The term woke traces to a 2008 Erykah Badu lyric

Evidence

Originally a term within the Black community to describe political consciousness, woke entered broader usage in 2008 as a lyric from Erykah Badu’s recording of “Master Teacher.” It gained further prominence during the Black Lives Matter movement, evolving by the Trump years into a broader call for the normalization of all marginalized identities within language and culture. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 458

Categorization

• CANDY: The Erykah Badu etymology is a compact, tweetable fact.