Woke is used as an insult to defend structural violence

Critics of woke culture have decided to use the term against its practitioners. "Woke" has become a pejorative among conservative critics of the movement. Their use of the term is a misrepresentation, which displays how threatening the movement is to their ideological system.^[1] Woke, in fact, is not often used as an identifier among social justice activists.^[2] This is in part due to the use of the word being bastardized by critics and used as a blanket term to describe social justice causes they view as threatening to their authority. Wokeness aims to fight the oppressive systems that affect black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), as well as the LBGTQ+ community, and beyond. Each of these groups has been oppressed by the societies they live in and the inherited systems from a bygone era. Considering critics of the movement are overwhelmingly heterosexual, white conservatives, its no wonder that they deride the term in an effort to discredit the social activism, as it threatens their supremacy across several privileged positions of power in government, religion, media, and the workplace. ^[3] Key to their criticisms of wokeness is their lack of an alternative means of fighting for these social causes, and that suggests that they would rather keep the status quo. Their use of the term is merely a reflection of the reality that their positions of privilege are on shaky ground.

[P1] The term "woke" is misrepresented by the right in an effort to undermine the cause for social activism. [P2] Critics of woke culture are overwhelmingly white conservatives. [P3] The right offers no substantive alternative for fighting inequity.