Republicans Are Giddy. But Democrats Aren’t Helpless.
Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow and a self-identified brawler, takes full credit for turning critical race theory into a political wedge issue.
In a March 15 Twitter thread, Rufo declared:
Rufo has been described as “a right-wing Leninist” by the conservative British website Unherd, which took note of Rufo’s assertion that:
Fox News did its part.
In the 11 months from January 2020 to February 2021, Fox referred to critical race theory — which has come to be known as C.R.T. -— 164 times, according to the liberal advocacy group Media Matters. In the subsequent three and a half months, from May through mid-August, as the gubernatorial contest in Virginia intensified, the number of on-air references shot up to more than 1,900.
As many have noted, there is little or no evidence that Virginia public schools actually teach critical race theory — although James F. Lane, the state superintendent of public instruction, included “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo and “Foundations of Critical Race Theory in Education” in his February 2019 recommended reading list.
But the fact that critical race theory is not formally part of the curriculum is somewhat beside the point. There is clear evidence that this issue touched a nerve across a wide swath of the electorate, evidence that suggests that C.R.T. can simultaneously be a Republican dog whistle and a significant political liability for the Democratic Party. Fox News raised the salience of C.R.T., but it resonated beyond the network’s viewers.
Take the conclusions drawn by Crooked Media, a “progressive media network” founded by Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett and Tommy Vietor, former top aides to President Barack Obama, and Change Media, a pro-Democratic advertising agency. Together, they conducted a poll of 1,653 likely Virginia voters on Aug. 17-21 that produced worrisome results for Democrats, a warning of what was to come.
Under the headline “Republican Messages,” the two groups’ reported that “Hot button issues like critical race theory and the rise of socialism are commonly spouted on right-wing media outlets, but this new poll shows that these issues are breaking through to the broader electorate and keeping the race close.”
It’s tempting, the authors continued,
A survey conducted on behalf of two conservative groups earlier in the campaign reached strikingly similar conclusions. Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm, surveyed 400 voters in early June in two Northern Virginia counties — Fairfax and Loudon — that have proven crucial to Democratic victories in the past. The survey was done for N2 America, a group “committed to promoting and supporting center-right policies and ideas,” and Fight For Schools, which describes its mission as “We Fight Against Implementing Critical Race Theory Concepts In Our Schools.”
This is from the Public Opinion Strategies report on the survey:
The survey also reported strong opposition to proposals to eliminate school programs that reveal or display achievement gaps:
“By an overwhelming margin (72-17), voters in these two key suburban counties oppose eliminating advanced math courses in Virginia public schools until the 11th grade” and “fully 62 percent of Fairfax and Loudoun County voters oppose eliminating the use of advanced diplomas for all public-school students, even high performing students.”
The N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund is sharply critical of conservative attacks on C.R.T.:
Youngkin found a way of raising the racially loaded issue, telling audiences:
Youngkin wound this peroration up with an applause line: “So let me be clear, on day one, we will not have political agendas in the classroom and I will ban critical race theory.”
These themes structured the Youngkin campaign. In a revealing postelection interview with Politico’s Ryan Lizza, Jeff Roe and Kristin Davison, two top Youngkin strategists, outlined their campaign plan, which included, but was certainly not limited to, highlighting critical race theory:
“One of our first advertising pieces in the general election — and one of the first things we hammered on — was that the Thomas Jefferson School in Northern Virginia had lowered their academic standards. It was then literally the first stop,” Roe said, moving on to describe the goal of uniting under the Republican banner seemingly disparate constituencies:
Achieving this goal received an unexpected lift from Terry McAuliffe’s now notorious gaffe during a Sept. 28 debate:
As Davison recounted the story to Lizza:
Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins, captured the problem with a common progressive analysis of the Virginia election in “You Can’t Win Elections by Telling Voters Their Concerns Are Imaginary,” a Nov. 3 Atlantic essay — the idea that “Youngkin, an extremist posing in the garb of a suburban dad, was able to incite ‘white backlash’ by exploiting ‘fake’ and ‘imaginary’ fears about the teaching of ‘critical race theory’ in public schools.”
The truth, Mounk continued, “is rather different. Youngkin capitalized on a widespread public perception that Democrats are out of tune with the country on cultural issues.”
The idea that critical race theory is an academic concept that is taught only at colleges or law schools, Mounk continued, “might be technically accurate, but the reality on the ground is a good deal more complicated.” He noted that “across the nation, many teachers have, over the past years, begun to adopt a pedagogical program that owes its inspiration to ideas that are very fashionable on the academic left, and that go well beyond telling students about America’s copious historical sins.”
In some elementary and middle schools, Mounk wrote,
While just under half of respondents (49 percent) described themselves as very or extremely familiar with critical race theory in a June Fox News poll, the theory, and arguments based on it, have become commonplace throughout much of American culture.
On Sept. 9, 2020, for example, Larry Merlo, then the chief executive of CVS, held a “Company Town Hall,” at which he invited Ibram X. Kendi to lead “a discussion on what it means to be antiracist.” Merlo asked Kendi to explain “what it means to be a racist.”
Kendi replied:
The Racial Equity Institute offers programs lasting from 18 months to two years to battle racism, “a fierce, ever-present, challenging force, one which has structured the thinking, behavior and actions of individuals and institutions since the beginning of U.S. history.”
The institute, which cites the work of scholars like Kendi, Tema Okun and Richard Delgado, lists more than 270 clients including corporations, colleges and schools, foundations, hospitals and health care facilities, liberal advocacy groups and social service providers.
There is no concise agreed-upon definition of critical race theory. Kendi, a professor of history and the founder of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, is a leading proponent. He described key elements in a July 21 interview with Brian Lehrer on WNYC:
More controversially, Kendi argues that many people delude themselves when they say they are not racist. “I think most people across the world are taught to believe — and believe themselves — to be not racist,” Kendi told the Guardian in an August 2019 interview. “I don’t think people realize that when they self-identify as ‘not racist,’ they’re essentially identifying in the same way as white supremacists.” The term “‘not racist’ not only has no meaning,” he continued, “but it also connotes that there is this sort of in-between safe space sideline that a person can be on, when there is no neutrality. We’re either all being racist or anti-racist.”
DiAngelo, writing in “White Fragility,” agrees with Kendi:
In “The economic state of Black America: What is and what could be,” the management consulting firm McKinsey reports that African Americans face “gaps in representation, wages, education, business ownership and more.” It’s not hard to see why many who are affected by or sympathetic to the people who are affected by the social and economic disadvantages plaguing African Americans find systemic racism a plausible culprit. Nonetheless, the immediate political question is this: How should Democrats deal with the “weaponization” of critical race theory?
I asked Anat Shenker-Osorio, a California-based communications consultant who specializes in the development of progressive messaging, especially in techniques to counter conservative and Republican campaign themes. Her reply by email:
There are, she continued, “proven ways to best right wing divide-in-order-to-conquer strategies”:
Randall Kennedy, a law professor at Harvard, had a harder edge in his emailed reply to my inquiry: “Democratic candidates should deal seriously and forthrightly with the cultural issues that clearly concern many voters.”
Learning, he continued,
Ultimately, Kennedy argued, Democrats need to articulate a complex set of principles:
I agree.
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