On Thursday, April 13^th, Professor of English at Arizona State University Dr. Lee Bebout visited JSU as the guest speaker for the History lecture: “Label Your Opponents Extreme (so that You Can Appear Reasonable), or Understanding that Recent anti-Critical Race Debate in Four Easy Steps”. 

Taken from his forthcoming book project on reactionary rhetorical strategies, this presentation examined the recent moral panic over critical race theory through the case of James Lindsay’s Race Marxism. Bebout illustrated that the recent fearmongering around critical race theory is not unique. Like Anita Bryant’s homophobic smearing of gay folk as targeting children in the 1970s or Rush Limbaugh’s popularization of the term “feminazi” in the 1990s, these moments share a common rhetorical strategy of positioning one’s enemy as an extremist so that one can claim the “reasonable position” of the status quo. 

With this lecture, Bebout aimed to explore how terms like “extreme” and “reasonable” have been used to hinder social change. He placed the current debate surrounding critical race theory in conversation with the rhetoric deployed against Martin Luther King, Jr.