Critical Race Theory, like a lot of social justice/victimhood identity politics creeds, clothes horrible, racist ideas in the confounding camouflage of postmodern academic jargon. That’s one reason conservatives have had a hard time fighting it. Scott Adams says that labeling “Marxist” or “anti-white” isn’t getting the job done persuasion-wise. He suggests boiling down the poison of Critical Race Theory into something far more readily understandable: losers and assholes:
Being accurate matters for science and for budgeting. Accuracy often requires details and nuance and context and all that stuff. But persuasion craves simplicity. Every detail you add to a clean message gives someone a reason to not accept it.
We see this problem for the critics of Critical Race Theory. They try to argue it is a Marxist worldview, and 95% of the country isn’t quite sure that is true, and isn’t quite sure why that matters, exactly. Sounds bad, but perhaps not so bad for left-leaning people. And that’s who the right needs to persuade.
Calling CRT “anti-white” might be close to the truth, but that doesn’t matter to persuasion. The “anti-white” critique sounds exactly like a Fox News talking point, and not something moderates would take se …
That’s why I am A-B testing some new persuasion approaches. In this tweet I reframe CRT as sorting children into two classes: Losers and Assholes.
The “losers” would be any non-white kids born into this oppressive racist system. The assholes are the white kids who allegedly benefit from the system and perhaps are not keen to change what works for them.
That framing might well get the job done, though just asking parents “So, is your kid a loser or an asshole?” might bring sub-optimal results…
(I have a lot of links on fighting Critical Race Theory building up in the virtual hopper, though there are other topic posts I need to finish first.)