Trump says US won't be ‘woke’ anymore, what does the term mean?

In the first Congress address of his second term, Trump condemned 'wokeism', advocating for hiring based on competence rather than race or gender.

Donald Trump, during his address in a joint session of the Congress, launched repeated attacks on ‘wokeism’. He reiterated that the United States will no longer will be a “woke” country as he said that hirings will be done on the basis of competency and skills and not race or gender.

Donald Trump also highlighted his decision of “making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders - male and female” during his speech. (Getty Images via AFP)

“We believe that whether you are a doctor, an accountant or an air traffic controller, you should be hired on the basis of skill and competence, not race or gender,” Trump said during the address.

Track updates of Donald Trump's Congress address here.

What does ‘woke’ mean?

The term woke means being “aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality,” according to the Cambridge dictionary.

The Oxford English dictionary describes ‘woke’ as being “aware of social and political issues and concerned that some groups in society are treated less fairly than others.”

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, ‘woke’ is a US slang that can be defined as being “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)”.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary traces the origin of the term to African American English and says that it gained widespread use in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning,” the MW dictionary says.

What else did Trump say?

Attacking the liberal view of gender being a spectrum and not a binary, Trump highlighted his decision of “making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders - male and female” during his speech.

He also took credit for bringing back "free speech" in America and recalled his order from a few days ago of making English as the official language of the United States.

Trump also defended his harsh tariff policy, reiterating that the US has been facing high tariffs from several countries across the world, including India. “On average, the European Union, China, Brazil, India, Mexico and Canada …have you heard of them? And countless other nations charge us tremendously high tariffs than we charge them,” he said before announcing reciprocal tariffs to be imposed from April 2.