Critical Race Theory (CRT) and, more recently, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) have become the subject of extensive political attention. Conservative media have particularly portrayed these concepts as evidence of anti-white discrimination, depicting them as pervasive across American society, from education to healthcare and the military. Narratives like these exemplify identity-based disinformation— strategically framed messages that leverage identity to deceptively reframe concepts, in this case, CRT and DEI, as all-encompassing symbols of anti-white racism. While the media’s capacity to promote negative and misinformed attitudes toward CRT is damaging, its ability to foster and reinforce white grievances has even broader implications, including the reification of opposition to diversity initiatives and the influence of such sentiments on political decision-making. Drawing on a series of studies that incorporate computational text analysis of news headlines, survey data (e.g., the Collaborative Multi-racial Post-election Survey), Google Trends data, and election data, Smith will examine the real-world implications of white grievances mobilized through identity-based disinformation.
