Right, you can read Edmund Burke speaking of the Irish race.The word race which derives from the Italian "razza" has been co-opted from its original sense as a description of people from a common origin or who share common characteristics.
It wasn't until Galton's ideas were adopted by Progressive Era eugenics that it became associated with skin color.
CRT has gone through two phases. The first phase was neoMarxist, materialist, and aligned with the civil rights movement that sought equality and judgment of a man by his character and not his skin color. The second phase started in the 80-90s and this is the postmodernist movement that rejects any form of objective truth, thereby unable in its contradictions to "contain some fundamental truths", and is anti-liberal, which is odd when you think of the Democratic Party's embrace of it.CRT may have become lost in the weeds to the point where it has become toxic, but it does contain some fundamental truths.