Mike, this is a good read and a good starting-point. Although I agree with a vast majority of what you've discussed in this article (especially when it comes to teaching more accurate and comprehensive history, and making the link to our racist systems), I want to address a few things.
First, John McWhorter is NOT "ultra-conservative." He is moderate or moderate-conservative.
Secondly, I think one of the keys to helping students (and even adults) understand all of the varying layers to racism is by delineating the differences between systemic, social, and cultural forms of racism. Systemic racism is what a bulk of your piece focuses on (and rightfully so), and it's usually what most of CRT focuses on (also rightfully so).
Where the Left has hit a wall is due to how many of its members seem hell-bent on simplifying the definition of "racism" per se to refer EXCLUSIVELY to systemic forms of racism. This is the neoliberal power+privilege definition that relegates any race-based behavioral or actionable mistreatment to merely "prejudice." What this worldview misses is that prejudice is, at its core, an ATTITUDE (or belief system). Once you take that attitude and weaponize/apply it against other people adversely, it stops being "just prejudice" and begins to enter the "-ism" realm. Some CRT educators are loathe to acknowledge this, because it would challenge their party line that power is fixed -- and it would force them to acknowledge that power can also, in some cases, be relative or situational.
But try telling that to the Robin DiAngelos and Tim Wises and Debby Irvines of the world, who insist that racism is ONLY systemic -- and, apparently, anybody who fails to subscribe to that dogma that they've created is incapable of being "antiracist." And if you try to debate or dissent or challenge their worldview, here -- you get dismissed as "fragile" or "brainwashed" (or, if you're a POC, you get called "self-loathing"). This is academic elitism at its worst.
This is not to suggest that racism (and the lived experiences) of BIPOC and White people are "equal" or should be falsely conflated. Rather, a true middle ground approach to CRT theory would be to acknowledge that race (and racism) is a complex, multilayered problem. We need to be treating it as such, and discussing it as such. But we'll never achieve that if certain CRT theorists continue to insist that being White makes one inherently racist, and/or if one fails to subscribe to their narrow definitions of racism that one is somehow incapable of being an ally. Hell, even some CRT theorists themselves have divergent definitions of what "racism" is/means...which muddies the waters even further, when students are essentially being thought-policed.
Sure, we can have these robust debates over definitions -- or nuances of definitions -- but many of the gatekeepers of CRT don't even appear to want to have those debates with people in the Center or on the Right, in the first place. Instead, they just gaslight and demonize anybody who disagrees with them...because, apparently, that's their idea of "teaching empathy"...
