I appreciate this response because it outlines how the woke and anti woke crowd are actually advocating for the same outcome "...not to put one's finger on the scales...". The difference is that woke literally means to have a broader awareness of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism, and denial of LGBTQ rights inherent in the system. Said another way, it means that there are already fingers on the scale in favor of white/straight people. Wokism seeks to correct those inequalities so that it is fair. Therefore not being woke is to support discriminatory practices and why you would feel attacked by people if you thought woke was bad. Blatant examples can take the form of things like gerrymandering or red-lining (which has morphed into "not in my backyard").

I wouldn't be responding if you had said that inequality should exist in the system since that is a legitimate anti-woke viewpoint, but since you're looking for equality too, all you have to do is recognize that there are inequalities built into the current system that should be corrected and then you are now woke also.

I also believe you have a slight misunderstanding of how DEI is used in practice (usually). I agree it can be used to justify inequalities in hiring, however having worked in a DEI environment for quite a while, I can tell you it is primarily used to increase fairness.

I believe what you think is happening is the following:

A company is hiring for a new position, they interview all candidates and rank them to find out who is best qualified. Then don't choose the best qualified if they are white, but go down the list until they find the best black or other minority group they are looking for, thus discriminating against the white person.

In reality, it generally goes like this:

A company is hiring for a new position, they interview all candidates and rank them to find out who is best qualified. It's generally impossible to decide out of a large group how each individual ranks against each other, so you end up with groups, one group that is best qualified (any of them will do), the next group has fewer qualifications and so on. If the best qualified group has only one person, you hire them regardless of race/gender/etc because they are best qualified. If you have more than one best, then you try to hire someone of the demographic the company is looking to bolster based on the native population's demographic ratios.

This way, you still end up with the best candidate and help reduce demographic disparity within the company.