You've been lied to before, and you'll be lied to again.

#madpridewasright

Do I have this right, it's the acknowledgement of systemic racism, but rebranded since systemic racism has always been pretty much just shrugged off, so they needed a new name so the idea isn't immediately dismissed since that how it's been forever?

It's not a rebranding so much as a decades old academic approach to looking at the how legislation and the legal system specifically created the concept of whiteness and maintains its supposed supremacy through historical legal presidence. If anything, the rebranding is happening as the right wingers try to label anything regarding criticism of racism or "wokeness" as CRT. They basically dusted off a college level course and gave it the boogieman treatment akin to 'anything i don't like is socialism', but we're watching the creation of it happen in realtime.

Exactly! Just like 'socialism' is an umbrella for anything that doesn't tow pure capitalist hard-line the 'critical race theory' is being used to label any race-related issues. Both concepts being reasonably broad in scope, reasonably hard to explain in detail, and poorly understood by the audience that's highly susceptible to scare mongering tactics by mostly right-wing leaning media houses.