroids.

Apparently the woke virus escaped from a small lab in Philadelphia.

Steven Spellman lives in Noank.