Critical Race Theory has become the latest signifier in the American culture wars, polarizing people across the political spectrum. In this paper, using the Virginia Governor's race as a case study, we ask how a political campaign helped transform Critical Race Theory from an academic theory to an emotionally charged political acronym – “CRT” – thus becoming a symbol evoking, crystalizing, and politicizing moral emotions. We demonstrate how transformative surprises occur in the unfolding performance of public culture: moments when obscure ideas or cultural objects migrate to the center of public discourse and media coverage. Drawing on performance theory, we show how Youngkin successfully “fused” his anti-CRT message with long-standing American cultural ideals to evoke powerful emotional responses. Specifically, Youngkin effectively portrayed his campaign as a grassroots movement of parents protecting children's innocence, the nuclear family, and democracy itself. Simultaneously, Youngkin characterized his opponent, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, as a self-interested career politician and CRT as a divisive, backward political ideology. By tracing these processes, this study provides novel insight into the moral turn in American discourse about race by demonstrating how White racial anxieties manifest in a moral panic about (white) children's endangered innocence. Centrally, we demonstrate the powerful, yet neglected, role of audience emotions in social performances.
