How The Rise Of White Identity Politics Explains The Fight Over Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory is quickly becoming the Republican Partys favorite culture-war cudgel.
From April to mid-July, Fox News mentioned it nearly 2,000 times, per Media Matters, a left-leaning media watchdog that tracks right-leaning media outlets. In fact, since February, mentions of the theory have more than doubled month-over-month on Fox News with prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Ted Cruz, all railing against it.
The attacks arent merely rhetorical, either. According to a July report from the Brookings Institute, eight states (Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Iowa, New Hampshire, Arizona and South Carolina) have passed laws banning critical race theory-related content from being taught in schools. Similar legislation has been introduced in over a dozen other state capitols.
Few Americans can define what critical race theory actually is an academic framework that originated among legal scholars in the 1970s to help explain how racism permeates American institutions but its not surprising that it has emerged as a bogeyman on the political right. Increasingly, the Republican base is politically animated by white racial grievances, which is a major reason why misrepresentations of critical race theory every white person is racist or certain children are inherently bad people because of their skin color have found such a receptive audience. After all, many of the same grievances helped fuel Trumps rise.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-rise-of-white-identity-politics-explains-the-fight-over-critical-race-theory/