Critical race theory has simply become the latest tool.
Right-wing politics in America is exhausted, out of ideas on how we should proceed and progress as a country, so instead they focus on maintenance: How can power and influence be maintained in its current form — white-controlled, largely by straight white men — or, how can we revert to a time in which they had even more power?
This is done by whipping up hysteria in the base about something, anything, that threatens to bring about fuller inclusion of more people and an expansion of rights.
This attack on critical race theory is no different than the rush during the Obama administration by states to ban Shariah law in state courts, even though there was absolutely no threat that Shariah law would be recognized or used in those courts. This is simply an extension of the Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim conspiracy and the backlash to his presence in the White House.
In fact, in the Republican primaries to challenge Obama in his re-election bid, Republican candidates were falling all over themselves to condemn Shariah law. However, in the 2016 primaries, the anti-Shariah law crusade died down. In its place, Trump vowed to ban Muslims from entering the country.
The freakout about critical race theory is also not dissimilar from the ongoing attack on trans people, particularly people who were assigned male at birth. First came the introduction of a wave of “bathroom bills” that made it a crime to use a bathroom designated for a sex different from the sex you were assigned at birth. Most of these bills failed.
Now states are moving to ban trans girls and women from participating in high school and college sports, although this is not really an issue. As Larry Strauss, a USA Today columnist, pointed out in April:
“In the more than eight years since the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) began allowing high school athletes to compete as the gender with which they identify — regardless of what they were assigned at birth — there has not been a single case in which a trans female athlete has been dominant enough to stir protest.”
Just like these initiatives that Republicans whipped up to rail against were by and large not a problem, but rather a wandering outrage in search of a problem, critical race theory is not a problem.
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