You don’t like critical race theory, but do you even know what it is?

SAN DIEGO — As a Mexican American, I marvel at the brazenness of white men who unflinchingly discuss topics they know nothing about.

That includes critical race theory. Many of those who despise CRT don’t have the foggiest idea what it is.

Let’s start with what it is not. It is not a way for people of color to settle the score by portraying white people as racist villains who are privileged, entitled and fragile.

If only the opponents of CRT didn’t sound so privileged, entitled and fragile.

That’s the profile of Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. During a recent appearance on the podcast “The Interview with Hugh Hewitt,” Rufo simplistically defined CRT as “an ideology that maintains that the United States is fundamentally racist” and “that the world can be divided into ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’ based on skin color.”

Hewitt — who described himself as being from “World War I of race theory, which is back in the day of affirmative action (and) counting by race” — insisted every “race issue” could be tied to CRT.

If they define the term that broadly, white males are going to need a bigger glass of “whine.”

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas — a likely contender for the 2024 Republican nomination for president — has emerged as a leading opponent of CRT, despite the fact he doesn’t seem to understand the first thing about it.

Cotton admitted as much during an appearance on Hewitt’s radio show. When asked if he took CRT while attending Harvard Law School, the senator said: “No, of course I did not take phonybaloney courses like critical race theory.”

Naturally, the fact Cotton avoided CRT courses makes him the perfect person to lecture the rest of us on the evils of this thing he knows nothing about.

Hungry for a more informed perspective, I sought out two law professors: one African American, one Latina.

My first call was to Randall Kennedy, a Harvard Law School professor and one of the nation’s leading African American legal scholars. In 1988, Kennedy taught me about “Race, Racism and American Law” in a course by that name.

“You have some people — the people on the right — who are basically trying to make CRT a good election gimmick,” he said. “They have created something that they call CRT. And it’s a good bogeyman. But the image that they’ve created of CRT … really doesn’t have any more substance than that.” Kennedy was on a roll. “Now, if we go back to when you were in my class, there was something called CRT then, and the critical race theorists had two central ideas that were perfectly plausible and sensible. One idea was simply that race and racism have been central in American life. Well, frankly, who can dispute that? And the second idea was that the reform of the Second Reconstruction’s anti-discrimination laws was, in and of itself, insufficient to create a truly just America. Again, that’s true.”

My next call was to Laura Gomez, a former college classmate. One of the few Mexican American law professors in the country, she teaches at UCLA School of Law, where she co-founded the Critical Race Studies Program. I asked my old friend to break down CRT. “Instead of seeing an act of racism or an act of discrimination as a one-off committed by a single bad or ignorant person against a single victim, critical race theory views racism as baked into American history and society,” she said.

Next, I asked Gomez why she thought the GOP had targeted the concept.

“I will give you three answers,” she said. “One is related to George Floyd. One is related to K-12 educators. And one is related to the right-wing sound basin.”

Floyd’s murder by police in May 2020 forced Americans to “really begin thinking about systemic racism,” Gomez explained. Meanwhile, she said, teachers and administrators were trained at schools of education imbued by “critical race studies.” And, finally, she noted, the issue is amplified by “right-wing foundations and the counter-media establishment who are keeping the controversy alive and making it part of the culture war.”

The war over CRT began in the 1970s. That’s when the late Harvard Law School Professor Derrick Bell and other legal scholars concluded the way to fix America was not to be colorblind, but color conscious. Only then can we have an honest conversation about race.

What a simple idea. And what a shame that, after all these years, some people still find it so frightening.