Embracing wokeness is electoral Kryptonite for Biden’s Democrats
Most American voters do not want their children indoctrinated in neoracism and hatred of themselves and their country
The race for the governorship of Virginia took on a peculiar significance this week. The shock success of the Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin, was immediately seen as not just an early verdict on Joe Biden’s presidency. It was swiftly interpreted as a referendum on a formerly obscure activist-academic theory that has recently gripped the US public.
Critical Race Theory (CRT) emerged from the American universities from the 1970s onwards and is, by the admission of its own founders, a social movement as much as it is a theory. It argues for re-evaluating absolutely everything in life through the lens of race. Where race is not an obvious factor, racism is said to be hidden in “structures of oppression” and more. CRT focuses on solving this by “problematising” and otherwise lambasting “whiteness”, which is seen to be the source of all evils.
If it sounds like this might not work in theory, you would be correct. But it works even less well in practice, because when you try to teach or otherwise embed CRT in your school, this is no abstract thing. Contrary to the claims of its supporters, it is not simply about educating children on history. It specifically aims to target white people. Which means problematising and targeting white children. Oddly enough, the American public does not like this.
Youngkin’s campaign was successful for a number of reasons. One was that he deftly and impressively trod around the trillion-dollar question of Donald Trump. Youngkin neither denounced Trump nor sought to be endorsed by him. Republican politicians across the country will have been looking on with keen interest.
But the campaign was also successful because Youngkin focused part of his attention on the hugely galvanising issue of CRT. Across the country, school boards have spent recent months trying to defend the teaching of CRT. In the minds of parents, this movement has been correctly conjoined with other social issues of the American “progressive” Left, especially the issue of transgender ideology.
In Loudoun County, Virginia, there have been especially wild scenes at school-board meetings. Parents have been carted off by the police after questioning school authorities. They have even been described as “domestic terrorists”. There is naturally some disgruntlement about this. And so opponents of CRT have recently undertaken a deliberate drive to get on school boards and prevent its wider dissemination. This has happened across the country, but Virginia has been a focal point of public attention.
Now that they have been subjected to daylight, CRT’s proponents have responded in a number of ways. They have argued that parents are seeing a mirage; that CRT does not exist. They have also argued that CRT does exist, but it is not what its opponents say it is. Some say CRT should be taught in schools. Others say that it is not being taught, but that it should be.
The fact that these positions are contradictory has not stopped Democrat lawmakers asserting all of them. Simultaneously. But parents are understandably fired up about the issue, something Youngkin used to good advantage. “There is no place for CRT in our school system,” he said, promising to “ban it” on day one.
How have the Democrats responded? Their media machine has had great fun passing around a video of one elderly voter who says he wants to ban CRT in schools, but when interrogated cannot explain precisely what the theory in question is. The fact that in defeat the Democrats have been reduced to this suggests that they may be failing to learn anything at all from the past week. And this is a significant test for the midterms next year.
If the party is run by moderates, then they will realise that CRT is political kryptonite. It doesn’t matter whether every voter has read every text of these unreadable theorists and activists. All that matters is they understand it is a divisive ideology being pumped into the heads of their children. Moderate Democrats ought to rein in the CRT crowd and other assorted race-baiters on the far-Left of their party. But the response to the defeat in Virginia this week suggests that they may yet double down on another claim. Which is that opposition to CRT is yet another sign of “racism”, and that the American public is not just racist, but stupid too.
Perhaps rising US employment figures will help pave over some of the governing party’s ideological excesses. Or perhaps they won’t. But regardless of whether the economy improves, most American voters do not want their children indoctrinated in neoracism and hatred of themselves and their country. Most still want to think well of themselves, and would like their leaders to think well of them, too. The fate of the Democrats rests on whether they recognise this fact, or resent it.