Public Opinion Toward Critical Race Theory in Academia, Legislation, and Name

Abstract

Political wrangling over Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the United States has produced policies banning its teaching in jurisdictions across the country. However, laws touted as “anti-CRT” have little in common with the original, academic origins of the phrase. In this study, we use a Qualtrics-based survey experiment to assess how participants’ support for a ban will change depending on whether the ban reflects core tenets of academic researchers’ use of CRT, the phrase itself, or elements common to many of the laws intended to ban it. We find that these three different frames do indeed change support for such policies, and the effects are dependent upon partisanship. We interpret our results to be empirical evidence of the phrase “Critical Race Theory” complicating political discourse.

Introduction

In U.S. education policy, few phrases have been as politically divisive as Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Teitelbaum 2022). To many on the political Left, CRT became a concept useful for explaining racial inequities in America (Holloway 2021) and has the potential to help students understand the roots of contemporary inequality (Hoover 2021). Meanwhile, many on the political Right see it as an attack on White people (Hilditch 2021) and claim CRT casts a negative light on the U.S. and divides children into unequal groups (Butcher 2022). The yawning gap between these two perspectives on three words and the sensitive issues they bring up resulted in tense or even chaotic school board meetings across the country (Sawchuk 2021). Despite extensive media attention and inflammatory rhetoric about CRT, few Americans feel knowledgeable on the subject (Safarpour et al. 2021). In this research note, we contribute to the growing empirical evidence that individuals’ reactions to the phrase “Critical Race Theory” often differ from their reactions to how CRT’s tenets might be used in academia or in legislation.

CRT originated in the legal scholarship of the late 20^th century in an effort to explain the limited progress of the Civil Rights Movement (Bell 2004). For decades, the theory circulated among social science researchers before exploding into political debates soon after Christopher Rufo and Donald Trump used it as a label for “progressive racial ideology” (Wallace-Wells 2021). Capitalizing on the rapid increase of attention on CRT during 2021, conservative lawmakers proposed and, in some states, passed laws intended to ban the teaching of CRT (Ononye, and Walker 2021). In Florida, for example, the legislature passed a law stating that teachers may not “share their personal views” or “define American history as something other than the creation of a new nation based largely on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence” (Ali 2021). The emphasis on protecting America’s reputation reflects conservatives’ concern that teaching CRT would make students less patriotic (Butcher 2022). Despite promoters of these laws touting them as anti-CRT, scholars who use CRT say the provisions in the laws have little to do with academic understanding of the theory, leaving many educators confused about what behaviors, exactly, are banned (Álvarez 2021; Schwartz 2021).

The controversy that has played out in the news, on social media, at school board meetings, and around dinner tables has been described as the result of exaggerations or mischaracterizations of CRT and the laws by both the Right and the Left. For example, Hess of the conservative American Enterprise Institute claims that CRT rejects “rationality and objectivity” and is used to justify “segregated, race-based affinity spaces” (2021). Gonzalez of the Heritage Foundation accuses CRT advocates of pursuing policies that include “no holds-barred racial preferences, the acceptance or even celebration of out of wedlock births, or the view that looting means redistribution” (2021). Meanwhile, Álvarez of the liberal National Education Association describes anti-CRT laws as “redlining the realities of history to justify the harms of the present” (2021). While writing for The Conversation, Gray argues that banning lessons teaching that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another”—a common phrase in such laws—is banning behavior that is not actually a component of CRT (2021). These contrasting interpretations of CRT likely contributed to Americans across the political spectrum reporting that they knew little about CRT (Safarpour et al. 2021).

Public Opinion and CRT

Two recent studies have produced empirical evidence of how uncertainty of CRT’s meaning has contributed to public opinion regarding the phrase. The first is a 2023 study that finds that clear messaging about CRT from Republican elites has resulted in strong opposition among rank-and-file party members. In contrast, Democrats tend to be uncertain about their attitudes toward CRT, likely because their party elites have not delivered a coherent message on the issue. In short, differences in elite messaging resulted in differences in intensity of belief and, by extension, differences in actions (Deshpande et al. 2023).

