That’s a very good point — it’s important for an educator to define what they mean by a term, and ideally include some history about how the term is used so people can understand how the meaning may differ across time and across speakers.

However, other posters on Medium who say they know what CRT is and favor it also say that ideas from CRT are indeed on their way to being adopted by schools: https://medium.com/afrosapiophile/critical-race-theory-is-coming-to-a-school-near-you-32214fad6e04

And that the president of the National Education Association supports some version of it: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/critical-race-theory-teachers-union-president/ (which is less clear from this article than the claim seems to be in the poster’s characterization, but “[students should] have the opportunity to be those problem solvers we need them to be so we can confront the institutional racism that this country lives with every single day” was used by the president to argue against legislative bans on CRT.)

In another post, the same author writes, “Critical race theorists do believe, however, that traditional liberal movements have failed to deliver progress for Black people. Incrementalism and colorblind ideology has failed, so the natural progression is to focus on identities.” (https://readcultured.com/white-peoples-fear-of-critical-race-theory-is-based-in-ignorance-692de80ca5ad) But this is exactly the kind of view that Nathan is arguing against.

Another author writes, regarding CRT, “Although the dominant culture likes to tell us race has nothing to do with white people, critical race theory reminds us it does. […] White people have to take real action to rid our society of the white supremacy they inherited.” (https://aninjusticemag.com/critical-race-theory-defined-bb73da8efd68) Isn’t that an example of what Nathan objected to (“all the blame on whiteness”), and you said wasn’t actually CRT? (You can read the rest of that article to try to find some blame that isn’t on whiteness. I couldn’t find any.)

In “The Role of Critical Race Theory in Higher Education” by Payne Hiraldo (https://www.uvm.edu/~vtconn/v31/Hiraldo.pdf), he states that central tenets of CRT include “The permanence of racism suggests that racism controls the political, social, and economic realms of U.S. society. In CRT, racism is seen as an inherent part of American civilization, privileging White individuals over people of color in most areas of life” and “Due to the embedded racism in American society, Whiteness can be considered a property interest (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004). As a result, this notion operates on different levels. These include the right of possession, the right to use and enjoyment, the right to disposition, and the right of exclusion (DeCuir & Dixson; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1998). Historically, the idea of Whiteness as property has been perpetuated as an asset that only White individuals can possess.” (emphasis mine). Doesn’t this sound like an awful lot of focus on whiteness? Isn’t this what Nathan was saying was too much?

And so on. This is not classroom curricula — I am not privy to that — and much of it is on Medium, which doesn’t reflect the whole of reality. But you need to make a stronger case than you did that Nathan’s criticisms are completely misguided. He might not be talking about the positions argued by the seminal early thinkers in CRT — and arguably if he wants to be a top-notch educator in this area, he should at least reference them — but it does at least appear that he’s squarely addressing not merely the right-wing panic attack about “CRT”, but what supporters of CRT say about it.

Appearances could be deceptive, but again, you need to do more to demonstrate this convincingly. It seems like he’s actually talking about something that is recognizably CRT as used by self-styled supporters and possibly some academics.

Or you could argue that while Nathan might have a tolerable characterization of CRT’s perspective, he nonetheless is wrong in his criticisms. For instance, you might argue, “CRT focuses on whiteness so much because it actually is that big of a problem.” (Hopefully with some good evidence of such.)

Anyway, the bottom line is that it’s not a simple cut-and-dried thing like you made it sound. If you are right, it requires better documentation that you’re right. If you’re not precisely right…well…maybe a similar better-qualified statement would be right. As it stands, however, your criticism of Nathan seems unjustified, or at least not clearly justified.

Everyone with a heart should recognize that something is clearly wrong with some aspect of American society. Having a robust dialog about what, and how to fix it, and what role the educational system should play in that, is valuable for finding effective ways to improve. If Nathan’s actually just off-base, of course pointing it out is valuable; but be careful of too hastily shutting down perspectives that don’t align with yours, because that squelches the dialog and therefore is, I think, more likely to impede than accelerate progress.