situation for both of us. we'll get through it. it's all that's left of a perfect family is the two of us. we can't let that go. america, and race. >> we should be teaching american pride, not to hate our country and hate each other. >> the battle over education and critical race theory, crt in schools. >> our painful past, that's part of who we are and who we are as a country, even though it's sometimes difficult. >> eight states passing laws banning the teaching of crt. >> if we were to tell little white children that they are inherently oppressors, that's not good.

if we tell little children of color they are inherently victims. neither is good. >> the battle hitting parents -- >> the light is shining. all of you must go and we'll take back our schools. >> -- against school board members. >> i'm a public official so i guess i'm open prey. >> what do you think debate about critical race theory is really about? >> control, control over what can and cannot be taught. >> it's even become a political weapon. >> virginia parents have a right to make decisions on their children's education. that's the virginia i grew up in. terry mcauliffe wants to change that. >> this morning, we'll look at the fight over how children should learn about america's troubled racial history, how the crt debate has divided one community, and i'll talk to nikole hannah-jones who won a pulitzer prize for her work on the 1619 project about race in america. welcome to sunday and a special edition of "meet the press." >> announcer: from nbc news in washington, the longest running show in television history, this is a special edition of "meet the press" with chuck todd. good sunday morning and a

merry day after christmas. when republican glenn youngkin won the governor's race in blue virginia, the second most important issues to voters according to the exit poll was education. for many of youngkin's voters, education was code for something called critical race theory or crt for short. it's an academic concept about racism being embedded in law, policies, and society, and it's come to mean different things to different people these days. to many african american parents, crt represents a long-overdue reckoning with america's racial history and how it's taught. conservative groups have campaigned against crt, and to many white voters it's been seen as a way for white children to be ashamed of their race. the result has been loud and angry demonstrations, raucous school board meetings, the dismissal of school administrators, and state laws banning the teaching of critical race theory. today we're going to take a look at the debate over not just crt, but education as a whole and

its impact on schools and politics. i'll also talk to nikole hannah-jones, whose "new york times" "1619 project" put slavery at the center of american history. we'll begin with a special report from my colleague antonia hylton who embedded herself in a texas town near dallas and has the story of what happened when a popular principal was accused of putting critical race theory into his school's curriculum. >> all right, buddy, are you ready? let's go. >> reporter: this is what most days are like for dr. james whitfield and his family. >> i would be lying if i told you it didn't pain me to not be with the students that i typically get to serve each day. >> reporter: normally he'd be up by 6:00 a.m. in a suit, ready to lead a school of about 2,000 kids, but since late august he's been suspended from his job as the first black principal of texas' majority white colleyville heritage high school in the wake of accusations he

was pushing critical race theory or crt on students. >> it has been difficult to be detached from really my purpose. they see that. they see the pain, even though i try to mask it. but that's all i've ever wanted to do, is be an educator and serve kids. >> reporter: he's become one of the most prominent casualties in a national war over race, history, around and diversity. >> psychologically what's that like? >> yeah. i go from different extremes. there's the part of me that goes, as any human, why me? why is this -- i didn't sign up for this. >> reporter: texas is one of eight states with new broad laws banning the teaching of critical race theory, a decades' old graduate level study examining the relationship between the law and racial inequality. but conservative organizers and parents have seized on the phrase, turning it into shorthand for lessons or

programs they feel are un-american and can make white students feel guilt. >> right now it's very trendy. i know that. it's very unpopular for me to be against it. >> we should be teaching american pride, not to hate our country and hate each other. >> reporter: there's no evidence that colleyville heritage high or dr. whitfield taught critical race theory. >> when whitfield became principal, parents claimed photos of him and his white wife found on his facebook page were inappropriate. others grew outrage after he took place in a district-approved -- later anger after he wrote an email about george floyd's murder stating systemic racism was alive and well. they flooded school board meetings. one resident accusing whitfield by name. >> tonight i would like to express my concerns, not only of myself but of many in our community about the implementation of critical race theory in our district.

