There have been some very strange protests by college students in recent years which a lot of people see as silly.
A common theme is students forming an aggressive gang under a political banner which dismisses basic authority premises, like 'respect for 'such and such' value'.
In other words the perceived 'problem' with the protests is not so much the root issue being protested as it is the style. Establishment supporters are not saying "These kids are wrong" as much as they're saying "These kids aren't allowed to say that".
A common rite of passage in all cultures is necessarily a dismissal of previous 'authorities', and many 'melting pot' political entities have incorporated clever infrastructure which seeks to preserve a past, usually colonial, worldview.
The United States, for example, has constructed a legal framework which allows all sorts of misbehavior by 'authorities', as long as that misbehavior is conducted within the U.S. framework of 'liberties'.
You can shoot a poor person, for example, for things rich people do not need to do, because rich people have certain 'U.S. liberties'. That's considered such an obvious right in the United States that nobody really challenges it, and converting that dubious right into a legitimate value would be expensive. The default progression is not 'phony value becomes legitimized', but rather 'phony value creates an equal and opposite reaction".
The development of ideas like 'critical race theory' is analogous to a lot of past political movements.
Like all generational movements which attract the younger part of a disenfranchised outgroup and their supporters, the criticism it attracts from others is often self defeating. In other words the critics are forced to use their flawed past reasoning to defend themselves, so it is a battle between capable younger people, and defenders of a previous paradigm who are on shaky ground.
Here is an example from the news.
"...Americans across the political spectrum have failed to separate the premise of critical race theory from its conclusion. Its premise — that American history includes slavery and other injustices, and that we should examine and learn from that history — is undeniable. But its revolutionary conclusion — that America was founded on and defined by racism and that our founding principles, our Constitution and our way of life should be overthrown — does not rightly, much less necessarily, follow."
The author of that article is very skilled at rhetoric, but very intellectually dishonest. He is snack food for the people he is targeting.
https://nypost.com/2021/05/06/what-critical-race-theory-is-really-about/
What should black people in the U.S. learn from slavery? His premise is that the lesson is "Be white".
That is one of the conflicts evolving now.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/critical-race-theory-classroom-understanding-debate/story?id=77627465
Was the United States founded on, and defined by, racism?
Of course, and racism is what keeps the United States afloat. Selectively targeting vulnerable groups is a melting pot signature, and the core of the United States. If Indigenous Americans ever get the political influence blacks have, the U.S. will be finished.
The 'facts on the ground' premise used in the construction of the United States was that Western Europeans had, and would continue to have, the power globally to enforce a Western European worldview on the Americas and the world, by carefully using a combination of military, political, cultural and other tools until enough generations had passed that the western European 'facts on the ground' became everybody's reality.
A significant part of this strategy has always involved, and still involves, extermination of indigenous identities.
Incompatible indigenous groups which challenged the colonial mindset had to be removed before they got a toehold in the globalized worldview. Vietnam was a famous example of a rebellious nation being crushed because it was not subservient to the melting pot, but every single war of the last 100+ years has involved this dynamic.
What a lot of people on both sides of this political issue miss is the essential conflict between indigenous and melting pot.
No one individual is entirely on one or the other side of this conflict, but all groups are.
A group of people, any group, either supports the extermination of indigenous in favor of the global melting pot, or it supports the federalization of non indigenous individuals into a framework which yields to indigenous interests. There is no group of people which can fairly mediate between the two sides.
In Progress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
https://nypost.com/2020/07/16/obscene-federal-diversity-training-scam-prospers-even-under-trump/