Deriving from "stay awake," to stay woke is to keep informed of the shitstorm going on around you in times of turmoil and conflict, specifically on occasions when the media is being heavily filtered- such as the events in Ferguson Missouri in August 2014.
The headlines say they looted McDonald's, but they won't tell you about the tear gas the police threw at the crowds, or the fact that they needed the milk from the McDonald's to treat the effects of it. Stay woke.
by pazwell August 20, 2014
Wake up from the bullshit you're speaking. Say this when someone is obviously talking out of their ass.
5'2" white guy: I swear I've been in the gym getting ready for the NBA Draft!
Person in touch with reality: Stay woke lil nigga. You ain't shit
Person in touch with reality: Stay woke lil nigga. You ain't shit
by Trizzy @Tre February 18, 2015
Stay woke means to understand the real world and to look everything and think twice because things can change in a second, to look deep and know what to permanently take something into your life, to know everything that’s fake or sus around you and to know when to cut people off .
by Cathcart August 10, 2019
First used in 1938 by Huddie William Ledbetter ‘Lead Belly’ in Scotsboro Boys. The phrase was repeated, by a union official, in 1940 to J Saunders Redding, who used it in an academic article in 1942. When Redding wrote “stay woke”, he meant stay alert for injustice, discrimination, prejudice, unfairness, to anyone, irrespective of race, colour, religion, sexual orientation or anything else.
When Redding said "Stay Woke!" He meant is as an injunction, a wake-up call, not the entry to a club or a fashion accessory.
by AKACroatalin August 09, 2021
Stay woke means to understand the real world and to look everything and think twice because things can change in a second, to look deep and know what to permanently take something into your life, to know everything that’s fake or sus around you and to know when to cut people off .
by Cathcart August 10, 2019
To continually be mindful of important issues of racial, gender, ethnic, cultural, social and economic justice. To raise the social and cultural consciousness
For many staying woke has created a collective social consciousness that has protected marginalized groups and communities. For a small segment who doesn't have a clue as to what staying woke means, they have devolved into a divisive call-out culture which has created a new form of social divisiveness.
by mlhiss October 31, 2019