An article by Bradley Devlin at the Daily Caller answers that question. Devlin, leaning heavily on a book titled “Critical Race Theory: An Introduction” by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, writes that there are four key beliefs that undergird the theory.
1. The Belief That Racism is the Ordinary Condition of Society.
CRT holds that racism permeates every aspect of our society - its institutions, laws, history, values, customs and social interactions. It's inherent in the dominant (white) class and every white person is, whether they know it or not, racist.
Thus, the proponent of CRT will examine every interaction, every element of culture, to spot the underlying racism and root it out.
2. The Belief in Interest Convergence.
CRT also teaches that whites comprise the "oppressor class" in America and give people of color opportunities to be full participants in society only when it's in their (whites) interest to do so. In other words, only when the interests of blacks converge with the interests of whites will whites willingly grant blacks equal treatment.
In CRT racism is an affliction solely of the dominant class in society. The oppressors are racists and can't be otherwise, the victims of oppression are not racist and cannot be.
Since whites only take up the mantle of anti-racism when it benefits them socially, interest convergence implies that the action of becoming an anti-racist is actually itself a racist act.
It's hard to see how the Civil War, Emancipation and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s were all in the interests of the white oppressor class, but that's what CRT teaches.
3. The Belief That Classical Liberalism Is Oppressive.
Liberalism was a political idea developed by the oppressive class, according to CRT, and is how the oppressor maintains and creates oppressive systems. Thus, classical liberalism, i.e. the ideal of a free people living in a free society enjoying free markets and minimal government intrusion in their lives, is oppressive in itself.
Critical race theorists advocate a Marxist-style revolution, which, if history is a guide, is almost certain to replace one form of oppression with a much worse one, but then such details don't seem to deter the Critical Race theorist.
4. The Belief That There Are Alternative Ways Of Knowing.
Mr. Devlin explains this pillar as follows:
Critical Race theorists argue that since traditional ways of knowing — science, rational inquiry, logic — are institutions of white supremacy and how whites understand the world, other ways of knowledge accumulation must be adopted. Storytelling, more specifically, telling counter-stories (like the 1619 Project) is the primary way to challenge the dominance of traditional knowledge.This, of course, assumes that people of color are incapable of understanding science and logic which certainly seems to be itself a racist assumption. It sounds as though it could've been lifted right out of white supremacist propaganda.
Devlin goes on in his essay to explain how CRT is a blend of Marxist thought and postmodern assumptions about truth, and the interested reader should check out his article at the link.
Meanwhile, it's hard to imagine anything more likely to divide people along racial lines, more likely to engender racial hatred and resentments, and more likely to insure that blacks remain mired in poverty and defeat, than the idea that whites are inherently and ineradicably evil, that the country, root and branch, is morally corrupt, and that blacks are both inherently good and at the same time incapable of competing intellectually with whites.
But that's what Critical Race Theory promotes. The Trump administration should be applauded for expunging it from our government institutions and for no longer requiring taxpayers to subsidize such a polarizing doctrine.
Now, if only we could get it out of our university classrooms we'd have a much better chance of seeing our children enjoy a racially harmonious future.