specifically the goals of colleyville principal whitfield. >> mr. stetson? mr. clark? we really prefer that you don't criticize a particular employee in the district. >> how about you fire him! how does that sound? >> sir. sir. >> because of his extreme views, i ask a full review of his tenure be examined and his contract be terminated effectively. >> yeah! >> much of the outrage focused on the views in his email. clark and others calling for his firing declined to speak with nbc news. >> do you regret writing that email? >> absolutely not. here in ft. worth we had a tatiana jefferson who had just been murdered in her home. you've got george floyd, and i saw this moment and i was just saying i'm here with you to work towards that. we're going to have to have uncomfortable conversations. i'd write it again in a heartbeat. >> in the hours and days in that school board meeting, did anyone stand up for you? >> no.

behind the scenes, text messages, phone calls, voice mails. so sorry that happened, we love you, we support you, we've got your back, but nobody would say that publicly though. >> reporter: 200 miles away in oklahoma, the state is facing the first ever federal lawsuit against an anti-crt law filed in october by the aclu arguing the law violates free speech. educators at millwood public schools in oklahoma city had been working under a law nearly identical to the one in texas that would ban concepts that could make students feel discomfort or guilt. but some teachers aren't budging. >> let's go before the massacre. what do you know about greenwood the city? >> reporter: today's lesson is about the tulsa race massacre and why a white mom burned down black homes and businesses in a city called greenwood in 1921. >> the plan there probably makes

you terrified. you're probably sitting there, froze, looking out, all the businesses are gone. >> i would have felt a little bit of animosity towards them. it's the whole fact of the situation. you came into my hometown, killed my people, and then y'all going to dispose of our bodies without a proper burial. that's crazy. >> reporter: her students are only in eight grade, but intensely aware of the politics around them. >> we're smarter than we look. we know what's happening in america. >> you want to grow to tell your kids about your story and not your kids tell them about your own. >> at the end of the day, if you don't teach history, it's going to repeat itself. >> honestly it's been like walking on eggshells. there are moments where i have to really be conscious of am i getting as much from my students, i'm wondering am i or is this law causing me to hinder their education.

>> is there a case to be made for, look, leave the tough divisive concepts to parents at home, and at school, just stick to basic history? >> that is -- to me is not going to solve anything. those questions eventually come back to us. what they learn at home will definitely end up right where they are engaging with one another. >> reporter: oklahoma's law went into effect in july. doakes says she searched her syllabus, feeling violated, and decided she wouldn't change. >> what do you think this debate critical race theory is really about? >> control. control over what can and cannot be taught. but is it really avoidable? that's the question. that's the one thing that i fear. why are we trying to avoid something they already see? >> good morning. hey, noah. >> hi.

>> good morning. good morning. >> reporter: cecelia robinson-woods is oklahoma's only black female superintendent. as the law went into effect, she placed millwood teachers through four days of training to assure them their lessons aren't crt, they're just history. >> are you on an island? >> i definitely believe that i'm on an island, which is one of the reasons i wanted to be in the school district. my board is all african american. they almost expect me to speak out because we know there's so many more that cannot. >> reporter: local conservative pac published her photo in the newsletter, warning readers, if we continue to allow these kind of superintendents, there's no hope for the future. >> as someone who has been identified by conservatives as a potential problem, are you worried? >> i'm not sure what i'd be worried about. i mean, i answer to a local school board, and i have the support of my school board.

