Stay Woke

and be conscious of the world around you

Sixty-two years ago Martin Luther King, Jr. was invited by his mentor Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse College, to address the 1959 graduating class of his alma mater. The title of his address was “Remaining Woke Through a Great Revolution.”  King wanted to make sure that the Morehouse graduates understood the era that they were living in was extraordinary because the civil rights movement and African decolonization occurred together changing a three hundred racialized history with African peoples and black Americans; it was a sea change in world history, he believed. To get the graduates to understand the enormity of the moment he made reference to Washington Irvin’s short story published in 1819 some thirty-six years after the cessation of the American Revolution in 1783. King depicted Irving’s character Rip Van Winkle sleeping for twenty years through the American Revolution.  King describes Van Winkle sleep as almost deadening. When Van Winkle fell asleep “the wall had a picture of King George III of England.” When he awoke there was a “picture of another George, George Washington.” As King tells it, “Rip looking up at the picture of George Washington was completely lost.” He woke up unaware that the United States was no longer “under the domination of the British Empire.” When he awoke “she was a free and independent nation.” King then urged the Morehouse to stay awake because “[t]his world shaking revolution which is engulfing our world is seen in the United States in the transition from a segregated to an integrated society. The social revolution which is taking place in this country is not an isolated, detached phenomenon. It is a part of the world-wide revolution that is taking place.” And this is precisely been the intent of those young people who use the phrase “stay woke.” 

Just imagine if the former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, a person who knew first-hand the experience of terrorism with the bombing of the 16^th Street in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, had been woke enough to advise former President George W. Bush of the racist orientalist consequences of U.S. Cold War foreign policy throughout the Africa and the Middle East. Might Bush sought an alternative to our twenty-year stay in Afghanistan? One wonders why Dr. Rice was not shaken out of her sleep and walked through the bad choices the Bush administration made in Afghanistan?

Imagine all the conservatives who feign outrage at young people for wanting to be aware of how their neighborhoods are economically divested in ways similar to that of African countries who are impoverished as natural resources can be extracted so cheaply.  Shouldn’t these young people wish to be “woke” and know that there is an interconnection between their struggles on the mean streets of Chicago and that of an African teenager in Eastern Congo where cobalt is extracted? Shouldn’t these young people be aware as to why the former mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel hid damning evidence about Laquan MacDonald’s murder? Will his word be his bound to our Japanese allies? Should not young people stay woke and aware that Donald J. Trump before he ever considered running for president called for the death penalty of the Central Park Five without a shred of evidence presented before the courts? Shouldn’t they make a direct correlation between his actions then and how he as president permitted the tear-gassing of Black Lives Matters protesters who peacefully assembled near the White House? And shouldn’t conservatives be chastising their own violent reactionaries for the January 6, 2020 desecration of the capitol in an attempted coup d’état? Or were they asleep like Rip Van Winkle in their house seats as a lynch mob violated the Constitutional order of the United States? Those who criticize the phraseology “stay woke” are doing so because they do not wish to be scrutinized for their political narcolepsy. They distract their constituencies with brazen half-truths using scare tactics. This is not new! Segregationists called Dr. King a communist for trying to make average men and women aware of their human rights. 

“Staying woke” is our effort to understand the interconnections of our global political economy, as well as our nationalistic and individual identity claims. Being woke also means the effort we put in to understand the networks that make up democracy at home and abroad and why they succeed and why they fail. It is essential that we stay woke to matters of climate change, chronic diseases, and lead poisoning throughout older core city neighborhoods where black and brown persons live. It is necessary that we stay woke to the multiple ways people are denied access to necessities of life, labor, and love. Being “woke” is fundamental to being democratic. Dr. King’s charged Morehouse graduates to stay awake because our existence depends on it! He observed:

First, we are challenged to rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. The individual or nation that feels that it can live in isolation has allowed itself to sleep through a revolution. The geographical togetherness of the modern world makes our very existence dependent on co-existence. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. Because of our involvement in humanity, we must be concerned about every human being.

To this, I say,  “stay woke!”*

This piece was originally written in 2021 and revised for Notes from the Black Bottom