During an episode of Meet the Press, broadcaster and journalist Chuck Todd corrected his question when discussing teaching Critical Race Theory in schools with best-selling author Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Hannah-Jones accepted a job as a featured book on the NBC program to debate whether her history novel The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story should be taught in schools.
Table of Contents
Chuck Todd Corrects Questions During Meet The Press Interview
On Sunday (December 26th), Nikole Hannah-Jones, best-selling author and investigative journalist, sat down with Chuck Todd on NBC’s Meet the Press. Todd asked how old children should be before having Critical Race Theory in their school education programs.
“I think this is coming through a racial lens, but there’s this, you know, parents are saying, ‘Hey, don’t make my kid feel guilty’. And I know a parent of colour is going, ‘What are you talking about? You know, I’ve got to teach reality.’ When do you do it and how do you do it?” Todd asked the investigative journalist.
Hannah-Jones replied: “Well, I think you should think just a little bit about your framing. You said ‘parents’ and then you said ‘parents of color.’”
Following the remark, Todd revised his question and said: “White parents and parents of colour. No. Fair point.”
“As a matter of fact, white parents are representing fewer than half of all public school parents,” Hannah-Jones responded. “And yet, they have an outsized voice in this debate.”
What Is Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project?
Elsewhere in the interview, Hannah-Jones discussed her book The 1619 Project and whether the teachings from it should be included in school curriculums.
The book was published in November and comprises of essays that explore the legacy of slavery in the United States.
Hannah-Jones noted that the book shouldn’t replace the old curriculum and explained that teaching white students about the past of Black people should give them the opportunity to take part in the conversation.
“Frankly, most educators are using it to supplement standard curriculum,” she said. “No one is replacing the old curriculum with The 1619 Project.”
Why Twitter is convinced TikTok’s Francis Bourgeois isn’t ‘real’
She continued: “I don’t think teaching an accurate rendering of history is about making white children feel guilty.
“I think some students who are white probably walk away from some of these lessons feeling very uncomfortable. As we should. We should be uncomfortable with the hard parts of our past.”
According to Education Week, Critical Race Theory is an academic topic that has been around for 40 years.
The teachings originated in the writings of legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado in the early 1980s.
Who is Hook as wrestler makes AEW Rampage debut?