>> reporter: but millwood is the exception. next door in texas several school boards are struggling to interpret new laws and protect employees. in south lake, texas, nbc news obtained exclusive audio of an administrator telling panicked teachers they would comply with texas law by balancing books about theocaust with an opposing view. >> make sure if you have a book on the holocaust, that you have one that has opposing -- >> how do you oppose the holocaust? >> believe me. that's come up. >> the administrator in the audio has not responded. in katy, texas, the school canceled and then postponed an event with a prominent black book author. the second and most stringent of the anti-crt laws passed in texas. >> when you look at what's happening are around the state

right now, you don't think if any of this has gone off the rails? >> i think folks need to focus on what's in the bill, not what's in other states or things we've heard. if we were to tell little white children they are inherently oppress source, that's not good. if we tell little children of color they are inherently victims. neither of those is good. >> is that the primary motivation of this law, to make sure white kids don't feel guilty? >> the bill is clear. it would be wrong to tell white kids or children of color that they're limited because of the color of their skin. or they are guilty because of what people did in the past. >> what about teachers who say they're closing their classroom libraries, or dr. whitfield who is about to lose his job? >> i would say the words of the bill matter, not the facebook memes. >> is there something you can clarify at a statewide level. >> what we do not teach in texas public schools is one race is inherently superior or inferior. >> i understand. but i want to know what you think of the current lives people are living as a result of this entire movement? >> i can't speak to the national movement of crt and what other states are doing.

all i can do is tell you what's in crt. >> reporter: a group of colleyville heritage high school students have spoken out at school board meetings. >> vote to keep my principal. >> they fired the best principal any of us have had in our entire lives. >> by dismissing the concerns of students of color they're guaranteeing that that kind of behavior and thought processes can continue living on. >> reporter: in a statement to nbc news, the grapevine colleyville school district said james whitfield violated district policies and the district has proposed the nonrenewal of dr. whitfield's contract due to deficiencies as principal that have been documented and discussed. >> the school district says what is happening to you is not as a result of critical race theory. has this all just been a misunderstanding? >> it's interesting they would say that. promoting me twice in the last three years. what's changed?

>> reporter: after month of anxiously waiting, students and parents packed into the grapevine colleyville meeting room as the board voted on whether or not to settle and formally separate with the principal. >> none of you can identify with a black man in america and his experiences, but he brought those experiences to our students. two of my kids were lucky enough to have him as an educator. >> dr. whitfield has done so much good for the school and the community. do better. be better. the entire nation is watching what you will do. >> the very first resident to public lib accuse dr. whitfield last summer made the night's final remarks. >> the question should be asked how do we get here. critical race theory [ laughter ] >> reporter: at almost 10:00 p.m. last night, board members voted unanimously to let dr. whitfield go. in a joint statement with whitfield the district acknowledging both parties

believe they are in the right. >> why did you want to stay around until the end? >> i needed to see the look on their faces when they read that. the fact they said that with a straight face, they're hurting students. >> love you, dude. have a great day, buddy. >> you have a great day. >> thank you. >> have the best day. >> you have the best day. >> where do you go from here? >> i have a family that needs me. it's bigger than me. >> reporter: whitfield still doesn't know where he'll work next, but worries educators are in peril. >> i planned on speaking up because that's what you're supposed to do, right? you've got to think about what is that silence doing, not only for you, but is it being harmful to moving us along as a society? >> my thanks to antonia hylton for that report and frankly her

excellent reporting all year long on this topic. when we come back, what is the best way to teach our children about the history of race in america? the panel is next.

i welcome back.

i recently sat down with three guests, republican congressman byron donalds of florida who opposes the teaching of critical race theory, brenda sheridan, the school board chair in loudoun county, virginia, which has become one of the epicenters over the battle over critical race theory and jelani cobb who covers race and politics for "the new yorker." >> jelani, it seems as if you take the oklahoma law at its -- word for word, i guess it means we teach the fact that the tulsa massacre happened, but you can't teach why? is that how you would understand the law? and is there a way to devise a

law to somehow find a middle ground on that? >> yeah. i mean, i think that's probably in theory what would happen, but in practice what would happen is that people wouldn't teach about the tulsa race riot and we should bear in mind that we're having this conversation now in 2021 because that history has been excavated. there are generations of people -- i just spoke with a former senator from oklahoma who talked about growing up in the state and in the 1960s, having no idea that any such thing had ever happened. it's only because of the diligent work of historians that we even know that the public has access to this information, much less the fact that there was an epidemic of these kinds of ties of racial violence in the period following world war i into the 1920s, that this was an uncommon phenomenon. we don't know that. we don't teach that. we don't talk about that. so what the practical effect of

