> Why not talk about one of the civil rights that they openly oppose?

They openly oppose black civil rights; that's what the war on “Woke"/”DEI” is about, its what the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act protections (also through the courts, but gets less attention than dismantling of abortion rights) is about, and there are many other aspects of it.

Being anti woke/DEI does not mean you oppose civil rights. Plenty of African Americans and other minorities dislike woke/DEI. They don’t want to be thought of as a diversity hire but still enjoy their rights to vote and use the same bathrooms as their white peers.

Just to be clear, what's the definition of "woke"?

In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice. To first approximation, being woke means viewing society through various critical lenses, as defined by various critical theories bent in service of an ideology most people currently call “Social Justice.” That is, being woke means having taken on the worldview of Critical Social Justice, which sees the world only in terms of unjust power dynamics and the need to dismantle problematic systems. That is, it means having adopted Theory and the worldview it conceptualises.

Adherents like Ibram Kendi argue that the only solution to historical racism is present day racism (Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (2019), p. 19). In other words, the "woke" believe in applying institutionalised racism and other forms of discrimination to realise a world in which outcomes are perceived to be equal. As this method and goal are antithetical to Enlightenment and democratic principles, there is a large contingent of people who oppose woke ideology.

> In brief, “woke” means having awakened to having a particular type of “critical consciousness,” as these are understood within Critical Social Justice.

This is wildly wrong; for starters, “woke” predates critical theory; for another, there is no such thing as “Critical Social Justice”, which is just mashing together two terms right-wingers don’t like and misrepresent.

The word "woke" was first used in the 1930s, and critical theory began its intellectual popularity in the late 1800s. Marx and Clausewitz were early adopters of critical theory, but Engels, Gramsci, Hegel, and many others who popularized the movement did their work in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In other words, critical theory predates "woke" by a century.

The word "woke" only attached to critical theory long after both had come about.

The Wikipedia page is useful here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke

    Woke is an adjective derived from African-American English used since the 1930s or earlier to refer to awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination, often in the construction stay woke. The term acquired political connotations by the 1970s and gained further popularity in the 2010s with the hashtag #staywoke. Over time, woke came to be used to refer to a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism and denial of LGBTQ rights. Woke has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and reparations for slavery in the United States.

Like a lot of leftist terms, "woke" been co-opted and intentionally corrupted by the right so that most people will now insist that it refers to a system of anti-white racism, which is a bad faith interpretation of what it represents, and completely disregards the actual history and context of the term. Asking what "woke" means on the internet and expecting any sort of unprejudiced response is about as useful as asking a Klansman to define civil rights or an incel to define feminism.

So I encourage people to do their own research and make their own decisions from first, rather than second or third-hand principles.

Republicans use "being anti woke" as a comfortable excuse to be anti women in general and anti minorities in general. They complain about diversity hires in institutions that have no such policy - just seeing a woman on good position makes them assume it was DEI.

There could theoretically be anti-DEI political party that is pro-equality, republicans are not that.

As someone on the outside of this fight (I am not American), there was only one side fighting to maintain racism and sexism in hiring, promotion, government assistance, and university entrance: the Democrats. The Republicans were and remain clearly resolute in creating a merit based society. It seems clear that the democrats were and continue to seek to expand racism and sexism under the banner of "DEI." Adherents like Ibram X Kendi aren't hiding the ball. They openly acknowledge that the use of racism is necessary to achieve equal outcomes.

> As someone on the outside of this fight (I am not American)

I’m.not sure why owlnly having any understanding of the issues through the propaganda of your chosen media diet makes you a better commentator in your mind, but let me assure you that it is only in your mind.