There isn’t even agreement on what the word means. When I was little my science book defined it as two individual are the same race if they can have offspring together. By that rule all humans are the same race.

Race is related to ethnicity but also relates to a lot of cultural factors. Race is also tied to people’s perception of a person, and also tied to an individual’s identity. There are more and different races than ethnicities.

Additionally, race is linked to discrimination. Two people can be the same ethnicity but different races, because their culture and ancestral nationality are different. This often leads to people of a certain race being seen as lesser than, even though there is no biological difference. I.e. the Irish, and Italians, who are considered white now but weren’t in the past.

On top of that, people of different ethnicities can be lumped into a singular race and be discriminated against. Like Hispanic people, who have native American, Spanish, and many other ethnicities mixed in. Or Asians who have probably the most varied amount of ethnicities in their singular “race.”

Conversely you can have someone who is mixed and is technically mostly genetically ethnicities that are considered white, and would be white passing, but because they are known to have a black parent or grew up in the black community, they are considered to be a person if color, and are discriminated against in the same way as someone who is more ethnically a POC.

This discrimination and racism can cause generational trauma and wealth disparity. Which is important to learn about so people can understand how systems, at least in the U.S., are literally built in a way that makes traditionally discriminated against races more likely to be born into poverty and less likely to get out of it. CRT strives to educate the our population on these issues.

CRT teaches about the fact that Black people and other POC in the United States have been discriminated against for generations, this discrimination is/was codified in law and local ordinances. Like laws limiting POC from getting certain loans, or moving into certain neighborhoods. Then building roads around those neighborhoods separating them from the rest of the town, making it harder for those individuals to get resources. Or the fact that, in the U.S.,public schools are funded by housing taxes in an area rather than by equal funding. Meaning that low income areas (usually populated by minorities because of the previously mentioned reasons) will inherently have less funding.

All this leads to the fact that even though a lot of the racist legislation in the U.S. is gone, a lot of minorities in the U.S. have been lower income for generations. Meaning a lot of them are starting from less and will have less opportunity to achieve because the just don’t have the same resources and education available. And today, because of all this, we are seeing things like schools being more segregated than ever, even more than they were even in times where segregation was in law.

If our population is not educated on these topics, these things will never change. These people will never get the help they need. This is why CRT in a lot of experts opinions is sorely needed in the American education curriculum.

Weird. My DNA test didn’t tell me I am X% white, Y% black, Z% Native American. It told me my DNA was a majority match for people that hailed from regions A, B, and C.

Are you sure you know how ancestry DNA tests work?

You’re conflating a few different concepts, and misunderstanding how DNA tests work. …And the only thing any of this has to do with CRT is that these questions are a symptom of it.

Race, ancestry, and ethnicity are not synonyms.

Race is “A group of people identified as distinct from other groups because of supposed physical or genetic traits shared by the group. Most biologists and anthropologists do not recognize race as a biologically valid classification, in part because there is more genetic variation within groups than between them.” (American Heritage)

Ethnicity refers to “people sharing a common cultural or national heritage and often sharing a common language or religion.” (American Heritage)

Ancestry is biological lineage.

DNA tests approximate the location on the globe (overlaid with national borders) where your ancestors lived at some point in time. They do this by taking DNA samples of people from all around the world, mapping that with human migration patterns, and comparing your DNA to that data pool to determine the statistical likelihood that you’re ancestors lived in a certain place within a certain time period in human history.

DNA tests do not determine race (social classification) or ethnicity (cultural classification). DNA tests can determine some physical traits, but not everyone with the same traits belong to what we might consider the same race. And not everyone who considers themselves to be of the same race have the same DNA.

There is no biological definition for the word “race”.

Your question has nothing to do with CRT, but with science (I am very critical to CRT if you want to know).

There is a scientific method to classify human beings by genetics. You can group by closeness of genetic code. When you do this you will arrive something similar to ethnicity NOT to race. Race classification is akin classification by eye color, while has some relationship to genetics - it has very little relationship and the genetic code similarities between two of ethnic groups, one has white skin, another have black skin, may be significantly larger than genetics similarity between two groups with black skin. This is why it is unscientific classification.