Ron DeSantis speaks during a press conference in  S.C. Sean Rayford/AP

One word on Republican presidential campaign trail that’s hard to avoid — “woke.”

Republicans on the campaign trail are using it as something of a catch-all to criticize anything on the progressive side of the political spectrum they don’t like — whether it’s teaching about racism in schools or gender transition policies or even books in libraries they deem inappropriate.

But the term didn’t originate with Republicans — or this round of the culture wars.

“It comes out of Black culture,” explained Elaine Richardson, a professor of literacy studies at the Ohio State University. Richardson co-authored an academic paper examining the word’s use in the Black Lives Matter movement.

“In simple terms, it just means being politically conscious and aware,” she said. “Like ‘stay woke.’ ”

Despite that, Republicans have co-opted the phrase and it’s become the word of the GOP primary.

DeSantis invents a new meaning for “woke”.

“We have made Florida the state where woke goes to die,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a recent event in Virginia. “The woke mind virus represents a war on merit. It represents a war on achievement.”

He’s repeated that almost verbatim elsewhere, too.

No other candidate has made anti-“woke”-ness more central to their candidacy than DeSantis. He’s repeated the word over and over and over again at nearly every campaign stop.

As governor, he implemented conservative policies that he’s branded as anti-woke. After winning reelection last fall, he made it central to his messaging, foreshadowing the central thesis of his presidential bid.

“We have embraced freedom. We have maintained law and order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers, and we reject woke ideology,” DeSantis said during his victory speech after his reelection, hinting at his own definition of what woke is — and isn’t. “We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.”

He has repeated the second half of that quote often on the campaign trail. And his use of it has forced it into the lexicon of the primary with other candidates using it, too.

Trump and others in GOP don’t like the word, but …

Former President Donald Trump has said he doesn’t like the term, but he has used it repeatedly himself.

“I don’t like the term woke because I hear woke, woke, woke, you know, it’s like just a term they use,” Trump said. “Half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.”

But just hours after making that statement, he used it multiple times in a town hall on Fox News.

“A lot of things going on with our military, with the woke and all this nonsense,” he said. “They’re not learning to fight and protect us from some very bad people. They want to go woke. They want to go woke.”

There are other candidates who also don’t like the focus on the term.

“I believe that the president of the United States has got to define a set of things they’re supposed to work on, and it’s not every culture war topic,” North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

He’s not alone, but he’s also in the minority in his party and has minimal support.

Former tech CEO Vivek Ramaswamy has written two books on it, crusading particularly against diversity-based hiring practices and socially conscious investing by companies.

“I think it is inherently divisive to tell us that we’re nothing more than the characteristics we inherit on the day we’re born,” he argued on CNN. “That divides us on the basis of race and sex and sexual orientation.”

Part 2 topics include Woke History, Rallying Cry and Dangers. Part 2 will publish Saturday July 29, 2023 on this website

[This is an excerpt of an article by Domenico Montanaro, NPR’s senior political editor/correspondent, published online July 21, 2023 on www.npr.org.]