"Woke" & 10 Other AAVE Terms Overused By The General Public

Source: Iryna Drozd / Getty

So, you’ve more than likely seen conservative writer Bethany Mandel’s viral “woke” moment by now — and, wow, was that entertaining or what?!

For those still catching up, the aforementioned Mandel was a guest earlier this week on The Hill Rising morning show to promote her new book, Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation. As the title might suggest, it spins the narrative that liberals are targeting children with “woke indoctrination.”

When politely asked by Rising correspondent Briahna Joy Gray to simply define the word “woke” as it came up in their conversation, well, just take a look below at the monstrosity that Mandel ended up digging herself into:

As she herself predicted, this was in fact one of those moments that went viral. Over the past 24 hours alone, many on social media have been voicing their opinions and allowing the moment to open up a bigger conversation surrounding AAVE, or African-American Vernacular English.

<br>

You might refer to them more commonly as “Black terms” or “Black slang,” but AAVE has come to be adapted as the official way of describing a form of dialect that’s become extremely influential in mainstream culture. Many words and phrases used daily over the years can be directly traced back to being originated by Black people, be it individuals or whole communities.

Of course, it seems ludicrous to police the use of language, but what happens when a term like “nappy” gets used by the wrong person to diminish the physical features of another? What does it really say about society now that Gen-Z boys of all races are calling each other The N-Word as a “term of endearment”? Where, simply, do we draw the line as a culture?