Ted Cruz, the senator who felt like the hearings for a Supreme Court nominee was the perfect place to plug his podcast, dug into the issue of race and critical race theory, per ABC News.
According to Rolling Stone, the senator from Texas asked Ketanji Brown Jackson at one point if she believed “babies are racist.” This is because Jackson serves on the board of Georgetown Day, a private school in Washington, D.C. To Cruz, the curriculum at the school is “filled and overflowing with critical race theory,” something The New York Times reports the school where Cruz sends his school also has done. Cruz wanted to know, while holding up a page from the book “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi, whether Jackson endorsed the message the school was sending. Control over what children are being taught in school has been a major Republican issue, seen most recently in Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
At several points, ABC News reports Jackson told senators critical race theory was not something that influenced her judicial philosophy.
Cruz wasn’t the only Republican who touched on race, either. Lindsey Graham on Monday claimed Jackson was a “beneficiary of a lot,” what many believe to be a thinly-veiled reference to affirmative action (via ABC News). The Republican National Committee even took to Twitter during the hearings, posting a picture of Jackson where her initials, KBJ, are crossed out and wrote “CRT,” presumably short for critical race theory.