The conclusion that Republicans are more confident in their understanding of CRT is echoed by a study by Safarpour et al. (2024), which describes the phrase “Critical Race Theory” as being an empty signifier that came to represent a broad range of “racial and cultural grievances.” While Deshpande et al. showed the effect of intensity of belief, the second study showed that elites’ broad application of the phrase “Critical Race Theory” has shaped the public’s attitudes toward it.

Both the study by Deshpande et al. and that by Safarpour et al. utilized survey experiments that randomly varied the way in which CRT was presented. In the former study, participants read statements about the government either mandating, prohibiting, or taking no position on the teaching of CRT in schools after being shown a brief definition that provides what could be described as an academic summary of the theory, including race described as a social construct and enduring racial inequality resulting in part from U.S. laws and institutions. This design is especially effective for showing the uncertainty among Democratic respondents; even when provided with a definition focused on two of the most publicized aspects of CRT, Democrats were still uncertain about whether they would oppose a ban on teaching it in schools (Deshpande et al. 2023). In the latter study, some participants were asked whether “Critical Race Theory” should be taught in schools (their “CRT condition”) while others were asked whether schools should teach “the legacy of racism” without any reference to CRT by name (their “definition condition”).

Our study takes this line of inquiry a step further by considering a third framing, one reflecting the legislation addressing the teaching of CRT in schools as proposed in many states, in addition to an academic meaning and the phrase “Critical Race Theory.” We expect to find that individuals will be more likely to support a ban when shown the phrase “Critical Race Theory” than when they are shown a description of the concept as used historically by academic scholars. Like the previous studies, we expect that Republicans will exhibit a stronger effect from the treatment than Democrats due to the uncertainty and comparatively weak messaging on the part of Democratic elites. Finally, we expect that because anti-CRT legislation tends to ignore tenets of CRT such as race being a social construct and enduring effects of race-based slavery by instead focusing on defending the U.S. as a country that ensures equality between groups, individuals will express more support for a ban on CRT as it is articulated in state laws than it is in academic usage. We expect this study to contribute to the literature by testing whether the intensity of support for CRT bans will vary not only by party but also by whether it is framed in the manner of academia, legislation, or name.

Theoretical Grounding

Research shows that politicians and pundits tend to exploit limitations to the public’s understanding of issues. For example, while debating estate taxes, opponents framed them as “death taxes” so they would sound both absurd and universal (Schaffner, and Atkinson 2009). An analysis of political parties’ messages on social media found that their tone shifted from hopeful to fearful at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic (Widmann 2022). Similar analysis shows how tweets guided the debate over the adoption of Common Core standards through implementation of five different frames (government, propaganda, war, business, and experiment frames) in order to touch on values of both liberals and conservatives (Supovitz, and Reinkordt 2017). In each of these cases, uncertainty regarding the meanings of words and issues made them flexible enough to serve as tools for opponents and/or advocates to frame the issues to suit their message. Even a term as familiar as socialism can prompt reactions different from those prompted by its technical definition (Liebertz, and Giersch 2022). Political science research demonstrates that politicians can easily lead the public to adopt a particular attitude and it is difficult to correct resulting misperceptions (Nyhan, and Reifler 2010).

The explosion of attention on a previously little-known topic like CRT created room for elites to shape the public’s understanding. When issues are complex and unfamiliar, individuals tend to adopt understandings of those issues provided to them by trusted experts (Druckman 2001; Zaller 1992). And when those issues receive increased attention, as did CRT in 2021, individuals give them more importance (Iyengar, and Kinder 2010). As explained by Safarpour et al. (Safarpour et al. 2024), CRT served as an empty signifier that could be framed to serve politician’s and activists’ purposes (Laclau 2005). Thus, we designed the following survey experiment to show empirically that a description of CRT in terms that reflect its academic origins will elicit a different response to a political question than both the phrase “Critical Race Theory” as well as a description of CRT framed in terms of recent state legislation aimed at banning its teaching. We expand on the existing literature by using a more complete academic definition, one that specifies policy, rather than the vague term “racism” as a source of inequality. Furthermore, by employing a legislation frame, we bring this strand of research closer to actual policy proposals.

