Identity politics and the myth of racial oppression weren't a thing in the pre-Obama era. People are much more obsessed about race in 2018 than they were in the 1990s, and it's a giant step back.
I don't understand how the racial oppression narrative became so much stronger in the Obama era. Shouldn't the election of the first black president have definitively ended it? If a black man can be president of the United States then there is nothing holding them back anymore.
It became stronger because systematic racial oppression was almost impossible to still justify after a black president was elected, and yet racial disparities didn't really disappear. If anything, they grew wider after the recession of 2009. Instead of being honest and accepting responsibility for the factors that were keeping that disparity in place, it was easier to fabricate a racial oppression boogeymanand get young people fixated on identity politics. This is ironically hurting the very people these progressives like to say they care about.