Misleading Media Coverage Has Made Critical Race Theory Debate Angrier and Less Honest

By Frederick M. Hess

Tuesday, November 09, 2021

 

Last week, Republican Glenn Youngkin claimed an upset victory in Virginia’s closely watched gubernatorial race. Youngkin’s win was fueled by parental frustration with schooling, especially on the amorphous but controversial subject of critical race theory (CRT), an avowedly revolutionary doctrine. Don’t take it from me, take it from Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, who explained in Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, that “critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.”

 

But you’d never know that from reading the coverage of the CRT debates. Instead, news accounts seem to suggest that the argument is really about whether “schools should teach slavery.” Meanwhile, they elide the troubling CRT-inspired practices that have spurred parental pushback, such as race-based affinity groups, “privilege walks,” “anti-racist” instruction (which holds, for instance, that “independence and individual achievement” are racist hallmarks of “white individualism”), demands that schools reject “colorblind” rules and norms, or history curricula which posit that the United States was founded not as a democracy but a “slavocracy.”

 

Is this truly a fair critique of the media coverage, though? I thought it was worth digging into the record to see. In a new study, I examined all 91 news accounts addressing CRT published between September 2020 and August 2021 in four major newspapers (the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today) and three influential education press outlets (Education Week, The 74, and Chalkbeat).

 

As it turns out, hardly any accounts mentioned, much less analyzed, CRT’s illiberal tendencies. Even though CRT is part of a school of thought that is “skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism,” readers wouldn’t know this from the coverage of CRT. Of the 91 stories examined, just two mentioned CRT’s disdain for rational thought and just one its disregard for universal values or objective knowledge. Indeed, more than 95 percent of the coverage ignores the extraordinary claims at the heart of a raging national debate.

 

The coverage isn’t any more illuminating when it comes to troubling CRT-aligned practices. The controversial use of racial “affinity groups” — in which schools segregate students or staff by race — was mentioned in just five of the 91 news accounts. The suggestion that schools should abandon notions of colorblindness was mentioned in less than a dozen articles. Even the dramatic, foundational claim that the U.S. is an innately racist nation (as argued by the architect of the New York Times’ influential 1619 Project) was mentioned in barely half of the articles — and many of those mentions described state laws intended to circumscribe CRT rather than the root cause for the controversy.

 

Indeed, the media hardly ever tell readers what the laws in question actually say. More than two dozen states have introduced legislation to address concerns about CRT, with twelve states passing such legislation. While news accounts frequently critique anti-CRT bills, they rarely quote them. (Hint: Most of these laws don’t ban the things that news reports claim they ban.) Of the 91 news stories on CRT, six mainstream-newspaper stories and 38 education-press accounts devoted at least half their text to state CRT legislation. Of those 44 stories, nearly half did not quote a single word from a state law or legislative proposal, and the lion’s share of those with a quote included, at most, 20 words. A Washington Post story, for instance, claimed that Republican legislatures in five states sought “to restrict what teachers can say about race, racism and American history in the classroom,” but never once quoted any of the proposed bills.

 

If news accounts don’t address CRT’s controversial premises, the practices that have spurred backlash, or what the laws actually say, what do they cover?

 

Well, mostly the assertion that schools should address slavery, racism, and the ugly parts of our history. Every article discussed racism in some fashion. Three-quarters mentioned the history of race or the way history is taught in schools. Most mentioned slavery. Further, the news stories routinely suggested that a desire to ignore these issues is what prompted pushback, as when the New York Times reported that the CRT debate is really about how “the legacies of slavery, segregation and Jim Crow still create an uneven playing field for Black people.”

 

The bizarre thing is that the supposed objections to teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, and racism are tough to find (except in the kookier corners of social media). Former U.S. secretary of education Betsy DeVos has insisted that “of course we need to teach history, we need to teach about slavery,” and emphasized the need for instruction that “embraces all of the parts of our history.” Texas senator Ted Cruz tweeted out that “OF COURSE we should teach about slavery & racism.” The educated, mild-mannered Youngkin, described by Democrats — including President Biden — as some kind of anti-historical extremist, argued on the campaign trail for teaching “all history, the good and the bad.”

 

In fact, teaching about slavery and segregation may be the least-contested element of the CRT debate. Recent polling shows that 74 percent of white Americans and 75 percent of black Americans “favor teaching students that the dispute over slavery was the principal cause of the Civil War.” More than four out of five Republicans and Democrats alike want social-studies texts to discuss that many of the Founding Fathers owned slaves and the federal government’s mistreatment of Native Americans.

 

Simply put, news accounts have focused intently on the one facet of CRT that is the least controversial and treated that as the center of an intense national debate, all while giving short shrift to legitimate concerns. It’s almost as if the goal was to make CRT critics look unreasonable and to shelter CRT from attacks.

 

This kind of reporting is a grave disservice to parents, communities, and educators. Indeed, it’s tough to imagine journalism more likely to fuel public distrust and help turn a sensitive, substantive issue into a culture clash. Nice going, guys.