Experiment Methods

To test whether a broad academic meaning of CRT elicits reactions that are similar to those drawn by the phrase “Critical Race Theory” itself or by key elements of typical anti-CRT laws, we conducted a survey experiment in the spring of 2022 with 562 participants from a national self-selected panel with quotas for race, gender, and party affiliation (see Yeager et al. 2011) provided by Qualtrics. Table 1 describes the sample.

Table 1. Descriptive characteristics of the sample

Each participant was told that state governments play a role in setting school curricula and then were asked whether they would support a state ban on teaching certain concepts related to race in the United States. The proposed bans were framed in three different ways; each participant was shown one of the three at random. The appendix provides a table comparing the groups on several demographic measures, a Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) diagram showing participant attrition, and the text of the items appearing in the survey. We wrote the first frame to summarize the original, academic understanding of CRT:

How much would you support a ban on teaching students the ways slavery, segregation, and racial inequality have been embedded in our local, state, and national laws over several centuries in the U.S.?

Strongly support (4) Somewhat support (3) Somewhat oppose (2) Strongly oppose (1)

Note that the frame does not include the phrase “Critical Race Theory” but rather a one-sentence explanation of how academics (for example, Ladson-Billings 2013; Taylor 1998), broadly speaking, apply CRT in their work. The frame features the idea that racial inequality has been enshrined at all levels of law and over a long period of time. Because this was the original meaning of CRT, we treat it as the control frame for the purposes of analysis.

A second frame does use the term “Critical Race Theory,” but provides no guidance as to its meaning, leaving interpretation up to the survey participant. It reads:

How much would you support a ban on the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools?

Strongly support (4) Somewhat support (3) Somewhat oppose (2) Strongly oppose (1)

A third frame makes use of language of the various “anti-CRT” legislation being passed in multiple states. Rather than addressing the tenets of CRT as developed in the scholarship of law and social sciences, these laws reflect the argument made by many conservatives that CRT, its application, and its supporters are likely to upend the social hierarchy and portray the United States as a racist country (Ali 2021; Frey 2022). The frame reads:

How much would you support a ban on teaching that the United States is racist or sexist, or was created by members of a particular race or sex to oppress members of another race or sex?

Strongly support (4) Somewhat support (3) Somewhat oppose (2) Strongly oppose (1)

In this frame, we took language directly from legislation passed in states like Florida and Idaho. Again, the phrase “Critical Race Theory” does not appear in the frame. Because so many of the laws being passed or proposed include language about both racism and sexism, we felt it important to include both in this frame. The tradeoff, of course, is that it introduces another element to the participants’ decision-making. Results could be biased if on average individual preferences on teaching bans shift based on whether one or both elements are present. We suspect, however, that this is unlikely to be the case (Sanchez et al. 2017). The three frames are intended to allow us to compare participants’ reactions to CRT as an academic concept to the meaning as expressed in recent law and to the phrase itself. Similar to the work of Jardina and Traugott (2019), we will leverage partisanship in our analysis.

Experiment Results

We begin with descriptive results. Responses varied widely in response to each of the three frames. Figure 1 shows the distribution of responses for each frame. When shown the academic language frame, few participants (about a third) supported a ban. Note that the frame using academic language received the least support for a ban as well as the fewest refusals to answer. We interpret this pattern to mean that our description of how academic research uses CRT was generally acceptable to our subjects, or at least innocuous enough that very few participants saw a need to ban its teaching. The two other frames were polarizing by comparison, with participants more likely to choose the more extreme options, both strongly in support of and strongly opposed to the proposed ban.

Figure 1. Support and opposition to each frame in sample.

Note: Error bars represent standard errors.

