I definitely agree that White liberals are the ones who initially started the misappropriation of the term "woke" AWAY FROM what Black activists had originally intended for it to mean.

The problem is that White liberals have done this largely as a tactic for shaming and scapegoating OTHER White people ("You need to 'get woke'!") -- you know, to *prove* what "good allies" they are.

In response, conservatives then hijacked that original hijacking for their own nefarious purposes, in order to conflate and lump together illiberal virtue-signaling with genuine policies that would promote social equality/equity.

Now, these extreme "sides" have dug in their heels and dragged all of the rest of us along with them in a race to the bottom.