About
Why WOKE Values?
Somewhere along the way, “woke” became a punchline.
A word that once meant being awake to injustice became shorthand for everything people were told to dislike.
We think it's time for a different conversation.
WOKE Values isn't about political parties. It isn't about candidates. It isn't here to tell you what to think.
It's here to ask what you actually believe.
Ten values
We don't expect everyone to agree on everything.
We do believe Americans agree on more than our politics would have us believe.
Where the word came from
Dictionaries trace the slang sense of “woke” — being alert to injustice — to African American English, where “stay woke” was a call to stay aware.
The word spread widely online during the 2010s. Over time, critics adopted it as an insult for ideas they considered preachy or extreme.
We're taking it back to the first meaning: awake.
Editor's note: this history is summarized from general dictionary definitions and must be checked against primary sources (e.g. Merriam-Webster, Oxford English Dictionary) before publication.