As the polarization observed in the above table is likely happening along partisan lines, we perform a similar comparison with participants who identify as at least leaning Democrat and those at least leaning Republican. When confining the sample to only those participants, the distribution becomes more lopsided, but in predictably opposite directions. Democrats were more likely to oppose bans in all three frames while Republicans were more likely to support bans in the second and third frames, as seen in Figures 2 and 3. As efforts at anti-CRT legislation have been most successful in Republican-majority state legislatures, it is not surprising that both the “Critical Race Theory” and legislation frames produced significantly more support among Republicans, but it is noteworthy that support for a ban is so low among Republicans when they are shown our description of CRT’s use in academic research. Also noteworthy is the fact that Democrats are more willing to show support when shown text from anti-CRT legislation than the other two frames, suggesting that the laws have been written in a manner that not only generates support among Republicans but draws less skepticism from Democrats.

Figure 2. Support and opposition to each frame among Democrats in sample.

Note: Error bars represent standard errors.

Figure 3. Support and opposition to each frame among Republicans in sample.

Note: Error bars represent standard errors.

Our next analysis collapses the dependent variable into a binary form, with support for a ban (either somewhat or strong) represented by the value 1 and opposition to a ban (either somewhat or strong) represented by the value 0. Using a logit regression model, we test whether the treatment frame affected the likelihood that a participant would agree with, rather than oppose, a proposed ban. Figure 4 shows the predicted probabilities of a participant expressing any degree of support for a ban rather than opposing a ban (participants who chose not to answer were excluded from this analysis). Note that participants are likely to oppose a ban when given the academic language frame or the “Critical Race Theory” frame, but when shown the legislation frame, the positions reverse. We interpret this finding to mean that the academic meaning of CRT, at least the way we chose to phrase it, is largely acceptable to people. The gap narrows when the frame features the phrase “Critical Race Theory,” which is not surprising given how politically charged the terms have become. Support for a ban when shown the legal language frame is highest, likely because the legislation in many states has been phrased to claim a position of equality in an effort to portray CRT and its advocates as promoting discrimination (Gonzalez 2021).

Figure 4. Predicted probabilities of supporting a ban in each frame.

Notes: Predicted probabilities result from logistic regression models in which the dependent variable was coded 1 = strongly/support and 0 = strongly/somewhat oppose or prefer not to say. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.

Returning to a more fine-grained version of the dependent variable with values for strongly agree (coded 4), somewhat agree (3), somewhat disagree (2), and strongly disagree (1), we examine the association between treatment frame and support for a ban using ordered logit regression analyses in Table 2. The table shows the odds ratios associated with greater levels of support for a ban when shown the “Critical Race Theory” or the legislative language frames instead of the academic explanation, which serves as the reference group. The first model includes all participants; while the “CRT” treatment did not generate responses that were significantly different from the control, the legislation language did, with the likelihood of showing more agreement increasing by 72 percentage points compared to the frame featuring academic language. The second model restricts the sample to only those participants who identified as White and produced substantively similar results.

Table 2. Estimates from ordered logistic regression models reported as odds ratios with agreement with a ban as the dependent variable. The academic frame serves as the reference category in all four models

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses. The dependent variable was coded as follows: 4 = strongly support, 3 = somewhat support, 2 = somewhat oppose, and 1 = strongly oppose.

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .01.

The third and fourth models further restrict the model to White Democrats (Model 3) or White Republicans (Model 4). Among White Democrats, the frame yields no measurable difference among participants’ responses; this group tends to oppose any such ban. While the legislative language frame appears most popular among White Democrats, the difference is not statistically significant. Among White Republicans, both the phrase “Critical Race Theory” and the language from legislation produce a statistically significant increase in support for a ban, nearly three-fold and four-fold, respectively. We restrict the results to White participants because the issue of CRT is so tightly intertwined with race; a table showing results for Democrats and Republicans of all races in the sample appears in the appendix. The odds ratios appearing in that set of results are similar to those appearing above.

