it's actually a bit more sinister than this. what neo-liberal identity politics really does is offer a hand to minorities: you, too, can be a part of the oppressing classes. it then claims that this is a type of progress. in doing so, it converts what should be broader race-based struggles into purely class struggles. the key thing is the next point: it manages to convince people that a society rooted in class divisions is "normal" or "natural", due to this concept of "human nature", which is not derived empirically but via the convenient process of construction in order to justify what it's supposed to prove is inevitable. the neo-liberals might not all miss the circularity of it, but the masses often do, as they're only capable of knowing what they're taught. if they're taught that our nature implies the inevitability of class, then it's enforcement is justified, and opening up a class-based society to minorities becomes a kind of progress, rather than a kind of oppression. so, the class struggle ends up co-opted by an idea of an "american dream": minorities compete against each other for status, rather than work with each other (and with others) for freedom. so, the capitalist class is converted from a source of oppression that needs to be struggled against into an ideal to aspire to. the result is that the same oppression carries on as it always had, it's just somehow better because the racial components within the classes are more evened out.

in the long run, this is unsustainable, but for the time being it gives capitalism enough support from the people that should be opposing it to allow it to kind of limp along at 1% growth.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/24/beyond-neoliberal-identity-politics/