Source: Iryna Drozd / Getty
o, 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.”
MORE: Exploring The Political And Cultural Battle Of The ‘Woke Wars’
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:
RELATED: Twitter Discusses The Hijacking Of AAVE, Debates Proper Usage
Love NewsOne? Get more! Join the NewsOne Newsletter
We care about your data. See our privacy policy.
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.
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?
Inspired by the painfully ‘unwoke’ Bethany Mandel, we put together 10 other terms that originated in Black culture and have been unceremoniously hijacked by the larger society at hand. Can we have anything for us?!
