Understanding the purpose of the agitation against "critical race theory"

Randall Kennedy takes on the Republican/far-right conspiracy theory around "critical race theory" in The Right-Wing Attack on Racial Justice Talk The American Prospect 09/28/2021.

The right has set up critical race theory (CRT for short= as "a target useful to its aims, which include taking the country back to an earlier era of accepted white hegemony."

As Kennedy explains, the rightwingers use "critical race theory" as a bogeyman. My own translation of the Republicans' message with the phrase would be, "Scary Jews! Scary black people!" The agitation focuses on promoting anti-black racism, but the conspiracy narrative behind it incorporates the far-right anti-Semitic "cultural Marxism" trope which blames Political Correctness and CRT on conniving Jewish Marxists.

After briefly sketching the actual acadrmic theory that did adopt the label "critical race theory" and related developments in actual academic fields, he explains:

In the far-right commentariat, “critical race theory” has become a catchall phrase that refers not so much to a discrete body of thought as a bogeyman onto which those who invoke it negatively can cast fears, resentments, and prejudices. Chris Rufo of the Manhattan Institute admitted as much when he declared that “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’” He remarked similarly that “We have successfully frozen their brand — “critical race theory” — into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.” According to Rufo, “critical race theory is the perfect villain.” He ought to know: The “critical race theory” that he attacks incessantly is, in large part, a figment of his creation. [my emphasis]

He also reminds us that rightwing agitation against decent textbooks and educational practices is not some new with the hysteria against CRT: "The history of American education at every level is full of examples of textbooks blocked, library books pulled, and instructors fired on account of right-wing objections to teachings about racial injustice."

Kennedy does stress the need to recognize the propaganda goal of the anti-CRT narrative. So treating it as a good faith effort to improve educational practices is not likely to move its advocates. "It is, for the most part, a race-baiting ruse to gin up the Trumpian base, to vent the status anxieties of aggrieved whites, and to bait progressives into saying and doing things that alienate potential allies."