What's the original source of the phrase "Wake up, white people" ?

December 17, 2010 9:59 AM

What's the original source of the phrase "Wake up, white people" ?

I vaguely recall it being some white supremacist on Jerry Springer or somesuch. Googling hasn't been particularly effective since it's become a jokey response to casual racism.

I'm mostly interested in how it inserted itself into pop culture, and if there's a single popular source.

posted by electroboy to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

Blues Brothers would be my guess.
posted by JPD at 10:00 AM on December 17, 2010

WRT to pop culture of course
posted by JPD at 10:01 AM on December 17, 2010

Best answer: I believe it was Daniel Carver on the Howard Stern show.
posted by padraigin at 10:03 AM on December 17, 2010 [9 favorites]

Best answer: Howard Stern used to (still does?) bring on a white supremacist guest called David Carver. They used a clip of him saying "Wake up, white people" as one of their audio drops. Surely, Carver did not originate the phrase, but it's possible that the phrase's use as an audio drop on one of the most popular radio shows propagated it to people who would not have otherwise heard it.
posted by mhum at 10:03 AM on December 17, 2010

Yeah, it's Daniel Carver. He used to have a phone number where other KKK people could call and listen to his message, which always included that phrase.
posted by amro at 11:09 AM on December 17, 2010

Google News Archive shows it in a 1958 news article.
posted by JJ86 at 11:33 AM on December 17, 2010 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Awesome. The Stern origin makes sense. I had a roommate that used to say it all the time, and he was a huge Stern fan.
posted by electroboy at 11:46 AM on December 17, 2010

Yeah, Carver/Stern is obviously not "the original source," since Carver was just repeating a phrase that goes way back into the dank history of U.S. racism, but that's definitely where it hit the culture at large.
posted by languagehat at 2:44 PM on December 18, 2010