"Like most of us, critical race theorists do genuinely want to make the world a better place, which they demonstrate through their unwavering commitment to studying inequality. "

I admire your optimism and good will. But you are wrong. Whatever CRT's origins, its advocates are driven largely by resentment and grievance.

Slavery in America was wrong because the once-universal institution had obsolesced in the rest of the civilized world. But to say that America was founded when the first slave ship arrived here is just political hogwash, meant not to advance the oppressed, but to shame and punish the (descendants of) oppressors. So, no, I think we need to talk about what CRT gets wrong, because making America about slavery is bad for all Americans.

Slavery and genocide are not a central feature of American experience. They are important historical events and practices, and they happened, but virtually every occupant of every land took it by force, if not from other people then from other sentient life forms. (Homo sapiens is an invasive species.) We try to move past that history rather than allow it to define us. No viable polity can sustain itself when its dominant myth is about the bad things it did and not the bad traits it outgrew.

To say that America was founded in 1619 opens the door to the claim that the America we live in was "founded" when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, and then again when the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. The idea is intellectually trivial, because it is simple agitprop. This is Pride Month. Unless you're a White, cis-het male. Then according to some "critical" theory or other, every month is Shame Month. In the long run, that dog won't hunt.