GOP hysterics about ‘wokeness’ aren’t attracting voters

GOP hysterics about ‘wokeness’ aren’t attracting voters

Jennifer Rubin — Read time: 4 minutes

A fleet of pundits will tell you the real problem for Democrats is that they talk too much about race and want to impose their “wokeness” on others. This supposedly provides the justification for book banning and prohibiting “critical race theory" in schools (even though it isn’t taught to kids).

As it turns out, the public is much more progressive on matters of race than Republicans and those pundits believe. Two polls suggest the public doesn’t like what Republicans are peddling.

A poll from Christopher Newport University’s Wason Center for Civic Leadership in Virginia reports, “Voters support teaching how racism continues to impact American society (63% to 33%) and oppose a ban on the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools (57% to 35%).” That might explain in part why Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who moved to ban such education, is so unpopular.

That poll does not seem to be an outlier. CBS News reports on a poll it conducted with YouGov: “Large majorities — more than eight in 10 — don’t think books should be banned from schools for discussing race and criticizing U.S. history, for depicting slavery in the past or more broadly for political ideas they disagree with.” Whites, Blacks and parents all agree. So do more than 80 percent of Republicans. Moreover, CBS reports, “Four in 10 believe teaching about race in America makes people more racially tolerant today, too, well outpacing the few who think it does the opposite.”

Despite trying to gin up public outrage on critical race theory, Republicans haven’t succeeded in raising awareness on it. Most voters have heard little or nothing about it, CBS reports; those who are more familiar with it are more likely to be conservatives. A plurality thinks schools teach too little about Black American history.

You're following Jennifer Rubin‘s opinionsFollowing

The CBS-YouGov poll also found that three-quarters of its respondents said that “public schools should be allowed to teach about ideas and historical events that might make some students uncomfortable.” More than 60 percent of Republicans say the same. And unlike the racial amnesiacs in the GOP, more than 70 percent of Americans think racism historically has been a major problem in the United States. Fifty-eight percent think it still is.

So have Republicans been barking up the wrong tree? Are Democrats tearing their hair out about their party being too “woke” freaking out over nothing? The data certainly contradicts the conventional wisdom. It also casts recent events into new light, such as the recall of San Francisco school board members who were criticized for being too focused on racial justice.

As a preliminary matter, don’t confuse the genuine frustration among parents over school closures during the pandemic with the cultural wedge issues that right-wing media and MAGA politicians cook up. Democrats may have been tone-deaf as to the former, but it does not mean voters have bought into Republicans’ extreme ideas on schooling. Democrats in San Francisco infuriated parents by attempting to rename schools when they should have been figuring out how to reopen them. These are not parents seeking to ban books or bastardize history.

Rather than run away from these issues, Democrats need to go on the offense. That means talking about the concerns of real voters — crime, missed schooling, inflation — and explaining that Republicans are embracing a radical, bizarre agenda that offers no practical solutions on these issues. Just look at the 11-point plan drawn up by Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that devotes pages to made-up racial issues. Scott emphasized that the plan was his alone, not the committee’s. Still, tell me again which party is obsessed with race?

Democrats also need to embrace values that Americans hold dear — democracy, fairness, opportunity and empathy. Democrats have been the pro-family party, trying to help working parents and make child-rearing less expensive. They need to be unabashed patriots (unlike Republicans defending armed insurrectionists and rooting for the Russian dictator) and defenders of American values.

Finally, Democrats should move to recapture the education issue. They supported funding to reopen schools in the American Rescue Plan; Republicans uniformly opposed it. Democrats want to pay teachers more, extend education to pre-K and teach accurate U.S. history. Republicans oppose all these. Instead, Republicans have sought to ban a book about the Holocaust, make life miserable for LGBTQ kids and create a litigation industry for parents to sue schools. Democrats should skewer Republicans on their politicization of education.

Democrats have been thrown on the defense by a party of trolls who seek to scare and infuriate the GOP base. Democrats need to respond by expressing solidarity with Americans’ values and devise real solutions to their concerns.