these laws is that people will not be able to understand and not be able to appreciate exactly how these problems arose and, therefore, will be poorly equipped to confront them or prevent them from rising in the future. >> congressman donalds, i brought up the tulsa race massacre because i wasn't taught it in schools. i went to public schools in florida. something i learned in the last two years was ax handle sunday, which was a horrible racial violence in jacksonville, florida. i assume you think we should be teaching these events in our public schools. >> absolutely. >> how would you do it and what does banning critical race theory do? >> the one thing we all agree on, history should be taught. objective history. >> even if it's painful, right? >> even if it's painful. i went to an elementary school

where they taught object irv history. i learned in elementary school. every child should have that. the issue with critical race theory is it is a subjective history using race as the lens of focus. when you bring subjectivity in the classroom, that's what has parents upset, what leads to children being divided in certain class segments based upon race. that has happened in some schools across our country, not all, but when you have something like this occur, that's when parents step up and oppose it. we shouldn't have subjectivity. we should definitely teach objective history in our country. >> can i respond to that real quickly? >> go ahead, jelani. >> i happen to be a historian. historians don't really believe there's such a thing as objective history. what we need do, we should recognize we have a perspective, that we're all subject active, and what we try to do, despite the subject activity, follow what the evidence suggests most stringently.

that's how we come to the conclusion that there's this dynamic of race in which one group of people have been disproportionately victimized, and one group benefited from that victimization. it's difficult to get around that even if people think it will make people feel uncomfortable. the last thing i'll say is there is no teaching of critical race theory in our schools. you know, i wrote about this in the new yorker. it's legal jurisprudence for which there's an extensive body of scholarship. if your fifth grader is learning critical race theories, i would say congratulations because you have a genius on your hands in the last year of law school. >> congressman, i want you to respond to that. are we to search for a problem that didn't exist when it comes to critical race theory? >> no, that's not what happened. crt ending up in classrooms is not a course. it's through diversity, equity and inclusion. all these things actually bring the subjective view not of our history, but how children -- that subject is being brought to children today, how they view

each other, how they view themselves. that's what we have to be very, very careful about. that's what parents are very, very careful of. >> all right. brenda, this is where i bring you in. you're a school board member. you're hearing these conversations, this is happening at your school board meeting. my guess is not as politely as we're having here. >> right. >> how do you guys decide as a board what belongs in history -- in a history curriculum? we're talking about the state of virginia whose history with race is very fraught. >> right. and i will echo that we're not teaching critical race theory. it's a graduate-level theory, and it would be inappropriate if a fifth grader was learning that in school. it's been manipulated. critical race theory has been manipulated to replace inequity theories. that's what leads to discipline disproportionality and students

being treated differently based on their skin color, or perhaps poverty -- their socioeconomics and those types of things. what we're really teaching students is compassion and empathy for other students' experiences. it can't be objective because we're experiencing it subjective. >> are you having a rational debate in loudoun or has it gotten out of hand? >> there is no rational debate. it's beyond that. >> what is it? >> i have to go back to the pandemic because it stirred from parents who were very legitimately concerned about schools being closed. so you had angry parents who i absolutely empathize with, and we wanted to help. we took their kids out of school because we had to. so we had a group of angry parents, and then someone lit the fire with critical race theory.

