Woke: as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. (source: Wikipedia).

Even if you know what “woke” means, you may still wonder if YOU are woke. And with current events, you may be feeling guilty and confused and wanting to be woke, and not sure how to make it happen.

Deep breath.

The beauty of this idea is the part where it is a “continuing awareness.”

Every day, you wake up and choose to be aware of what is happening in the world, including the past and present injustice. You chose to pause before saying something you may later realize was foolish. You read. You listen. And then you do it again.

Being woke is hard. Before now, white people could forget about racial discrimination for periods of time because it wasn’t happening to us, and it wasn’t making headlines every day.

Now that we have had a collective awakening, we have an opportunity to choose wokeness over ignorance, apathy, or fear.

Where does that leave you? Only you can answer that.

It might start with a conversation, a podcast, or a book, but “woke” isn’t a destination, it’s a journey.

I have felt so many things since the moment I read about George Floyd’s death in the news. I have cried in front of my husband, and then felt guilty for making him, a Black man, hold space for me.

I felt angry at all the white people on social media who were stampeding to do the “right” thing and trying to shame the rest of us into copying them, quickly and publicly. I have felt cowed listening to Black voices educate whites. Sometimes it feels like the only thing white people can do right is to fail.

I felt guilty for being aware of these issues for years but not feeling like I could do anything meaningful about it.

I’ve felt angry, helpless, and full of grief. And I’ve felt incredibly hopeful to be living in a time where we may finally, as a nation and as a world, be ready to right wrongs.

Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been tagging posts #becomingwoke. It’s my way of documenting my own learning and the work I do with the kids, which ends up teaching me as well. I hope you’ll come along with me.