MSNBC Host Joy Reid Says Parents Who Don't Want Critical Race Theory Taught in Schools Are Racists

MSNBC host Joy Reid said parents who don't want critical race theory (CRT) taught in schools are in fact racist themselves, while live on the air Tuesday evening during her weeknight show The ReidOut.

Reid discussed the growing movement in the U.S. to reframe how American history is taught and said that "some parents opposed to CRT aren't too pleased," before playing a video clip of an emotional mother expressing her opposition.

"Just because I do not want critical race theory taught to my children in school does not mean I am a racist damnit," the unnamed mother said tearfully in front of a room with others and was met with clapping.

Reid laughed at the mother's statement and said, "Actually, it does."

"It's just another example of Republicans turning kids into a wedge issue just like their politically motivated attacks on transgender youth who just want to play sports," Reid added.

Before playing the clip of the upset mother, Reid praised the New York Times 1619 Project that she said "traces the consequences of slavery from its inception centuries ago to its modern day implications for black Americans."

The project was established in August 2019 by Pulitzer Prize–winning Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in America.

Reid brought Hannah-Jones on her show and asked her to respond to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's belief that 1619 is not an important date.

McConnell and GOP lawmakers wrote a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona criticizing President Joe Biden's administration for praising the 1619 Project and the administration's proposed priorities for education programs to address systemic racism in schools, Newsweek previously reported.

Reid pointed out to Hannah-Jones that although McConnell does not believe 1619 is important, he considers "dates like 1776—the Declaration of Independence, 1787—the Constitution, Civil War," to be of importance.

"When you hear people like him saying that teaching the actual facts of American history are divisive, maybe that's because we have a divisive history in this country," Hannah-Jones said. "So he's not arguing that we shouldn't teach the truth. He's just saying that the truth is too difficult for apparently our nation to bear and that we're far too fragile to be able to withstand the scrutiny of the truth."

The Department of Education published a proposal April 19 "to support the development of culturally responsive teaching and learning and the promotion of information literacy skills in grants under these programs."

Following her show, Reid retweeted Martin Luther King Jr.'s youngest daughter Bernice King's tweet Tuesday evening that said, "Have you commented on and/or condemned 'Critical Race Theory' without clearly understanding what it is?"

CRT was officially established in 1989, but its origins can be traced to the 1960s and 1970s, according to Britannica.

"CRT challenges us to see that racial injustice in America is not, and has never been, just a problem of isolated instances of individual bias and private prejudice which we can solve by enacting 'color-blind' laws and policies," Columbia University law professor Kendall Thomas previously told Newsweek.

Newsweek has reached out to Reid and MSNBC for comment.