Wokeism: definition, examples, and societal impact

May 2, 2026

I listened to a debate recently between popular leftist podcaster/commentator Destiny and one of the hosts of Triggernometry, Konstantin Kisin. One of the topics that came up was Wokeism and its impacts on society. During this debate, Konstantin decided to let Destiny define Wokeism and said he would work off that definition. Destiny boiled Wokism down to far-left policies and Konstantin mostly agreed.

The definition of woke and Wokeism or Woke Ideology is so often improperly defined, especially by people on the right, and people on the left use this to accuse right leaning people as just blanketing any left-wing policy they do not like as ‘woke’. Woke comes from a very specific place and means something very specific, though it can often be applied to many different issues that we see today as the definition has expanded.

I will attempt to provide my working definition and then some examples of how this can be applied throughout society. I will also lay out a case for why ‘Wokeism’ has a negative impact on society.

Woke: To be aware of disparities or inequities within society that negatively impact historically marginalized groups, and which are caused by historic and current systemic discrimination against those historically marginalized groups.

Wokeism/Woke Ideology: Everything from the definition of ‘Woke’, with the addition of prescriptive policies, governmental or societal, to correct for those specific disparities or inequities.

Historically Marginalized Groups: Segments of the population that experienced some form of systemic discrimination based on gender/sex, race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, with gender identity added more recently.

Example: There is a disparity between black and white enrollment in ivy league schools. This disparity is caused by systemic racism both historically and in the present day. So the school should institute admission policies that allow black students entrance with comparably lower SAT/ACT scores than white applicants. The belief behind this is that racial diversity is important and makes the school better, and the only way to get more black students into the school is to lower standards and discriminate against white and asian students.

This was an actual Supreme Court ruling against this kind of race-based admission on the grounds that it discriminated against students. https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1181138066/affirmative-action-supreme-court-decision

Next I will get into another example involving Hollywood, movies and TV shows. Many articles have been written regarding historic underrepresentation of women, racial minorities, and LGBTQ people in movies and TV shows. This underrepresentation of these groups is attributed to racism, misogyny, and homophobic/transphobic bigotry. To correct this, two steps have been taken, 1) The Academy Awards qualifications were given a diversity quota that films hoping to win Best Picture have to meet. https://www.oscars.org/awards/representation-and-inclusion-standards

2) The studios, fully believing in this mission, have hired people into creative positions and hiring positions that push the belief throughout the process.

The result has been a bevy of race and gender swaps to achieve diversity within shows and movies that are set in culturally/historically European and white settings.

It is why you have Zeus and Achilles, along with Achilles’ Myrmidons played by black people in Fall of a City, and why Achilles was made bi-sexual. A new Anne Boleyn series on AMC featured Anne Boleyn as a black woman. A Netflix series, Vikings: Valhalla features a bi-racial, black woman as a Jarl in Viking Scandanavia. Super-popular Netflix series Bridgerton makes Queen Charlotte of England bi-racial black and inserts black people as part of the aristocracy of England at the time. In the upcoming Odyssey movie, Zendaya is slated to play Athena and Lupita Nyong’o is rumored to play Helen of Troy.

Below, casting or promotional depictions (left) are shown beside conventional classical or historic sources (right) for several of those figures.

While that is a short list of most historical figures, we can move on to other race swaps, though this list will not be exhaustive. The Little Mermaid, Rings of Power made Galadriel a warrior and lead character, War of the Rohirrim pushed an unnamed daughter of Hammerhand as the lead character, I have detailed the many changes in the Wheel of Time series here. Marvel has pushed many heroes that are either women or racial minorities, making Captain America black, and replacing many males character with women including Hawkeye. Marvel put women in charge of making the She Hulk series, changing it from a property targeted towards young men into a feminist power fantasy that elevates nerdy men into the main antagonist role, portraying them as terminally online incels.

As for why this is negative for society, there are two reasons I will briefly explore here.

First, seeing this happen repeatedly drives resentment in audiences, particularly straight, white, male audiences. There are several segments this can be broken down into.

Conservatives or right leaning audiences see the social marxist underpinings of the changes, and how this is a coded left-wing policy designed to program the population in a certain philosophy, and resent it. They may have a tie to their history and do not like seeing it defiled to push a message that is antithetical to what they believe.

Those that are rabid fans of an IP or are a stickler for portraying history accurately become resentful at changes being made to something that they are so tied to. If you grew up watching Star Wars as a young boy and see that consistently new Star Wars projects are made for a different audience and not you, you may get resentful. Similarly, if you have a particular tie to a historical culture, and you watch as that culture is being misrepresented, it is offensive. And because the misrepresentation of history does not go in the opposite direction, that further drives the resentment.

The final segment is just normal people that do not like seeing the pattern. For example, a moderate to slightly left-leaning politically, white man who likes super hero movies or historical dramas, but at a deep down level, is just not as interested in watching something like She Hulk with its loaded messaging. Maybe he would like to watch Lord of the Rings content, but not really interested in a series that focuses so much on an inaccurate Galadriel. He might think it is fine that those shows are made, but they just are not for him. And after a while of those being the shows that are made, with messaging that makes him the villain, resentment starts to build. Or maybe something else, almost as bad for the entertainment industry in this case, apathy. This person eventually just loses interest in what is being produced and moves on.

What will exacerbate the feelings of all of these groups is the backlash when any of them voice dissatisfaction with the change. Don’t like a race swap, that is because you are a racist. Don’t like a gender swap or feminist messaging, that is because you are a misogynist. Don’t like a character being turned gay or trans, you are just a homophobe or transphobic bigot. The person who originally expressed their dissatisfaction is often not part of whatever historically marginalized group, and therefore harbors negative feelings towards that group and should shut up. Their complaints are a form of cultural oppression against the historically marginalized group involved.

