Holding woke values, while I disagree with many of them is not the problem. It is the sense of entitlement that goes along with those values including the "right" to cancel people that don't share those values or the right to seek "redress" when someone says something that offends you in a country where "free speech" is considered sacrosanct as a value.

The belief that society has the right to use its collective power to pressure individuals to conform is the opposite of "liberal mindedness" and yet it is core value of progressive liberals today. That conservatives in the past did the same thing, makes it wrong then and today... it does not justify it.

Wokeism doesn't reject racism, rather it embraces it. Under woke ideology racism can be good or bad depending how it is applied. If used as a tool to achieve equity it is good. If used as a tool to maintain the status quo it is bad.

Of course, wokeism loves to use the "word" racist in order to suppress opposition to their values, so the word has been redefined, so it does not apply to their racist beliefs. Opposing institutional discrimination in any form is critical to creating a society where people can "pursue happiness" and people have equal rights to do so.

However, things like affirmative action or preferential treatment in order to achieve some concept of racial equity is by definition institutional racism unless of course you change the definition.

As a classical liberal, I tended to side with the Democratic party on social issues, until it moved away from the pursuit of equal rights and opportunity to equity. The concept of "equity" is simply rebranded socialism that uses racism to justify why socialism should replace capitalism in our society... but "equity" comes with all the warts and problems socialism has in the past... it is not "new and improved" and history shows in the end societies collapse due to socialism and its poorly designed alignment of societal incentives to create products and services that people want.