But this is exactly what Republicans are objecting to. Rufo craftily labeled this "Critical Race Theory" (not the whole thing, just this "simply put" version, plus the "whites will only ever support maintaining their own racial privilege" addition that you can find in the writings of some Critical Race Theory scholars), recognizing that this outlook was objectionable to many Republicans, and facilitated by the fact that there wasn't a good umbrella term for this flavor of anti-racism (which goes beyond just "institutional racism", but doesn't encompass everything that deserves to be called anti-racism).

And you absolutely do see these points in ethnic studies curricula in schools. One could debate whether that's good or bad, but there's no question that it's either there or on its way.

So while it's technically true that a lot of people are objecting to Critical Race Theory without understanding what it means beyond a simplified Right-wing-name-it-and-hate-it caricature of it, my sense is that a lot of people objecting actually have the content kind of right, and that saying that they don't know what they're talking about is just failing to engage in debate on the topic.

There is strong (albeit far from universal) stated opposition to racism. Maybe it's not wholly genuine, but if you make people put their actions behind their words (or not), it may actually become genuine. There's a boatload of psychological research suggesting as much.

But when it looks like people are saying "there's this immensely oppressive force trampling black people, but you can't see it", and they go, "Hey, no, I don't think so, what is this CRT stuff?", and the dominant answer is "You're so ignorant, this isn't CRT!!!", what are they supposed to think? It looks like someone's trying to pull a fast one on them.

It would be way better to just accept that some of the perspectives that were developed and explored most thoroughly in Critical Race Theory are now fairly mainstream, and that those perspectives get called, somewhat confusingly but also in a somewhat historically justifiable manner, "Critical Race Theory". Make the clarification (like when dealing with scientific issues and people using the word "theory"--do you mean it in the colloquial sense or the specialized scientific sense?) and then get on with discussing the content.

Of course there are a bunch of people with more extreme views who won't be convinced. They're not the ones to try to talk to. Engage with content on its surface rather than talking at the opposition who uses apparent content as coded language. Talk to the center, the people who feel that racism is bad, but who also feel that it can't be right that institutions are so thoroughly biased against blacks. They're willing to be swayed by sufficiently compelling evidence, as we have witnessed by the very widespread outrage at Floyd's murder by police.

Lots of white people separated themselves quite thoroughly from that. They had no trouble detatching their identity from murder in the guise of policing. The for-now-irredeemable closet bigots shouldn't be the target of rhetoric. But those who can be reached should be reached, not pushed away.

It was those people in the center who Youngkin reached. The right fringe was always going to vote for him. But the "Hey wait, what are you teaching my kids? That doesn't quite sound right." crowd got a lot of attention and sympathy from Youngkin, while McAuliffe managed to make it sound like he thought parents had no right to question what their kids were being taught.

"We're going to indoctrinate your kids into whatever we feel like, without listening to you, without explaining to you, without debating the content, and while calling you ignorant when you try to talk about it," sounds pretty scary to a parent. As well it should.

But, "We're going to teach your kids how to be more open and more fair and make the country better by helping them identify not just blatant unfairness but also sneaky or accidental unfairness...let's talk about how best to do that!" should sound pretty appealing.

Even if you call it Critical Race Theory.

Even if, technically, it isn't.