However, the immediate attack against someone expressing the frustration serves to drive that person into more resentment. We can see that the people attacking are often supportive of left-wing ideology. Often times one of the actors or people involved in the creation of the show or movie. The conversation is discussed as an oppressor group punching down at a member of an oppressed group; however when an actor, who gets paid significant money, attacks fans who are often working hourly or salary jobs for which they are paid significantly less than the actor, it appears as a person in a position of privilege attacking less privileged people. Once the people making the show or movie begin attacking fans for expressed criticism, it increases resentment towards the studio and industry more generally. Multiply this out across many movies and shows.

This leads to the second negative impact. We covered building resentment in society and potentially driving people into more extreme ideologies. But keep in mind, the media industry is large, and hires a lot of people. If this industry drives people away with social messaging that offends them, with race swaps, gender swaps, and orientation swaps, and then attacks fans who express displeasure, the audience size will decrease.

Movies and TV Shows are part of a broader entertainment industry that is fighting for the time of consumers. I am a father of three children and have a wife. I work a full time job. Daily, I get about 2 hours of leisure each evening, after the children are in bed. With those two hours I can read a book, play a game, watch a movie or TV show, watch YouTube, watch older entertainment, do personal development, spend time with my wife, listen to music, etc. There is a opportunity cost in choosing anything, and the question is, why would I pick a show or movie made by people pushing a message I don’t like, making changes I don’t like, and then attacking me and calling me one of the worst people in society when I express displeasure? If enough people start to feel this way, the industry begins to lose revenue, which leads to less production, fewer jobs, a collapsing industry, which would ultimately impact local businesses and economies that have thrived around places like Hollywood.

What happened to Wheel of Time with the show that Amazon Prime created is a prime example of this, and I wrote a whole article covering it here.

This is a detailed example of how Wokeism negatively impacts society. I think a similar structure can be used for subsequent examples, but for sake of brevity, I will not lay out the full case, in detail, for other examples. I will cover them much more briefly and can get into detail with each one if the need arises.

I will cover in brief, three other examples, but the number is expansive.

The News Media covering news in a way that specifically highlights white people and men negatively, and non-white people in a way to downplay severity. We see articles pushed that discuss toxic masculinity or uplift women and feminism.

For example, a disparity was identified in frequency at which black men were portrayed as criminals on local evening news. This disparity drives racist feelings in white people towards black men. The solution is to not mention the race of the perpetrator. This extends out to something that Anne Coulter once said about a mass shooting. She mentioned to Bill Maher that the reason we did not know the race of the shooter was because the shooter was not white. If the shooter would have been white, the media would have mentioned it right away, along with trying to spin the shooting as racist if possible. The fact that the media had not mentioned the race of the shooter, nor had the police, was indication that the shooter was not white. And this holds true if a shooter is trans, which recently we have seen. That fact is often left out of the news media coverage, along with manifestos not being released. If someone committing a horrific crime is from a historically marginalized group, details are left out of the reporting for fear that it could reflect negatively upon that group and drive discrimination against that group.

Another way that we see this in the news media is in online articles that frame everything you can imagine as racist. Take for instance hiking. The Sierra Club published an article titled, The Unbearable Whiteness of Hiking. The article points out that there is a disparity in racial minorities, particularly black people, in hiking. It links that disparity directly to racism and racial minorities not feeling comfortable going out to predominately white areas in the country to hike. It then suggests that it is incumbent on white people who form hiking clubs to invite non-white people into the club and put those people in positions of power so that more non-white people are invited to go hiking. Another interesting point here is that the percent whiteness that hiking is makes it unbearable and something that needs to be “solved”.

https://www.sierraclub.org/outdoors/2016/12/unbearable-whiteness-hiking-and-how-solve-it

There is an interesting Twitter thread that details many such articles, many of which I searched for and found, though not all of those could I read because of some paywalls. Scrolling through this thread and seeing all of the articles that have been published portraying everything as racist in some way is shocking.

https://x.com/TitaniaMcGrath/status/1857826699997557046

Wokeism is the lens through which someone like Ibram X. Kendi sees everything, though he calls it being anti-racist. He looks at a disparity between two racial groups with one of those groups being white people. If that disparity is determined to negatively impact the historically marginalized racial group, he determines that racial discrimination/racism is an underlying key cause. One of his key proposals is that racial discrimination in favor of a historically marginalized racial group in the present and into the future is needed to offset historical and current systemic discrimination against that racial group. He even proposed a federal department of anti-racism to systemically push this throughout the government and country.

The final example of Wokeism I will put forward here, though there are many others, is in the court systems in many large cities. Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated. This disparity, according to people that adhere to Wokeism, is the result of systemic racism in policing and a multitude of other systemic factors that drive crime, like economics and poverty. Because of this, criminals are repeatedly allowed back onto the street to reoffend. Minor crimes are not prosecuted and policies like bail reform and defunding the police are pursued to reduce the number of black and hispanic people incarcerated.

There is a great YouTuber named Actual Justice Warrior who covers this exact kind of content regularly.

In conclusion, Wokeism is something very specific. The definition that Destiny put forward, while sometimes may be the way conservatives actually use it, is wrong. I have laid out the definition and how it can be applied. The reality, it can often be applied to many different situations if the connections can be made and truly justified. And the way that this can drive resentment and encourage people to view everything through a racial lens. If everyone besides straight, White men are of an oppressed class, then they will push for society to discriminate in favor of their group, which leaves only straight, White men not being discriminated in favor of, so they are the most discriminated against group. And that will lead to them seeing themselves as an oppressed group and collectivizing. And would they be wrong to do so? Is that the world we want to live in?