>> will you do this job again? there are a lot of school board members who have been walking away. >> i've been on the board for 10 1/2 years. i'm in my third term. it's been a long time. i don't make decisions based on -- >> not asking you to make predictions about your political future. the unintended consequence is i feel as if we're just going to separate on this, whether teachers are going to walk away, school board members are, like, don't want the fight, parents may go to their own schools. >> we're already seeing that. we see people -- we see a lot of our teachers saying just as an effect of the pandemic and this piled on top of it, they're walking away. it's an underrated profession as it is. >> jelani, that seems to be the unintended consequence we're all bracing for. we could have segregation of education. >> i'm not sure that's an unintended consequence. this is just an extension of the dynamics we've seen before, death by euphemism where texas

textbooks referring to the triangular slave trade, or people enslaved as workers and trying to find ways around the most uncomfortable parts of the story in the first place. this is tremendously treacherous as we've seen the increasing tide of hate crimes, we've seen white nationalist violence resurging across the country. we really need to understand what the pitfalls are. we teach history, we teach this difficult history because it's the only chance we have of immunizing ourselves against the vectors of evil in the past. >> congressman, i take your beliefs very sincerely. are you worried there are people that are using this -- hijacking this because of maybe their own nefarious views? >> no. my view is that the parents are coming to school boards all across the country, whether it's a red state or a blue state or a red district or a blue district. they're legitimately concerned

that their children are not being taught history, but they're being taught about biases that they may or may not have based upon the color of their skin. with young kids in america today they should be looking each other and viewing each other as equals understanding our history. i think that's what everybody wants. >> this was actually part of our original report of critical race theory that aired on "meet the press reports." that's where we dive into one subject for an entire half hour. we just wrapped up season three. you can see all episodes, all three seasons any time you want on peacock. go make that your second home. when we come back, my conversation with journalist nikole hannah-jones who led the 1619 project which places slavery and its aftermath at the core of our nation's history. ♪ i'm gonna keep on lovin' you ♪ turns out everyone does sound better in the shower. and it turns out the general is a quality insurance company that's been saving people money for nearly 60 years. for a great low rate, and nearly 60 years of quality coverage, go with the general.

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revolution itself was a fight for slavery. few people have spent more time researching, thinking or writing about race in america than nikole hannah-jones. she joins me now. nikole, welcome to "meet the press." >> hi. thanks for having me. >> let me start with this. describe in your own words what "the 1619 project" is and its mission. >> "the 1619 project" is a book now. it began as a magazine, a special section of "the new york times." what it is, it marks the advent of african slavery in the original 13 colonies. so 1619 is the year the first africans were sold into slavery in virginia. what the project argues through a series of essays is very little about american life today has been left untouched by the legacy of slavery and the anti blackness that developed in order to justify it. so it is trying to place slavery

as an institution, which is one of the oldest institutions in america, really at the center of the story that we tell ourselves about our country and to explain so much about american life through that lens. >> did you intend for "the 1619 project" to become public school curriculum, or did you intend it to start a debate to improve the curriculum of how we teach american history? >> well, when i first pitched the project, i simply pitched it as a work of journalism which it is. i'm a journalist at "the new york times," and i pitched a project to run as a piece of journalism in "the new york times." now, some months in as we were working on the project, we began to talk about this could be a great learning tool for students, particularly we were thinking about the broad sheet that ran in partnership with the national museum of african american history and culture that teaches slavery through objects found in that museum. "the new york times" has an education division. "the new york times" regularly turned its journalism into curriculum, as did the pulitzer center who we ultimately

partnered were. they are constantly turning works of journalism into curriculum. it's only become controversial because people have chosen to make "the 1619 project" controversial. >> i think in the last two years a lot of people have come to realize that our teaching of history has been incomplete, to be generous, particularly on whether it's reconstruction -- we talk about glossing over that. or specifically think about the tulsa massacre and how so many people said i didn't get taught that. i grew up in miami, florida, i didn't get taught about axe handle sunday in jacksonville. eight in ten public school teachers are white, yet half of the public school students are students of color. how do we improve that aspect of education in america? >> so i don't think that we have

