BY HARVEY J. GRAFF

Great debates about critical race theory “rage” at all levels—including school boards, state legislatures, and national politics—we are told. As I have argued in the Columbus Dispatch, Inside Higher Ed, and Washington Monthly, and as others have pointed out, there is in fact no real debate, because there are no real issues. The “critics” of what they misrepresent as “critical race theory” lie about its contents and orientation. This constitutes the second “big lie.”

Right-wing attackers inaccurately present critical race theory as a universal problem. Yet it is a field of study and teaching predominantly in law schools. The attackers are obsessed with and opposed to teaching about race, racism, and slavery, especially in K–12 schools. The selection of “critical race theory” as a force of evil is a marketing strategy that has impact. This focus also limits understanding of the development of critical race theory in the mid-to-late 1970s, especially by legal scholars Derrick Bell at Harvard and Kimberlé Crenshaw at UCLA.

A retrospective to the 1970s and later provides context, although it is interpreted differently by conflicting camps. In most discourse, the relevance of critical race theory to a range of compelling, longer-term issues is muddled. This lens is too short. The field of play is all of American history with race, racial relationships, and slavery at its center. Right-wing campaigns to deny that—like senators Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley raging that critical race theory is like KKK lynchings, and is itself racist—are laughable, except when they mislead others. The radical misrepresentation of the 1619 Project is one powerful example.

We must expand our focus to the post-World War II era and the emergence of civil rights movements. At the center is the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate is not equal.” The white counter-thrust that accelerated after the mid-1960s civil and voting rights legislation laid the ground for organized, well-funded, right-wing activist resistance movements.

I call this resistance the new “white fright and flight.” Understanding its development provides a missing context for comprehending the seemingly sudden eruption of the nondebate over critical race theory. Rooted in fears and anxieties, it is easily manipulated by propagandists. Today, dark-money-funded, nationally organized campaigns dominate the attacks on teaching about race.

The major players are Heritage Action, 1776 Project, and Citizens for American Renewal. They provide dishonest scripts for the fearful to follow, from sample legislation for state legislators to instructions on how to disrupt a school board. Tracking the small number of reported incidents shows that Republican state legislators and a handful of parents providing testimony never present their children’s personal experience or other direct evidence. They follow the scripts.

Subterfuge sparked the fears and resentments developed over the previous half century and more, reactions on which Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, and the Trumpists drew. Less known are the intersecting roles of school and residential desegregation and their exaggeration, on one hand, and neighborhood change, minority residential deconcentration, and white and later minority suburbanization, on the other. Conflicts over zoning regulation and deregulation—including redlining, opportunity zones, and battles over fair and alternative housing—are also part of the story. They literally paved the way to the present just as they damaged the physical and cultural infrastructure. Seldom noted, these are systemic institutional and legal impetuses that prompted the development of critical race theory. The United States has come full circle.

White fright and flight are inextricably connected to today’s fears about public discussions of race. They deny the centrality of race and slavery, and our incomplete experiment with democracy. They contribute to baseless allegations that any mentions of racism or race “shame” or “blame” whites and “hold them responsible” for racism and slavery, even if they are only part of the distant past. False allegations stimulate fear and resentment and further exacerbate racism. Documented rising currents of white supremacy, deluded notions of “replacement theory,” and fears of the reality that whites are becoming a minority population follow.

White resistance takes many forms. White flight begins with physical movement. Limiting of neighborhood and classroom integration results from many factors. Such resistance in turn provides the grounds for today’s unconstitutional campaigns to “ban” critical race theory or, in effect, teaching about race in schools.

From the 1960s on, fear, flight, and fight have filled court dockets, legislative agendas, and school board sessions and elections. They link battles over “forced” busing and the historic shift toward the long-prohibited use of public monies for private and parochial schooling. Inseparable are gate-keeping entrance exams for advanced schools, “school choice,” and unrestricted use of vouchers. Ever-shifting subdivision and school district lines, affirmative action as threat and reality, and expansion of charter schools and homeschooling combine. Exaggerated, fleeting minority gains are seen as white losses, as in a zero-sum game.

Today’s efforts differ because they are nationally organized by ideologically driven activist groups that bombard the media. Many journalists and opinion writers, including those in the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, are fooled into unwarranted assumptions and make false equivalences.

Our historical moment is a backlash against several decades of civil rights victories, however incomplete, and the racist response to Barack Obama. This was stoked by Republicans who screamed “birtherism” and demanded his birth certificate. Trump’s election of 2016 initiated four years of racial divisiveness.

Today’s campaigns are more dishonest than those of their predecessors. Campaigns of disinformation are boundless. Perhaps the best example is Christopher Rufo. Rufo, who has no scholarly or journalistic credentials, is the darling of Fox’s Tucker Carlson. Supported by the Manhattan Institute, he makes endless appearances and publishes “opinion essays.” Rufo is proudly ignorant and publicly admits to fabricating quotations to incite public outrage. For the record, critical race theory is not Marxist nor rooted in “critical theory” or radicalism (all of which are distinct). 

White fear and flight underlie the resistance to teaching about race. They deny history, and the ability to learn from it. They fight against the open teaching and learning of accurate and inclusive American history that embraces achievements and shortcomings. This is a radical rejection of the common knowledge and, for the young, the maturity that democracy demands.

We must join together to build commonality, maturity, and truth in the face of unprecedented antidemocratic and un-American reactionism.

Harvey J. Graff is professor emeritus of English and History at the Ohio State University. He is the author of many books on social history. He writes and speaks widely on critical race theory and related issues.