The curious transformation of “Critical Race Theory” to “CRT”: The role of election campaigns in American culture wars

Critical Race Theory has become the latest signifier in the American culture wars, polarizing people across the political spectrum. In this paper, using the Virginia Governor's race as a case study, we ask how a political campaign helped transform Critical Race Theory from an academic theory to an emotionally charged political acronym – “CRT” – thus becoming a symbol evoking, crystalizing, and politicizing moral emotions. We demonstrate how transformative surprises occur in the unfolding performance of public culture: moments when obscure ideas or cultural objects migrate to the center of public discourse and media coverage. Drawing on performance theory, we show how Youngkin successfully “fused” his anti-CRT message with long-standing American cultural ideals to evoke powerful emotional responses. Specifically, Youngkin effectively portrayed his campaign as a grassroots movement of parents protecting children's innocence, the nuclear family, and democracy itself. Simultaneously, Youngkin characterized his opponent, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, as a self-interested career politician and CRT as a divisive, backward political ideology. By tracing these processes, this study provides novel insight into the moral turn in American discourse about race by demonstrating how White racial anxieties manifest in a moral panic about (white) children's endangered innocence. Centrally, we demonstrate the powerful, yet neglected, role of audience emotions in social performances.