Crying, “Wolf!” The Campaign Against Critical Race Theory in American Public Schools as an Expression of Contemporary White Grievance in an Era of Fake News

Abstract

The recent fervor over Critical Race Theory (CRT) in American public schools is the result of a confluence of contributing factors including: an eroded news media apparatus operating within a capitalist framework where an increasing portion of the American populace consume news through hyper-partisan cable news networks and social media that comports with their individual ideological preference; the decrying of CRT in schools as the latest iteration of historically-reliable White Backlash; and a highly-effective conservative messaging apparatus skilled in fomenting White Rage based on disinformation. In this essay I will, first, briefly survey America’s collapsing contemporary news media industry before discussing contextualizing White Rage throughout American history. From there, I will transition the article’s focus to the modern conservative media machine pushing fake news highlighting the (non-existent) issue of CRT in primarily suburban public schools as an exemplification of White Rage to protect whiteness and its hegemony for political gain.