to have, you know -- we should definitely have more black and latino educators because that is what our country looks like, but i don't think you have to be black or latino in order to teach a more accurate history. the problem is that our teacher preparation programs are not equipping educators with the knowledge that they need to teach this history better. when you look at the survey by teaching tolerance, they found that about half or slightly more than half of american educators say they don't feel equipped to teach about slavery, and they really struggle to teach about slavery. it's kind of ironic that we're seeing these bills being passed, these anti-history laws that make it more difficult to teach about slavery and racism and our country's long history of racism when, in fact, we have educators who are struggling the opposite way. they're holding mock slave auctions in their classrooms. they're having students do assignments where they have to list the pros and cons of

slavery because they really don't know how to teach this very well, and that's because as a country, we have not honestly grappled with the truth about our history. the history we learn is often about nationalism and patriotism but not -- >> where should it come from? i've thought about this. i know if government says this is our history, people are going to say, i'm not letting government historians decide what our history is. this seems to be a real challenge in an open society, is how do we get agreement on this, especially when parents want to have -- look, a virginia governor's race was arguably decided on the strength of how influential should parents be on curriculum. how do we do this? >> well, i would say the governor's race in virginia was decided based on the success of a right wing propaganda campaign that told white parents that they needed to fight against their children being indoctrinated as being called racist. but that was a propaganda

campaign. there are a lot of black parents in virginia, there are a lot of latino parents in virginia, and they were not being featured in that coverage. what they wanted for their kids' education, which is more teaching about race, more teaching about the history of racism, seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. i think we should frame that question properly. i don't really understand this idea that parents should decide what's being taught. i'm not a professional educator. i don't have a degree in social studies or science. we send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have expertise in the subject area. that is not my job. when the governor or the candidate said he didn't think parents should be deciding what's being taught in school, he was panned for that, but that's just the fact. this is why we send our children to school and don't home school because these are the professional educators who have the expertise to teach social studies, to teach history, to teach science, to teach

literature. i think we should leave that to the educators. yes, we should have some say, but school is not about simply confirming our world view. schools should teach us to question. they should teach us how to think, not what to think -- >> at what age? is there -- >> wouldn't want my child to go to a school -- teaching what? >> teaching, when it comes to teaching our past -- i think this is coming basically through a racial lens. parents are saying, hey, don't make my kid feel guilty. and i know a parent of color is going what are you talking about? i've got to teach reality. when do you do it and how do you do it? >> well, i think you should just think a little bit about your framing. you said parents, and then you said parents of color.

the white is silence. >> fair point, yeah. >> as a matter of fact, white parents are representing fewer than half of all public school parents, and yet they have an outsized voice in this debate. i have a child who just by watching the news when she was 8 years old, she saw laquan mcdonald, a teenager in chicago get shot 16 times by cbs on the morning show. she asked me why did they kill that boy? i can't wait to have these conversations with my child. i don't think we should be asking what is the appropriate age. i think we should be asking what are the appropriate conversations at that age. but our children are being raised in a racialized society. they are noticing things, they have questions, and i don't think teaching an accurate rendering of history is about making wild children feel guilty. i don't know an educator -- i've been covering education for two decades. i've never seen a teacher of any race tell a white child you are responsible for what's happened in the past. i just don't think that's happening.

even all the people who have claimed that that has happened have not been able to produce a shred of evidence that that is true. i think some students who are white probably automatic walk away from some of these lessons and feel very uncomfortable, as we should. a master educator knows how to give those lessons without making students internalize these feelings of racism. >> at the end of the day, this politicizing of this, it's clearly been weaponized. you've described it, i think, pretty well, on the weaponization of this. do you think simply time will get us past this? how can we get over this hump? >> i don't know honestly. i'm quite concerned about what's happening in our country because, as you know, my project which is a work of journalism by "the new york times" is banned by name in georgia, florida, in texas.

there are efforts to ban the teaching of this history in oklahoma, in south dakota, in tennessee. and when we think about what type of society bans books or bans ideas, that is not a free and tolerant democratic society. that is a society that is veering toward authoritarianism. unless people who believe in free speech, who believe in our children being intellectually challenged begin to get organized and speak up, i think we're going into a dark age of repression and suppression of the truth. really these laws are paving the way for the taking of other rights, votes rights, women's reproductive rights, rights for lgbtq people. >> nikole hannah-jones of "the new york times." i appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective. thank you for being with us.