Discussion

The experiment in this study supports the notion that when people read the phrase “Critical Race Theory” they often react more negatively than they do to some of its core tenets regarding the legacy of race-based slavery. Republicans in our study were more willing to support a state ban on the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” than they were to support a ban on teaching the ways that slavery and racism became embedded in laws in the United States. We do not interpret this to mean that Republicans fail to understand CRT because the academic language frame only presents a brief summary of the theory and avoids more controversial tenets such as the existence of institutional racism and White privilege. Instead, we interpret this result to mean that the division over CRT is the result of how pundits, influencers, and politicians frame the theory. As other scholars have pointed out, Republican elites have been far more intentional, active, and successful at framing CRT than Democratic elites (Deshpande et al. 2023; Safarpour et al. 2024).

We believe this interpretation is supported by the approval among Republican participants for bans on teaching that the United States is racist or sexist or was founded to oppress. The language of the legislation frame in this experiment expresses an idea similar to the academic frame but in more assertive terms. Rather than merely being “embedded,” racism is part of the very founding of the country, an idea quite different from the United States being the manifestation of Enlightenment ideas about freedom, equality, and dignity.

Related to that point, it seems noteworthy that in each of our analyses, support for a ban was strongest when framed using language from typical anti-CRT laws and the least when using the academic description. This finding does more than support our hypothesis that political debate over CRT has drifted far from a disagreement over its original tenets. It suggests that legislation is not merely a sloppy interpretation of the academic concept, but has come to represent a much broader set of concerns (Safarpour et al. 2024) and captures behaviors that some individuals want to ban more than they want the ideas of Bell, Crenshaw, and others banned. It is likely that the appeal is in the antidiscrimination language, appearing to promote both race and gender neutrality, that appealed to respondents. After all, who would ever say that it’s fine for teachers to be racist?

It is worth noting that the large increases in odds of support among White Republicans when seeing the legislative frame or CRT frame mean not only their agreement with those bans but also their relative skepticism for a ban when shown the academic frame. If our experiment’s design is at all representative of the core tenets of CRT, then the fact that the Republicans in this study have little objection to those aspects of the theory suggests that there may be more common ground than is apparent. Further research could explore what aspects, interpretations, and applications of the theory drive partisans apart.

Perhaps the most important question raised by the results of this study is what Americans think CRT includes. The patterns revealed here suggest that Americans are forming strong opinions along partisan lines, but the present study cannot identify what the typical American believes are the tenets of CRT. Future research should address this question, perhaps with surveys that include open-ended questions that allow participants to state what comes to mind when they see the words “Critical Race Theory,” or even just the letters CRT. The survey conducted by Safarpour et al. (2024) in 2021 produced wide-ranging ideas of what exactly CRT means. Now that several years have passed, it would be useful to know whether groups have converged on a common understanding or moved further apart.

Several limitations to the study’s design have been mentioned above and deserve review in this section. One is the inclusion of bans on teaching that the U.S. is sexist along with a ban on teaching that it is racist in the legislation frame. While that inclusion could complicate a participant’s response, it also provides more external validity by matching the bills in state legislatures. Another limitation is the lack of control for racist or anti-Black attitudes. Presumably, such attitudes are evenly distributed across the treatment groups, but one treatment might be affected by such attitudes more than the others. While such effects are indeed a component of the effects we expected to see, controlling for these attitudes could clarify their role in participants’ responses.

For policy debates seeking compromise, it may be that the phrase “Critical Race Theory” has lost some of its usefulness because it has taken on different meanings, associations, and affect depending on one’s political affiliation. Politicians looking to stir emotions may still find it useful, however, for motivating their supporters. For education policy leaders to find a common ground, it may be more productive to focus on the space between a curriculum that shows how racism played a role in shaping social, economic, political, and legal institutions in the United States at one end and how those institutions served to reinforce racism and racial inequality over time. Bipartisan committees responsible for state curricula, in cooperation with interest groups, should be able to produce guidance that both directs and protects educators teaching American history and culture (Schwartz 2023).