Critical race theory is explicitly incompatible with liberal solutions to racial inequality such as meritocracy and non-discrimination. CRT's solution to racism is to recreate every personal and civic interaction into one that is explicitly race conscious, which is an idea incongruent with American principles and law.
There is no such thing as true meritocracy unless every child starts off on an equal playing field from day one.
I don't disagree with you, per se. But that isn't the Critical Race Theorist's point. CRT would argue that the very system/process of "meritocracy" reinforces and perpetuates White supremacy; that, even if you had children enter a meritocratic system on "an equal playing field", the structure will inherently replicate racial inequality unless "White privilege" is explicitly corrected for. Do you agree with that?