Special: The Nation's Divide over Critical Race Theory

- Into the Washington Week Extra, I'm Yamiche Alcindor. We are continuing the conversation we had on the broadcast, and digging into the GOP's claims about critical race theory and history. To be clear again, Virginia schools do not teach critical race theory, but during this week's elections, misinformation about the subject turned schools in the Virginia governor's race into cultural war zones. Many, including white suburban voters are energized by anger over what they think their students and their children, I should say, are being taught.

- CRT seeks to divide our children, and define them solely through their race and identity. I think you know this already. I think we all know this already.

- First, I would like to say that this is so important for all our children to be seen and represented. There should be a diverse environment and representation of religion, gender, economic status, race, and sexual orientation and education through books and discussions. A small group of parents should not dictate what books are in our libraries. Rhetoric at the school board meetings, not only harms our students, but fuels hate, and hate fuels violence, and it must stop.

- Joining me tonight to discuss all of this, Errin Haines, editor at large for The 19th, and joining me in studio, Eva McKend, national politics reporter for CNN, Kelly O'Donnell, senior white house correspondent for NBC News, and Dave Wasserman, senior editor for The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Errin, I wanna come to you first, talk a bit about sort of how what we're seeing play out in school boards and across the country, how that connects to our history. I wonder in some ways, whether or not you feel like we've been here before, especially as someone who's covered race and covered history as you have.

- Well, it is absolutely connected to our history. The issue of parents' rights was front and center in our public school system. When you saw states like Virginia bucking desegregation in the wake of the Brown versus Board decision, we saw after the civil war ended, you had the daughters of the Confederacy that were literally attempting to rewrite history, right? And trying to reframe how that was going to be taught to our school children in the early 20th century. Listen, it's interesting to watch that footage from those school board meetings. We've seen really a completely different kind of racial reckoning unfolding in the past year, and a lot of it has been the having to do with the culture war in the classroom. And a lot of that has been led by women, specifically, suburban white women, because this is an issue that is absolutely resonating in those communities. And so I think that really coming out of Tuesday, that is the thing to really pay attention to now. Notice, I didn't just say suburban women because my mom is suburban and she is not white, but how effective a critical race theory appeal is to white women, to white moms of school-aged children. We've seen so much of this at school board meetings in recent months, these moms that are furious about, again, the false threat of critical race theory being taught to their children, and whether some of the anger that we're seeing in that footage translates into political activity beyond Tuesday night is something that I think that we have to continue to watch.

- And Eva, you talked about the fact that this critical race here has become a catch-all phrase, because I have a husband who, full disclosure, works in Virginia covering some of the school board issues. He was talking to me, and he was mentioning that transgender rights is part of this. You also looked at, parents have become increasingly angry about COVID mandates, right? So there's, this is not just about race, it's about a bunch of other sort of personal freedom as the catch-all phrase that people are using. I wonder what you make of this atmosphere and what it means for the future of politics.

- Well, I think you hit it right on the nose, Yamiche. I would speak to people, I would speak to voters, primarily at Youngkin rallies, they would say, you know, critical race theory was their number one issue. I didn't even get into a back and forth with them about how it's not being taught, but I would instead, well, what does that mean to you? And they said, oh, well, they're having the kids start to do their pronouns. You know, that has nothing to do with race at all, but that was something they incited. Or you would ask a parent and they would say, "Well, actually, my kid is not even in the school district, but I heard through someone on Prince William County School Board that they're teaching white kids to be oppressed." And so I think Democrats have recognized that just dismissing it as not being taught is not enough. What my Democratic sources are telling me is that they are thinking, or having conversations about how they want to respond to this in a robust and meaningful way.

- Yeah, and Kelly, we covered former President Trump together, some folks are asking, "Is this Trumpism to point out, is this sort of where the future of the Republican Party is going?" But also, I wonder, when you think about the past of the Republican Party, this has been a party that's been really good at running on fear, running on people's emotions, and that gets people to the polls.

- Very definitely. Fear, anger, and a sense of being somehow at peril, drives people to the polls. And it is as old as elections, and it feels very contemporary as well. And so it has new names, it has new circumstances, it's driven by the moment we're in, especially with the parent relationship with the classroom that we've seen through COVID. Frustrated parents who were tired of all the rules and everything that was going on. Back in my local news days, I covered school board meetings. They were always interesting, but they were never the hotbed that they have become now.

- People weren't dragged out, you're saying?

- Yes, and it really is a reflection of what's happening in communities, and it's an important thing to listen to what is there. And as you're saying, Democrats, frankly, both parties need to listen to what is being said and what it means to the people saying it. If the terms aren't quite accurate, the emotions underneath it really are reflecting something, and that's what they need to address with their policies and with how they're communicating to voters, because those anxieties are real, and they're very provocative in terms of turning out voters.

- But keep in mind when this issue started popping up. Back in the spring, American voters were actually in a pretty good mood over stimulus checks arriving in their mailboxes and vaccine rollout, we're gonna return to normal, remember that? And so Republicans needed an issue, even if it was a manufactured one to latch onto. But what's happened now is that Democrats, it's easy for them to dismiss this as a phony issue, but they dismiss it at their own peril. And one democratic adviser in Virginia told me the other week that, you know, if he were advising Terry McAuliffe, he would have tried to seize the conversation back by running on a plan to raise teacher pay, and try and bring the education issue back into Democrats corner. The problem for McAuliffe was that since he had already been governor, it was hard for him to convince voters that you'd be doing something that maybe he failed to do over the four years of his term.

