As far as I can tell, it seeps into schools because well-intentioned educators are seeking an alternative to the failed program of "colorblindness" which persisted for decades and raised generations of privileged people who think racism was eradicated in the late 1960s. And young people are themselves actively interested in repudiating and reversing the mistakes of their elders.

Maybe it's an extreme reaction. Critical race theory is certainly an extreme way of looking at the world if you take it literally and not as a thought experiment. But I just see it as a swing of the pendulum. I wish people wouldn't get "canceled" over it, but I don't think it's the slippery slope to Maoism that people seem to think it is.