Why won’t Republicans show the courage to condemn their party’s race-baiting?

Why won’t Republicans show the courage to condemn their party’s race-baiting?

Opinion by 

Paul Waldman

Columnist

June 24, 2021 at 2:15 a.m. GMT+9

Angry parents and community members protest after a Loudoun County School Board meeting was halted by the school board because the crowd refused to quiet down, in Ashburn, Va. on June 22. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Image without a caption

Imagine what would happen if a prominent Republican — an influential elected official, or a Fox News host — stood up and said this:

“Listen guys, this critical race theory stuff? C’mon. We all know it isn’t a threat to anyone’s children. It’s a relatively obscure academic theory that law students read about. It’s not being taught in anyone’s elementary school. How about we decide not to whip up a frenzy of race-baiting, and instead worry about what’s actually affecting people’s lives?”

It’s hard to imagine, because no important Republican has said that.

Instead, we get Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) declaring that critical race theory “is, in fact, very real. It is very influential. And it appears to have become the animating ideology of this administration.”

Story continues below advertisement

We get Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) thundering to a conservative crowd, “critical race theory is bigoted, it is a lie, and it is every bit as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets.”

All 50 Republican senators — even the alleged moderates — voted against Kiran Ahuja’s nomination to lead the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources office; as Hawley said, “I’m concerned Ms. Ahuja is a disciple of radical critical theorists” (spoiler alert: she isn’t).

Multiple Republican states have rushed to pass laws banning the teaching of critical race theory or anything that sounds like it. School boards are besieged with protesters angry over kids being taught things they aren’t actually being taught. Every Republican eyeing the White House in 2024 is posing as a courageous fighter against critical race theory.

Story continues below advertisement

The problem isn’t just the absurdity of the idea that there is no greater problem facing America than a theory laid out years ago in some law review articles. It’s also what this campaign is quite explicitly trying to accomplish.

That’s one of the ironies here: Republicans who never bothered to read anything about critical race theory say falsely that it “reduces every American, no matter their character or creed, to their racial identity alone” (that’s Hawley). Yet the whole point of their campaign is to convince white people that they’re oppressed because of their whiteness.

As we see so often, elite Republicans operate from the presumption that their supporters are easily manipulated rubes who can be worked into a frenzy by just about anything. And it’s hard to argue that they’re wrong.

Story continues below advertisement

Hawley went to Stanford and Yale Law, and clerked on the Supreme Court. Ted Cruz? Princeton and Harvard Law. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)? Yale and Harvard Law. These are smart guys. Nobody fooled them into believing what they’re saying. They know that what they’re pouring into the ears of the Republican base is a toxic stew of lies and demagoguery.

So when you see a grown woman holding a sign outside a school board meeting that says “Kids aren’t born racist,” you can almost sympathize with her. If I believed someone was teaching my kids that they were born racist, I might be upset too. But no one is teaching her kids that. She believes it because that’s what someone on Fox News told her, or she heard a Republican politician say it, or she got it from some right-wing website. Or all three.

And there’s a nifty if well-worn rhetorical move Republicans are using here: They insist that any discussion of systemic racism is itself racist against white people.

Story continues below advertisement

Cruz says that “if someone has a different color skin,” critical race theory “seeks to make us hate that person.” In a debate over his bill to forbid teaching that the United States or Louisiana is “systematically racist or sexist,” one Louisiana legislator said critical race theory “furthers racism and fuels hate.”

I could point out that the central assertion of critical race theory is that racism doesn’t have to exist within individual hearts because it is built into systems and institutions. But who would that persuade?

Not the Republican base, because they’ve already been convinced that there’s only one kind of racism left in America: racism against white people.

Story continues below advertisement

A recent poll by the progressive organization Civiqs found that only 16 percent of Republicans agreed that “people of color in America face discrimination and unfair treatment based on race.” Among people who watch Fox News frequently it was just 9 percent. But 54 percent of Republicans and 65 percent of frequent Fox News viewers agreed with the statement, “White people in America face discrimination and unfair treatment based on race.”

According to this bizarro worldview, this Post story about how home appraisers regularly undervalue homes owned by Black people does not illustrate ongoing racism in housing, because such discrimination can’t possibly exist. Having high school students read the article, on the other hand, would constitute racism, against white people, because the facts contained therein are “divisive.”

There may be dissent within the GOP these days about some things, like whether Donald Trump was merely the greatest president in history or was literally anointed by God to save America. But there are no Republicans, at least not yet, who will call out this shamelessly dishonest race-baiting for what it is. They all seem to have decided that white resentment and fear are just too important to their party.