>> thank you. when we come back, we'll look at another big problem facing america's schools as our special report continues.

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welcome back. "data download" time. a look at perhaps the biggest problem plaguing schools going into 2022. back in october our friends at education week released a survey that found some deep staffing shortages. 37% said these staffing shortages were moderate.

25% said severe. 15% said very severe. add it all up, that's 77% of those surveyed saying staffing shortages were having notable impacts on the school. it's nearly eight in ten schools that don't have enough people to serve the students, so where is the problem being felt the most? well, it's across the board. what's most acute, and you hear this anecdotally and see it in the survey, substitute teachers, struggling to find them, 77%. bus drivers, this has been a huge issue. even one state called out the national guard. 68% say they're having that problem. how about teacher aides and other specialty instructors? 55% are having a problem with that. full-time teachers, nearly half are having this problem. you should add it all up. sometimes teacher aides will being asked to be substitute teachers. this great resignation seems to have hit schools across all positions, and you can see it when you look at the total number of education employees

nationwide. in july it was 7.8 million. believe it or not, that has gone down. in november it's been 7.6 million. you know what hasn't gone down? we have 200,000 less people working in the schools. the number of students have not gone down at all. so they went back and resurveyed. have things gotten better? not so much. are the problems more severe? 52% said that. are things the same? 37% of the administrators said this. just 6% essentially said things had finally started to improve. this is a huge problem that is only getting worse, especially since this pandemic doesn't seem to ever end. when we come back, why is it more than 50 years after his assassination we still don't know how to teach about dr. martin luther king jr.

when you have xfinity xfi, you have peace of mind built in at no extra cost. advanced security helps keep your family protected online. pause wifi whenever for ultimate control with the xfinity app. and family-safe browsing gives parents one less thing to worry about. security, control and peace of mind. with xfinity xfi, it's all built in at no extra cost. welcome back. time for a little history quiz. what famous american gave a speech decrying how black

citizens live on an island of poverty in a vast ocean of material prosperity and the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. it was martin luther king and he said it in his "i have a dream" speech. unknown to so many of us, indicative of how we've struggled to tell the history of not just dr. king but all african americans in this country. joins me now, keith mayes, a historian from the university of minnesota, and joshua johnson, anchor of "now tonight," my colleague also at nbc news and n nb c news now."

welcome to both of you. let me phrase the question this way. rashid darden in 2018 wrote the following: students don't typically have a great understanding of the civil war, reconstruction, the jim crow south, the racist north. there is really not much after harriet tubman until we get to the civil rights movement. their body of knowledge is focused on those couple of things rather than the interconnectedness, the intersections. that's why i wanted this conversation to not only utter the words critical race theory. really what this is about is how do we improve the education history in america. keith, where do we begin? >> we begin by telling the truth, chuck. i think you're right that all of these things are interconnected. i was listening to the conversation you had with nikole hannah-jones, and 1619, indeed, is a starting point. but we have to talk about the black colonial american experience or the experience of people of color pre american revolutionary war, but also what was going on in the new national period of the turn of the --

18th century, leading up to the 19th century and the civil war, abolition, reconstruction, the post-reconstruction period, post-progressivism. i think in many ways, chuck, we have missed an opportunity to understand what that through line has been from the very beginning, whether 1619 when the first african americans were brought here or 1607 when white people came here, all the way through 2021. i think there's something important for us to understand as we connect the dots throughout all the centuries that this country has been the united states, even the colonial period. >> joshua, we also have this other pattern, when we do teach parts of african american histories, we fight it. think about the dr. king holiday. then when it's accepted, it gets watered down. think about how i opened this segment, about how few people

actually know all the contents and substance of the "i have a dream" speech. how do we get out of that trap? >> well, i think first we have to decide how much you need to know and when. there's a reason we think carefully about the way we write stories for the news. we don't tell you everything all at once. we have to figure out what to tell you first and then what to tell you next based on where you are and what you probably already know of the story. there was a documentary that just came out about the creation of sesame street, and one of the first things they did before they created the series was they did research of small children to see what they were already watching. they used the impact of existing commercial television to build a program that would take children as they were and educate them in line with what they were already exposed to. i think that might be one of the missing pieces. it's not just what we need to tell people, but how we need to listen, how we need to receive where america is now and work with the nation we have to build a nation we want.

