JUST SUBSTITUTE "BLACK" FOR "WOKE":

Republican politicians and voters alike have differing definitions of wokeism -- and some struggle to define it at all. The rallying cry has recently been used to denounce everything from climate change policies and socially responsible investing to transgender rights, critical-race theory and the Black Lives Matter movement.

"What we're seeing is a kind of standard practice of conservatives and conservative reactions to Black political movements -- to weaponize the words and concepts they've used to undermine efforts of social movements," said Candis Watts Smith, an associate professor of political science at Duke University and co-author of "Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter." "History shows that you can rally voters around issues of difference, issues that suggest that people are losing power, issues where their values are being challenged."

Much like the "cancel" of "cancel culture," "woke" is another word that originated in Black culture before being co-opted by White people. Some credit blues singer Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter for helping to popularize the term in his 1938 protest song, "The Scottsboro Boys," in which he urges Black America to "stay woke" to social and political injustice as well as physical violence.

More recently, when conservatives began using "woke" in pejorative terms to undermine Black and liberal ideals, it was not an accidental choice, Smith said. "It's important for us to remember that woke initially became a way to mean Black and to derisively refer to Blackness, and so to use this word that evokes Black folks or Blackness on other things kind of spills over," she said. "I don't think that's a mistake."

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