The right is panicking over critical race theory

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

(CNN)The moral panic around critical race theory, an academic legal framework for analyzing structural racism, reached a new level on Glenn Beck's radio show on Monday. Beck, who specializes in dreaming up bogeymen intent on destroying the United States, warned his audience that critical race theory was coming for everything that defines American culture. "Baseball: unwatchable because of critical race," he said, before teasing an upcoming segment on its attacks on another American institution: "Wait until you hear the critical race theory on apple pie that has just come out — it's unbelievable."

Much of the hysteria on the right about critical race theory is unbelievable, but quite a few people believe it all the same. "Critical Race Theory" has become the song of the summer for right-wing media and politicians, the one they're playing on repeat, returning to it when they've got nothing else on tap. And while there's nothing particularly novel about this particular moral panic, it is serving a useful political purpose: arguing about critical race theory shifts the conversation away from the continued consequences of structural racism.

That conversation opens up challenging issues about equity, affirmative action, reparations, and government intervention to dismantle racist systems — all of which face significant opposition from the right — and can only hurt a Republican Party that has grown dependent on the politics of White racial grievance.

We know that because right-wing media have attempted to use critical race theory as a cudgel before. That previous effort, which occurred in 2012 and was ginned up largely by the website Breitbart News, fell flat because it was not tied to a larger debate about racism. Instead, it was part of an effort to damage President Barack Obama during his reelection campaign by tying him to the founder of critical race theory, Derrick Bell.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/18/opinions/critical-race-theory-right-wing-moral-panic-hemmer/index.html

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Sigh: I see these names that one day before I croak, they will have vanished: Breitbart, Beck

Limbaugh, Falwell, and on and on.

[rsdsharp]

2. They're not panicking. They're celebrating.

They are using it as a wedge issue. Six months ago, virtually no one had heard of CRT. Now they are turning an academic issue into a scary boogie man for the “poorly educated.”

[Crunchy Frog]

3. They're cynically using it to whip up the rubes.

The rubes panic about whatever they're told to.

[The Blue Flower]

4. If it wasn't cry, it would be something else

These things always backfire because of the kind of people who believe them.

[lees1975]

5. Ignorance of CRT/I is everywhere

[link:https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2021/06/so-you-never-heard-of-critical-race.html|

Interesting that attempts to rescind a resolution on CRT/I passed by Southern Baptists in 2019 made by the "Fundamentalist-Trumpie" element within the denomination met with defeat when they met in Nashville this past week. Not saying that the SBC is headed toward any kind of genuine spiritual revival but they prevented what would have been the almost complete exodus of all of their predominantly African American churches had they done something different.