Photo courtesy of The Hill
In the days since the November 2, 2021 elections, the long-standing, popular media outlets, Fox News and CNN, have been vigorously debating reasons that lead to the Virginia Gubernatorial race “upset” of Democrat Terry McAuliffe by Republican Glenn Youngkin. The wildest claim is that McAuliffe was undone by the latest conservative disinformation campaign centered around the purely academic exercise of Critical Race Theory (CRT).
CRT was created in the 1970s and 80s from the hallowed halls of academia, predominantly law schools. It theorized that racism was so endemic and institutionalized that it permeated all aspects of the legal field, from laws and decisions, to any race-related reforms. “Critical race theory is a practice. It’s an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that ‘what’s in the past is in the past’, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” said critical race theorist and law professor at UCLA and Columbia University, Kimberlé Crenshaw. However, contrary to the idea used by anti-CRT advocates, it is not part of the curriculum currently being taught in Virginia public schools.
Following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other senseless killings of Black Americans by police officers, CRT was used as a lens through which a national reckoning about race relations might be viewed. Crenshaw said Floyd’s murder led to “so many corporations and opinion-shaping institutions making statements about structural racism — creating a new, broader anti-racist alignment, or at least the potential for one.” In fact, before the 2020 election, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scheduled CRT training, which was promptly cancelled by President Trump because, as his administration said, it was “divisive, anti-American propaganda.” However, the current Biden administration seems more receptive to CRT and has begun promoting programs to address systemic racism and the legacy of slavery in the U.S.
Chris Rufo, a noted advocate against teaching CRT in schools, cited the “mention” of CRT on the Department of Education website as justification to, as Rufo explained, “[build] the most sophisticated political movement in America.” Additional evidence he provided for his claim were the works of Abolitionist Teaching Network co-founder, Bettina Love, who wrote, “Lastly, teachers must embrace theories such as critical race theory, settler colonialism, Black feminism, dis/ability, critical race studies, and other critical theories, that have the ability to interrogate anti-Blackness.”
How did a Republican primary candidate viewed as a puppet of former President Donald Trump P’00, emerge to win the Virginia general election? In 1995, political scientist Chris Wlezien introduced as a political model the term thermostatic, where the American electorate adjusts the thermostat whenever the temperature of the political environment is too hot or too cold for their liking. As a result, during non-presidential election cycles, such as this last election cycle, the pendulum swings back and forth depending on which party is in power; those out of power galvanize their members and rail against those in power.
Although Virgina has a long history of voting against an incumbent president’s party in off-year and midterm elections, a Republican has not won state-wide since 2011. While Northern Virginia is typically blue and the rest of Virginia generally bleeds red, Virginia moderates of either party are integral to winning a state-wide election. According to exit polls, moderate Republican voters that were put off by Trump and thus voted for Biden in 2020, came back to the fold. Youngkin, eschewing Trump’s support in the final stages of the campaign, rallied the moderates and doubled down on education, lowering taxes, safety, and law enforcement.
In an interview with The New Yorker, Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics’ senior elections analyst said, “If we had seen a massive swing in Loudoun County, which was ground zero for the Critical Race Theory issue, that would suggest the Republicans have an issue they can latch on to and use to really pound the Democrats in the midterms … but, for now, it looks like if Republicans are going to win, it will be by virtue of not being in power, rather than having some agenda the public is lining up behind.”
For Virginia’s more moderate voters, the election last week of its next governor appears to have been a purely Wlezien temperature-adjusting exercise, and not some new conservative roadmap based on Rufo-inspired anti-CRT rhetoric.
