Bleh, it is indeed true that people only knows that racism is bad, but do not actualy understand why its bad and what it actualy is, and thus they think they can fight it like it was some sort of cartoon villain. Ironically, many of those attempts devolve into racism as well, because people have a need for villains and targets to demozine and destroy and make themselves feel better, even though they're actively hurting people.
Again, like Phmcw also stated, people have this dire need for identity. While it may be hard for some people to realize, extremist groups of all sides (even those that claim to be on opposing ends of a spectrum) are often very, very similar in practice, but thats not the point of the thread, anyway. More on topic, people often crave an identity that can make them into something that is a part of something bigger than themselves, and I feel that, nowadays, gender is becoming more popular as an identity option to latch onto, and not just in regards to gender dysphoria and sexuality, either. Feminism has ceased to be only a civil rights movement to become an identity option, which can be good if its used well, since it creates unity in favor of a cause, but really bad when its badly used, since the bad actions of a loud minority do end up dragging the whole group down, and may actualy hijack the entire cause into a direction it was never going for, since our society still often sees groups as homogenous and stereotypical entities (because there's always someone to reinforce the stereotype).
This need for identity, by itself, is not a problem. The problem is when people start to ascribe good and evil to identities, rather than actions. Thus a certain identity group gets a free pass to do pretty much anything because a major chunk of society likes to see them as "the good guys", while identity groups that said group opposes and/or are in start contrast with are relegated to the status of "bad guys", which become the acceptable targets, and eventualy attacking the "bad guys" becomes a free meal ticket to being socially seen as a better person then you actualy are. This creates social division, because not all of society sees "the good guys" in such a nice light, which is a very convenient scenario for politicians and opinion formers to take advantage of.
Moral of the story is: people need to stop judging people for what they think they are, and start judging them for their actions.