in antonia hylton's piece earlier, you heard the state lawmaker from texas talking about not wanting white children not to be taught they're superior because they're white and black children are inferior just because they're black. that is a huge win. think about what that means in the context of the history of this country, having a white person say they don't want their white children taught that. that's something you can build on, even if it's someone who says critical race theory scares me, okay, where are you now? we don't have a clear understanding of what america is ready to discuss now because that's a need we can meet today. >> keith, one of the things i've thought about is -- it was 1975 that the president then, gerald ford, declared february black history month. and it has served as a tool for educators to at least begin a -- some teaching of african-american history.

there's a part of me that thinks if president biden -- if we didn't have that and president biden declared it today, we'd be having a very polarizing conversation about it. >> absolutely right, chuck. the extension of black history month from negro history week, the great carnegie wilson created that back in the 1920s. and it really flourished in the 1930s and '40s. that is the way we actually taught black history in public schools for many decades. what carnegie woodson envisioned was contributionism, what is the black contribution to science and business and education. that was kind of an easy, fluffy history to place the black contribution side-by-side with whites, but the civil rights movement did something very important, it demanded black history is not embraced just in

one week of february, but we want to actually begin to talk about what it means to be black all year-round. so it's really the american bicentennial moment in 1976, chuck, that opens up the calendar to extend that week into -- three additional weeks into one whole month. but i have to say that black history is still os feed and frozen in time in that one month in the calendar year, and once february 28th or 29th, depending on the year, once that goes, we're back to really talking about -- not talking about black history and the concerns of african americans and the things

that they care about, whether social justice movements or what have you, we don't visit it until the next your. this perennializing, analyzing of black history since the days of woodson, we haven't moved beyond that even in 2021. >> that feels like, joshua, how this debate opened up. there are educators trying to say, you know, it isn't a month. this is american history, good, bad, ugly, american history. it seems this is where the pushback comes in. i'm a cynic. this feels like it's almost all being done for political gain short term. i'm an optimist. i think over time we'll get better at this. but i guess the question is how long is it going to take? >> i think it's happening. i mean, there's another piece of the equation we can't forget, and that's the young people themselves. this debate about talking about race is over. young people are doing it on their own. they are googling the pink elephant you told them not to talk, and they're fascinated by this. so they're falling down

wikipedia rabbit holes about the truth of race in this country and talking about it with their friends as if this never occurred. i'm not sure there's going to be as much power in these laws as lawmakers think. i think there's going to be a lot of very resentful kids who realize their parents were trying to hide the truth from them or lie to them about something fundamental about who they are. so the curriculum is part of it. young people aren't dumb. they know that if you don't want them to know this, there must be something important there, and they might well google it behind your back. in fact, i think they already are. >> with two teenagers in my house, trust me, i'm well aware of that fact. >> yeah, exactly. >> keith mayes, joshua johnson, i hope you've had wonderful -- a wonderful new year and have had a merry christmas. thank you very much for coming on. >> thank you. that's all we have for today. thank you for watching. i hope you're having a safe and merry christmas week. we'll be back next week and next year, because if it's sunday, even in 2022, it's "meet the press."

increased testing over the holidays uncovers a record-breaking number of new covid infections. with the seemingly less severe but more contagious omicron variant spreading like wildfire, the question is it time to shift the way we track the virus? plus, covid calls and bad weather leads to thousands of canceled flights over the holidays. the question is will the return home be any less complicated? plus, nasa launches into space the most largest and powerful telescope to date. the question is what