The defining principle I see of critical race theory from Ibram X. Kenadi is the idea that any law which has a disparate impact on different races must be a racist law
In a very brief skim of "critical race theory" I'd say for me, the two main takeaways are 1) constructivism 2) binary class tension.
Ironically, Marxism's deep roots are in Hegel, who had concluded that Germans were essentially, the master race.
Prior to Hegel, philosophers were stuck on how to 'know what we know': How does a subject (Ajax) know that the grass is green? It's a trap, because there is no way to ever distinguish between a real external world with grass, and a world where a disembodied mind is fed the impression of grass.
On the one hand, the modernist idea of a subject makes the individual a god in the sense that an individual's mind mediates all of reality; on the other, a mind can't get past itself to know what the mind knows. Hegel scraps the modernist subject. He puts ideas, things in the mind, outside of the mind and into the world. It's kind of like a platonic form, say, a triangle, but not in an otherly world, in this world; but unstable, working itself out against other forms in the way of a dialectic. People are pawns in a chess game of higher concepts defining themselves; basically, empires fighting for world domination until white wins. Most important: the individual is no longer arbitrator of reality.
Marx takes the dialectic idea and turns it into a theory about workers and owners of capital. Western Marxism develops ideas about movements of opposing groups shaping reality (among other things). So in "critical race theory" there is the familiar tension of a "dialectic" -- 'races' in tension, and constructivism, where a group -- presumably the group in power -- has 'constructed' the [false] idea of 'race' in order to maintain power.
How in God's name you'd teach "critical theory" to kids in high school is beyond me. Do they teach Descartes, Hegel, Marx, Adorno and Walter Benjamin first? I fail to see how critical theory per se, even critical race theory, would be constrained to result in policies that help people. Like postmodernism, which trades in a lot of similar ideas, it can be used to any end conceivable.
And that brings me full circle to the original point about individuals arbitrating reality: back in the day, as a conservative, we were supposed to be horrified at 'postmodernism' because we were supposed to believe that "the grass is green" is a factual statement about an objective world, not a social construct. Right-wingers still complain about 'Marxism' and these 'left wing" theories, but they've embraced all the main elements of these kinds of theories themselves. The grass is green because CNN tells everyone it's green. Right-wingers are the most unhinged social constructivists I've ever met, believing in a dialectic of left-wing 'elitists' and the 'regular guy' conservative; and that the regular guy will overthrow the oppressors under Donald Trump. Everything from climate science, to the financial world, to viruses, to elections is an elaborate social construct created by liberal elite with the help of Jewish bankers. as A-Mike says "everything is really just politics" -- that's the essential message of postmodernism and critical theory. I studied postmodernism and ultimately couldn't go the distance with it, and so the fact that right-wingers have become the worst examples of postmodern theorists ever is a major reason why I would never be able to identify with the right as it stands today.