Critical Race Theory: Backlash Is Real

Returning once again to the shallow well from which she has pulled the majority of her journalistic water, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer suggested last week that the escalating pushback against critical race theory “has all the red flags of an dark money astroturf campaign.” We are stuck, it seems, in Stage One of the Kübler-Ross Scale of Progressive Political Grief.

If they wish to, figures such as Mayer can spend the next few years insisting that the resistance to critical race theory that we are seeing from parents across the country is little more than a mirage. Fingers firmly in ears, they can maintain that their detractors have invented the controversy from whole cloth, that an astroturfing effort by the Koch Brothers or the Manhattan Institute has tricked them, or that their objections ring hollow because they don’t know what critical race theory “actually” is. Sneering, scoffing, and laughing off the revolt, they can submit in anger that those complaining about the development are suffering from “white fragility” or are engaged in a “moral panic” or are just trying desperately to prevent their kids from learning about slavery and civil rights.

About the Author

Charles C. W. Cooke

Charles C. W. Cooke is a senior editor at National Review and the host of The Charles C. W. Cooke Podcast.

Featured Tags

Returning once again to the shallow well from which she has pulled the majority of her journalistic water, The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer suggested last week that the escalating pushback against critical race theory “has all the red flags of an dark money astroturf campaign.” We are stuck, it seems, in Stage One of the Kübler-Ross Scale of Progressive Political Grief.

If they wish to, figures such as Mayer can spend the next few years insisting that the resistance to critical race theory that we are seeing from parents across the country is little more than a mirage. Fingers firmly in ears, they can maintain that their detractors have invented the controversy from whole cloth, that an astroturfing effort by the Koch Brothers or the Manhattan Institute has tricked them, or that their objections ring hollow because they don’t know what critical race theory “actually” is. Sneering, scoffing, and laughing off the revolt, they can submit in anger that those complaining about the development are suffering from “white fragility” or are engaged in a “moral panic” or are just trying desperately to prevent their kids from learning about slavery and civil rights.