Poll: 4 in 10 Republicans Want Less Teaching About History of Racism

Republicans are all-in on making banning critical race theory a campaign issue in the 2022 elections, after Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin (R) used it to rally the GOP base and make education a major issue in his upset win.

Even as he was doing so, though, Youngkin sought to emphasize this wasn’t about banning ugly historical truths such as racism and slavery from the classroom. “We are going to teach all history — the good and the bad,” he said. He added at another point that, “America has fabulous chapters, and it’s the greatest country in the world, but we also have some abhorrent chapters in our history. We must teach them.”

But new polling suggests a large chunk of that GOP base would indeed like to throw the baby out with the bathwater — to stop teaching about the history of racism at all. And it reflects both the potency of the issue for that base and how it could spill over into something more corrosive.

The Monmouth University poll shows 78 percent of Republicans oppose public schools teaching about critical race theory. Schools generally don’t actually teach it, but advocates have effectively used the phrase to refer to teaching about the ongoing impacts of racism.

Before the poll asked that question, though, it asked a broader one: “Do you approve or disapprove of public schools teaching about the history of racism?” More than 4 in 10 Republicans — 43 percent — opposed schools even broaching the subject. And about one-third — 34 percent — said they disapproved of it “strongly.”

Only a slight majority of 54 percent agreed that schools should teach about the history of racism. Among Democrats, 5 percent opposed schools teaching about the history of racism, including 2 percent “strongly.”

The survey is merely the latest to suggest that a very significant number of Republicans would like to take the history of racism and/or the impacts of slavery out of classrooms altogether.