MSNBC host Joy Reid took one of her latest guests, Christopher Rufo, to task after he challenged her to a debate on critical race theory.
During a Wednesday broadcast of her show, The Reid Out, Rufo, who is a self-proclaimed “think-tank scholar,” engaged in an on-air dispute with Reid after he said she didn’t have the “courage” to have him on her show to discuss the topic.
“Why would I need courage to have you on? Are you an expert in race, or racial history, are you a lawyer, are you a legal scholar?” Reid said during Wednesday's show. “Is that a part of your background?”
Rufo then informs viewers that he’s a senior fellow with the Manhattan Institute and is currently spearheading their initiative on critical race theory. Moments later, he accuses Reid of attacking him for quoting his words from an article last week.
Rufo continued that his issue with Reid is that she’s spreading “false pieces of information about critical race theory.”
“You’ve claimed in recent weeks that critical race theory isn’t being taught in schools, you’ve claimed that most American public school students learn what you call “confederate race theory” and are taught that slavery was 'not so bad,' he said.
“You’ve claimed that state legislation will prevent schools from teaching about the history of racism and finally you’ve claimed that critical race theory isn’t rooted in the philosophical tradition of Marxism, and I think that all four of those claims are wrong and I would love to discuss them tonight,” he added.
Since the inception of The 1619 Project, implemented by The New York Times two years ago, critical race theory has been a controversial topic over whether it should be taught to young students. Recently, conservative state legislators across the country have voted against teaching the concept in schools, as Blavity previously reported.
After Reid quoted historian Ibram X. Kendi, who does not identify as a critical race theorist despite Rufo’s allegations, the two continued to go back and forth with Reid taking a stance saying she refuses to let people talk who are not telling the truth.
“I don’t allow people to just make up and say lies on the show. It’s just not really right to do that and let people hear it,” she said. “Aren’t you just taking wokeness stuff that annoys you and calling it critical race theory?” she continued after quoting his tweets where he says critical race theory has been “decodified” and used to erase the cultural woes of Americans.
"What you basically — and you admit it yourself, that you have taken all of these sort of wokeness moments, corporate wokeness, the corporate sort of woke money, woke capital, the things that annoy conservatives, and you have stuffed it all into the name critical race theory,” Reid said. “It’s really like — it’s like Christopher Rufo theory. You stuffed it all in.”
According to U.S. News & World Report, anti-critical race theory bills have either passed or are being considered in Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
According to CNN, critical race theory is a concept that acknowledges that racism is inextricably linked to American culture. The theory, which has been used for decades, examines and challenges the systems implemented into American society that have perpetuated racism since the country’s inception.
"Critical race theory is a practice. It's an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it,” Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and a law professor who teaches at UCLA and Columbia University, told CNN.
