I understand what you're saying, and to be clear I'm not suggesting that woke progressives invented segregation. But the racial lanes that divided us historically have been progressively weakened--indeed, "racial progress" is largely synonymous with desegregation. So the idea that we can make racism/segregation "structurally more difficult" by reinforcing racial lanes is completely paradoxical.

Can we not agree that categorizing people by their race is going to reinforce their racial identity at the expense of a broader collective human/national identity? And can we not agree that reinforcing racial identities and weakening the collective identity is going to create competition among and animosity between the different racial groups? And can we not agree that it is this racial animosity that births all of the evils of racism? If we can agree here, then surely this does the opposite of making segregation/racism "structurally more difficult"?

> Which is arguably a more realistic and rational choice than simply saying "things will be fine if we get better people."

Desegregation isn't "things will be fine if we get better people"; it's the active dissolving of racial lanes ("dismantling racist structures" might be a good phrase if it weren't coopted to mean the exact opposite). And it has been the only thing that has worked so far, so why should we think that it's a worse choice than segregation?