makes me uneasy because while as a white person I don't experience racism in any meaningful way, as a woman I do experience sexism and it IS hard-baked into society. That does not mean it can't be challenged and eventually defeated, but it's not a trivial thing to achieve and it does demand society changes.
You might look at some of the things that John McWhorter has said or written about this. He doesn't dismiss racism, but he is pretty clear that he thinks that even in the US, the idea that it is a society pervaded by racism is overblown. And Adolph Reed, on the left, (McWhorter is a classical liberal) says something similar.
*it's popular among white middle class kids because it is just a power grab by the middle classes threatened by the expansion of higher education. The main reason working class kids drop out of uni is social exclusion so if you set up the culture to be based around complex, ever changing beliefs which often go directly against clearly observable reality then you are going to exclude those with more varied points of view, experiences or who simply haven't been trained in politeness and telling PC white lies from childhood.
I'm afraid I agree with this completely.*
Reed is also interesting on this in terms of the black leaders of the identity politics crowd who are the supposed leaders in the community - he says that they represent the middle managerial class of black Americans who emerged after the civil rights movement and moved into the civil service, politics, policing, and notably, advocacy. Their interests, according to Reed, very quickly had more in common with the white middle classes, and they were advantaged by being able to speak on behalf of their communities on policy issues, and indeed by the creation of a whole career arc based on advocacy.