How Wokeness Turned a Fight for Justice Into a Weapon of Division

 

The woke movement pretends to fight racism while creating the very divisions it claims to oppose. In the name of equality, wokeness has replaced merit with mediocrity, forcing diversity over competence.

Wokeness—what a punchline it’s become! Once a symbol of staying alert to injustices, it has now morphed into a joke as it clings to the final threads of relevancy. The influence of wokeness is fading, and that’s a development worth celebrating. Why? Because in all its loud proclamations and ideological gymnastics, wokeness achieved nothing truly good. Like a hollow mantra chanted by the self-righteous, it made more noise than progress. Its decline signals the end of a toxic wave that divided society rather than healed it.

Let’s travel back in time to one of the earliest uses of the term. In 1938, blues legend Lead Belly warned black Americans to “stay woke” when traveling through the South, referencing the infamous Scottsboro Boys case where nine black teenagers were falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931. The warning was simple: be vigilant, or you’ll be swept into a world of unjust accusation. Now, even the most rabid anti-woke crusader could admit Lead Belly had a valid point. But here’s the twist: the wokeness of today has gone from a reasonable call for alertness to an extreme, rigid ideology that sees society through a narrow, unforgiving lens.

The wokeness that has infected discourse in the past decade is not about progress or vigilance against unfair systems—it’s about tearing down anything that doesn’t fit its puritanical worldview. Today’s woke activists focus less on concrete solutions and more on public shaming and virtue signaling, like the Puritans of old hunting for heretics. It’s not about fixing problems; it’s about condemning attitudes, especially those of others. A quick glance at how wokeness took hold shows that it doesn’t improve society—it fractures it.

Take the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election in 2016. His victory sent shockwaves through the political landscape and was like a shot of adrenaline to the woke movement. The American left—reeling from the loss—leaned into the idea that the country was irredeemably racist and sexist. The optimism of progress gave way to a deeply pessimistic belief that America was a broken system, rigged against minorities. And thus, the woke revolution was born, infecting not just sociology departments, but seeping into corporate boardrooms, media platforms, and universities across the country.

Let’s talk numbers. The peak of wokeness arrived in 2021. Gallup reported that 48% of Americans were worried about race relations that year—up from 17% in 2014. The term “white privilege,” which had been thrown around the media like confetti at a parade, appeared 2.5 times for every million words in The New York Times in 2020. But here’s the kicker: by 2022, it was only mentioned 0.4 times per million words. Wokeness, it seems, was running out of steam. And it’s no coincidence that this decline began shortly after the murder of George Floyd, an event that many believe catapulted woke ideology into mainstream culture. But in reality, the seeds had already been planted back in 2015, during Trump’s presidential run.

The irony of the woke movement is that it claims to fight for equality but often achieves the opposite. When the left embraced illiberal tactics like censorship, cancel culture, and racial quotas disguised as “positive discrimination,” they didn’t create unity—they created division. It’s hard to ignore the backlash this created, even among their own ranks. Many liberals, terrified of being labeled “racist” or “sexist,” stood by as universities shut down controversial speakers and companies rewarded managers for meeting diversity quotas rather than focusing on merit. And while these corporations paid lip service to the woke agenda, the American public grew increasingly frustrated with the nonsense.

Even the Democratic Party—supposed champions of woke ideals—realized they were playing with fire. Relying on a multiracial coalition to win elections, they saw that pushing woke policies could alienate large swaths of voters. In fact, Kamala Harris’ speech in Chicago recently included a line about “the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth—the privilege and pride of being an American.” Five years ago, it would have been political suicide for a top Democrat to express any sort of patriotism. But even Harris, who once rode the woke wave, now sees the need to dial it back. Why? Because Americans are tired of being told their country is irredeemably evil.

Sure, woke activists can claim they’ve pushed some progress forward—after all, corporate diversity programs still exist, and universities continue to preach against “hateful rhetoric.” But what good has all this truly done? Have racial tensions eased? Hardly. The woke movement has left us more polarized than ever, forcing race and sex into an endless loop of identity politics where compromise is impossible.

There’s an old African proverb that says, “He who is being carried does not realize how far the town is.” The woke movement, in its endless march to find villains and oppressors, failed to see how far it strayed from its original purpose. It once sought justice but now feeds on division. The backlash is growing, led by conservatives and liberals alike who are exhausted by the performative, sanctimonious nature of wokeness. They see through the charade, and the culture that once bent to the will of the woke mob is beginning to snap back. It’s not just the right that’s tired of being lectured to—ordinary people are sick of it too.

As the influence of wokeness wanes, what have we really lost? Certainly not progress—true change happens through dialogue, cooperation, and concrete policies, not through self-righteous posturing. The hope now is that we can return to discussing issues like race and gender as matters of public policy, where compromise is possible, rather than of identity, where it is not.

And so, the woke revolution sputters toward its end, having achieved little more than louder echo chambers and the cancellation of free thought. It is as if the woke warriors spent their time climbing a mountain only to find it was a molehill all along. Perhaps the next time someone warns us to “stay woke,” we’ll be wise enough to just take a nap instead.