It's a post- graduate legal theory about the intersection of laws and race in America. Exactly what it is isn't really relevant- even among legal minds in the US, it wasn't a widely accepted or debated concept.

However, three or four years ago, a racist shit bag named Christopher Rufo started lying about what it was to rile up the racists in the Republican party. He claimed CRT was designed to make white children feel guilty about America's slave-owning past and that it teaches that Black children are owed status and money at the expense of white children. He also claimed this was being taught to children at all levels of American public education.

Again it must be pointed out that he completely fabricated everything he said about CRT. Unfortunately, Republicans are generally as unintelligent as they are fearful, and a wave of anti "CRT" panic is sweeping through America. The net result is Republican governments are banning nearly any discussion about racial disparity in current or former US events all because they don't want to admit that 1) YES RACISM IS BAD and 2) freeing a class of people you've kept enslaved for hundreds of years doesn't magically make things okay or make that people equal to you.

To be clear, white Americans shouldn't feel guilty over America's slave-owning past. I never owned any slaves, and neither has anyone I know. But we should be recognizing how a system of laws built on the literal backs of Black slaves would generationally prevent Black Americans from reaching parity with white Americans- you just can't wave you hands and say "Poof! Slavery is gone!" and everything becomes sunshine and rainbows. It's these kind of discussions that Rufo and the GOP are trying to prevent.

To be clear "CRT" when used by alt-right reactionaries is not the Critical Race Theory college level courses most people would expect. It is used as a bully word for the Right to rally around and push actual historical knowledge out of grade-school education (and it's worked very well for them).

Critical Race Theory. Pretty much the excuse the GOP is using to not teach the history of slavery in the US.

"Critical Race Theory"; it's a college-level class about how racism affects the recording of history, but the term has been misappropriated for several years now to mean any acknowledgement of the USA's past (and current) struggles with racism. The Civil War, Jim Crow Laws, and the Civil Rights Movement are all getting lumped together with the term (as well as other major events) and has been used as an umbrella term to restrict schools' abilities to teach those subjects.

they don't even know what it means. teachers who get asked if they teach CRT tell the parents they're not familiar with the idea, and what topics would be taught. the parents are usually silent.