- And Dave, that's a good point that you've bring up, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about sort of where the numbers tell us, what are the possibilities? Is there wiggle room? 'Cause it feels like in this atmosphere, it's gonna be really, really, really hard for Democrats to have some wins here. Maybe of course, 2020 to 2024 they're far away, maybe not that far, but when you look at the numbers, what if you were talking to Democrats or Republicans to explain a little bit what you're seeing in the data here, and what the wiggle room could be?

- Yeah, so when you look at the down-ballot, the fact that Republicans were able to recapture the House of Delegates, 52 to 48, even by winning some suburban seats. Democrats probably have to move more resources to defense, and understand, this is gonna be a very difficult election cycle in 2022, particularly with redistricting. One thing that we touched on was the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The implications for our next elections are huge because this is a redistricting cycle. And because that act is unlikely to become law, it means there's not gonna be a pre-clearance process where the justice department gets to approve lines that are drawn by mostly Republican legislatures in the South. And already, we've seen Republicans in North Carolina partially dismantle a historically black district in the Northeastern part of the state. It's gonna be up to courts in a lot of states to decide how these lines go, and that's gonna determine the battlefield in 2022 and beyond.

- Yeah, and North Carolina is the same place where a judge said that Republicans were targeting black voters with surgical precision. Errin, talk a bit about, I'm wondering about the moderate candidates that we're seeing in the Democratic Party rise up. I'm thinking of Eric Adams in New York talking about, as he's a former police captain, he was also talking about sort of working class folks and was talking to working class folks of color, going into the Bronx, going into other boroughs. What lessons, if at all, do you think Democrats think or wanna take away from a race like Eric Adams'?

- Well, Eric Adams is certainly somebody who had law and order bona fides with all the hand-wringing that we saw in 2020 over the whole Defund the Police conversation. Well, somebody like Eric Adams kind of, he kinda neutralizes that, right? Like, you've got Val Demings running for Senate down in Florida, also former sheriff of Orlando. She's somebody that has credibility in the criminal justice arena. You've got black lawmakers who were able to win in 2018 in districts that were not minority districts, I'm thinking about people like Lauren Underwood in Illinois, Johanna Hayes in Connecticut, Lucy McBath in Georgia, if she can hold onto her district, depending on what Georgia does with its recently released redistricting maps that they're haggling over even as we speak, in a special session. Those are the type of Democrats who certainly were driving a very much an issue-based campaign, talking to voters, trying to connect with them on common ground. Issues around the economy, around healthcare, around education, not critical race theory, but like actual education issues that voters were really focused on. And so I think we have seen that strategy work out to Democrats' benefit in recent cycles, and I think that on that, especially at the congressional level, you're gonna see that kind of happening again. But I think you're gonna see the critical race theory piece continue to play out at the state level in the same way that voter suppression was kind of sweeping state legislatures. You had Governor Kay Ivey banning critical race theory recently. When Glenn Youngkin takes office, he's bound to ban critical race theory on day one. What will state legislatures do to take up kind of the critical race theory argument? It'll be interesting to watch how they keep that in the conversation and have Democrats at that level respond.

- And I wanna, you wanna add something?

- Just wanna say one thing, I think, you know, it's not critical race theory in schools, but we have moved away, I think from a Disneyfied version of American history in recent years, especially in the wake of George Floyd's death, right? We are now talking, not about Rosa Parks sat on a bus. Dr. King gave his, I Have a Dream speech, Kumbaya, amen. You know, we're actually now talking about the history of racism in America in a substantive way. And I think that's what Democrats need to articulate better. You know, we are talking about red lining, housing discrimination, and tying that to a dearth of black home ownership today. We are hearing those connections be made. And so I think that is important for the discourse, and all of those conversations are not critical race theory.

- Yeah, and Kelly, people heard, also had to hear what their children were learning. We had a year where parents literally were, their students' teachers and their children's teachers. And that also impacted the way that people saw this. They realized that the Christopher Columbus that they learned about with a pretty little song, that Christopher Columbus lesson is out the door. And that now they're having to deal with the Christopher Columbus that murdered native Americans, and that's being taught. And it's truth, but it's being taught.

- And it's a challenge for parents to have that sort of dissonance with the memories they have of their own great school times, and it's at a time when there are just those stressors. It's just hard to put all of this in a context without considering the kind of pressure people have been under in two years of pandemic, and how that has affected how they view the world around them, from the economic stresses to the oh, tired parents who were trying to work from home and teach at home, and fears about health and all of that, has really meant a restless, frustrated public, that all of that is coming out and it's playing out, with certainly very volatile consequences in our elections that are playing out in front of us.

- And last question to Dave, the president, we talked a little bit about infrastructure on the show. The president has said over and over again, "Get these bills done." It sounds like he's saying, "Okay, if we pass these bills, my approval ratings will somehow skyrocket. We'll go back to being in a great place as Democrats." How much of that is a fantasy? How much of that could actually happen?

- There's no guarantee that Biden's numbers will suddenly rebound as soon as Democrats pass one or both bills. But I do think there is a risk that Democrats could be even more depressed next year if nothing gets done. And we've seen erosion, certainly among independents, we've seen Republican intensity skyrocket. The kind of the last puzzle piece that could send this downwards is Democrats base becoming very depressed next year. They can't afford that. And so to give them any chance at holding onto a majority, they probably do have to be able to sell voters something that they've accomplished.

- Yeah, yeah, well, we'll have to leave it there tonight. Thank you so much to Errin, Eva, Kelly, and Dave for joining us, and sharing your reporting. And thank you for joining us. If you missed the broadcast or the extra, you can listen wherever you get your podcast, or watch the Washington Week on our website. While you're online, make sure to sign up for the Washington Week newsletter on our website. It will give you a look at all things Washington. I'm Yamiche Alcindor, goodnight from Washington.