MSNBC: Glenn Youngkin’s Victory ‘Proves White Ignorance’

The front page of msnbc.com harshly and incorrectly characterized Virginia Republican voters Wednesday morning with the headline “Glenn Youngkin’s victory proves white ignorance is a powerful weapon.”

The article compared the governor-elect to former President Donald Trump, claimed critics of Critical Race Theory (CRT) are “intellectually lazy,” and said, “angry, willfully ignorant white people was the key ingredient needed to elect a GOP governor.”

With the featured title “STOKING OUTRAGE,” the 382-word article was written by Ja’han Jones, who worked at the HuffPost before joining MSNBC’s ReidOut Blog, an extension of The ReidOut starring Joy-Ann Reid.

Jones described Youngkin as an inexperienced businessman “focused on hot-button social topics — like outrage over school curricula,” with “a largely ill-defined campaign, often hewing close to the former president’s 2020 election lies while also coyly trying to distance himself from them.”

Jones did not provide examples in the article to support these claims, but he did describe Youngkin’s platform as “designed to shield Americans from the reality of the country’s racist history.”

According to Jones, Youngkin targeted CRT because it “seemed to resonate deeply with white voters in Virginia.” The MSNBC writer claimed, “Critical race theory is a college-level field of study that’s not taught in Virginia K-12 schools, but it’s become a catchall phrase for intellectually lazy people — many of them white — who want to stigmatize any discussion about American racism” [Emphasis added].

Several other MSNBC commentators also focused on racial issues, without evidence to support their claims. Reid wrote Wednesday that “Youngkin, like the Republican he is, filled the vacuum with inchoate fear of threats to the cherished historical narrative of a glorious history of unbroken white Christian great/goodness.”

McAulliffe’s problem was that A) the overall mood narrative is bad for Dems & Biden, and B) Youngkin, like the Republican he is, filled the vacuum with inchoate fear of threats to the cherished historical narrative of a glorious history of unbroken white Christian great/goodness.

— Joy-Ann (Pro-Democracy) Reid 😷 (@JoyAnnReid) November 3, 2021

Mehdi Hasan also harped on race, specifically calling out supporters of Winsome Sears, the first female and the first minority to be elected lieutenant governor in Virginia. He posted on Twitter:

The argument that white supremacy & racial resentment couldn’t have helped power Youngkin to victory in VA because the Republicans elected a black lieutenant governor – Winsome Sears – is as convincing as saying Trump isn’t a racist because he made Ben Carson his HUD secretary.

The argument that white supremacy & racial resentment couldn't have helped power Youngkin to victory in VA because the Republicans elected a black lieutenant governor – Winsome Sears – is as convincing as saying Trump isn't a racist because he made Ben Carson his HUD secretary.

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) November 3, 2021

MSNBC contributor and Mother Jones writer David Corn claimed, “Youngkin exploited a panic over CRT that was orchestrated and exploited people’s race paranoia.”