I'm not saying there was never any problem with racism or anything, or that it's been invented just to create a diversion. I'm saying that the movements that existed before occupy around racism, sexism etc. instead of being about working for womens/minority rights suddenly became imbued with "fuck white male patriarchy".
During/after occupy they suddenly took this populist left turn into stoking resentment and ingroup/outgroup identification along race and gender lines. Obviously that stuff was always there but it suddenly blew up into the mainstream narrative and pushed everyone into taking a side.
There was a point in the occupy thing where "the one percent" morphed into "white males" and the narrative flipped from criticising the financial/political system, which was totally indefensible, into this flame war where working class white guys who thought they were the ones getting a raw deal are suddenly being portrayed as the bad guys by people who are basically spokespeople for the elite class- celebrities, university professors, politicians etc.. and those working class guys are all so surprised and pissed off by that they go and vote for Trump as a big fuck you to the source of the perceived betrayal, that's my take on it anyway.
That is the part of it that smells like a diversion, and now everyone is so heavily invested on either side of the culture war that there's almost no hope of them meeting again, at least for a good while and it's pretty much business as usual for the elites who are completely out of the spotlight again.