Conservatives, Critical Race Theory and the Trans Panic
The current conservative panic is part of a larger right-wing ideological plan
The recent debate about the inclusion of Critical Race Theory (CRT, for those not online) in various classrooms from middle school through post-secondary is one of the hottest talking points currently in the right’s discourse. A recent viral video (signal-boosted by Newsmax host and incredibly unhinged Twitter presence Greg Kelly) showcases an EdBoard showdown: a parent named Tatiana railing against her school district’s supposed “indoctrination” of students, teaching them to “go out and kill police officers” (if only [satire]). While Critical Race Theory is often also derided by leftists, it is melting the brains of conservatives, simply by having teachers make banal statements like Black Lives Matter or affirming students’ personal pronouns. A large portion of the online left could benefit from some CRT, sure, but this CRT must also be rooted in material analysis.
The good news is that Purdue’s Writing Lab defines Critical Race Theory as “a theoretical and interpretive mode that examines the appearance of race and racism across dominant cultural modes of expression,” which seems very reasonable in a country scarred and founded in the oppression and exploitation of non-whites. And this analysis is also intersectional, examining “work by writers like Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others studying law, feminism, and post-structuralism,” variable, adaptable, and powerful in its analysis. Opponents of CRT claim that it is nothing more than identity politics, but, as Purdue’s Writing Lab elucidates, “CRT scholars do not only locate an individual’s identity and experience of the world in his or her racial identifications but also their membership to a specific class, gender, nation, sexual orientation, etc.” Critical race theory is simply another lens (to use a term philosophers and literature scholars alike despise) with which to examine myriad cultural artifacts and expressions.
So, the watered-down version that is being now taught to students in middle school, which, to be clear, is nothing more than affirming Black Lives Matter and teaching children about the reality of trans people’s existence, is
not really CRT
not harmful to a child’s development
Why this is becoming a huge deal for conservatives, however, is a deeper and more sinister ideological project. Now that gay marriage has been constitutional for almost six years, conservatives are fighting a new culture war, and have been for a while. North Carolina’s bathroom bill was one of the first major pieces of anti-trans legislation in the country, and now increasingly new bills focused on bathrooms, high school sports, and even doctors’ rights to treat trans children have been cropping up at an alarming rate. After what many on the right view as the “uprisings” or the “riots” last summer, many of those conservatives have devolved into outright fascists and conspiracy theorists. Theories like the Great Replacement that were once crackpot messageboards’ domain are now being repeated and promulgated by parents (shoutout my mom!) and even congresspeople. These confluences have played into this right-wing terror ideology of being under siege at all times. For to conserve in the first place is to fight back against the changes of the time in favor of “tradition” and historical precedent.
This of course ignores the reality that everything, our conception of history included, is socially constructed, and usually constructed by those in power. Conservatives have been able to shape the perception of every historical event, from the Civil War to the Cold War, with biased textbooks that overshadow the contributions of the Soviet Union in World War II, downplay the literal genocide of the Korean peninsula by the United States in the 1950s, and erase the true horrors, terror, and destruction of a continent during the slave trade. Critical Race Theory is just one means of righting the wrong perceptions that have perpetuated throughout United States history throughout the course of its sordid and terrorizing history.