Nor does it refer to a “boogeyman”—those ideas definitely exist and aren’t made up, regardless of what you choose to label them: https://web.archive.org/web/20211108155321/https://freddiede...
For example, I’m pretty sure that 10 years from now the racial affinity groups in my 5th grader’s school are going to be an embarrassing idea liberals will pretend never happened, rather than being the future of race relations in America.
These are people who consume zero right wing content, so it’s not like they’re being socialized to be mad about stuff that they wouldn’t otherwise be mad about. In fact it’s the opposite—they would be madder if CNN wasn’t careful to hide the full scope of what woke people think and believe.
But let's pick one example: woke people believe that skin-color diversity is both meaningful and a good thing in and of itself. They would say that, all else being equal, a group of people with a mix of races is better than a group of white people, even if there was no evidence that the white group was that way due to discrimination.
The statement is wrong because skin color is superficial and meaningless. Here’s a thought experiment: say you have a group of white people, and then I (a “brown” person) join them. Woke thought posits that, through added “diversity,” the group has become “stronger.” But to be “stronger” it must be “different.” What non-superficial characteristic about me are you inferring about me that leads you to conclude I changed the group by joining it? Any answer to that is going to be racist.
This idea manifests in media, for example adding a characters of different races to historical contexts where the lack of diversity isn’t due to discrimination. (E.g. adding a random African character to medieval Scandinavia in Frozen 2.)