The Bulwark Podcast - Dan Vallone: The History Wars Are Not What They Seem

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Americans are less divided than they think about how schools should teach about our nation's history. Conflict entrepreneurs are stoking polarization and cherry picking extreme opinions as majority views. More in Common's Dan Vallone joins guest host Mona Charen today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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very well-deserved vacation. We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by Dan Vallone of More in Common. I am very, very interested in the data that More in Common have produced in their new report, which is relevant to the culture wars. Without further ado, let me introduce Dan Vallone, who is the U.S. Director of More in Common. And Dan, thank you so much for joining me this morning. And thanks for this great report. And so why don't you just set the stage a little bit by telling our listeners what More in Common is and what kind of work you do? Sure. It's great to be here, Mona. Really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and happy to. So More in Common is a nonpartisan research nonprofit, and we work as part of an

international initiative. So there are More in Common groups in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Poland. And we launched about five years ago with a focus on understanding polarization, social division, and what can be done to try and bring our societies back together in ways that enable us to actually make progress on our common challenges and seize opportunities that are in front of us. And we primarily do large-scale public opinion research. We do a lot of focus groups. And so in America, for example, we are probably best known for a report that we released in 2018 called Hidden Tribes, a study of America's polarized landscape. And that was based on a very large national survey where we identified something called the exhausted majority, speaking to the fact that actually, although we feel so intensely divided and our politics is, in fact, in many ways divided, there is this majority of Americans who are looking for something different, who are more open to compromise, more open to seeing positive elements in their political opponents and working towards our common values and goals. I think it's fair to say that probably a fair number of listeners to this podcast would consider themselves to be in that exhausted majority. Although speaking only for myself

now, I don't feel like I have the luxury of being exhausted. You know, you have to go forward, you have to keep fighting and stay strong. What's special about your group, what really makes these results pop, really stand out, is that you don't just ask people what they think. You ask them what they think the other side thinks. And this is so revealing. So you did this about a few years ago, I remember, where you asked Republicans how many Democrats they thought were radical leftists or whatever, and you got a certain number of responses, and it was completely wrong, and how many Democrats thought Republicans were rich, and et cetera. But let's turn now to this most recent survey,

because you do that here, and you're tackling one of the very fraught matters in our politics, namely how Americans feel about teaching our history to kids. And this has become so fraught. So partly because, and I loved this phrase in your report, you talk about the conflict entrepreneurs who make money and get clicks by stirring up animosity and spread falsehoods and so on. But let's just start with an example of what some of these conflict entrepreneurs do. Let's play a clip from Tucker Carlson. If you wanted to destroy a country, if you really wanted to plow its fields under with salt, you would teach kids in school to hate their own country and to hate one another based on the color of their skin. That's happening everywhere

all of a sudden. No one seems willing to do anything about it. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri is going to try. He's proposed something called the Love America Act. It will require every K-12 school and school district that gets federal funding to ensure that students read the nation's founding documents. All right, so that's Tucker Carlson and, of course, Josh Hawley eager to jump on this bandwagon. And one of the things that they claim is that they're going to introduce legislation to make sure that kids learn about our founding documents, presumably because they believe that Democrats are trying to teach kids to hate their country. And so, you know, one of your results was you asked, do you agree or not with the following statement? All students should learn about how the Declaration of Independence

and the Constitution advanced freedom and equality. And what you found is that Republicans guess only about 45% of Democrats would agree with that. Whereas in fact, 92% of Democrats believe that that's something that they want to see taught. So talk to us about that a little bit. Sure. And that's a great finding. And it's kind of stunning on its face where, again, overwhelmingly nine out of 10 Democrats support that statement, feel very positively towards the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. And yet Republicans are fairly convinced that believing in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is a minority viewpoint among Democrats.

And just speaking to that clip, the strategy of conflict entrepreneurs is not particularly complicated. It's take an isolated viewpoint that is far outside of the mainstream and present it as if it is the majority viewpoint of whatever group you're trying to target. And then the second piece is amplify the sense of threat and make it seem as if this is not just an extreme viewpoint, but it is an extreme viewpoint that is part of a movement that is attacking something foundational or deeply valued by one's own group. Again, that has happened for many, many years. It's not new, it's not complex, but it is effective. And our report tries to expand our understanding of why is this working and what can we do to stop it?

Because as our data shows, there's so much more common ground in terms of how we want to see our history taught, but we just don't see it. And we are convinced the other side holds wildly divergent views from us and that they are a threat to us. And happy to go in further on any of those points, but I feel like connecting the conflict entrepreneur strategy to the data that we're trying to showcase leads us to the solutions part of the report where we're really trying to figure out how do we push back on those entrepreneurs and build on our common ground.

Right. So here are a few more. I mean, it's maybe hard to sort of absorb this with audio rather than seeing it right in front of you, but I'm going to do my best because these are so interesting. So here's another one that you asked people. In learning about American history, students should not be made to feel personally responsible for the actions of earlier generations. Okay. Republicans thought that only 43% of Democrats would agree with that. Actual number of Democrats who agree, 83%. Or we don't need to be ashamed to be American. Similarly, Republicans thought that only 42% would agree and 71% agree. And then you also talk about the perception gap on the other side. So first, let's listen to another clip. This one is from Robert Reich.

The so-called party of free speech is now going after academic freedom. A host of Republican controlled states have passed or are gearing up to pass bills that ban teaching the role race has played in the history of American politics, policy, and law. Conservatives lob the term critical race theory against the nation's tragic racial history they don't want students to know, calling it indoctrination or brainwashing. Leaving aside just for now some of these efforts that are going on at the state level, because there are some that are really worrisome, where, you know, legislatures are passing these overly broad, like Florida, passing these overly broad

laws that really do limit the way teachers can teach about issues like race. But here's some more data. So here's the statement, and we're going to talk about how many people agree or disagree. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks should be taught as examples of Americans who fought for equality. Democrats thought that only 38% of Republicans would agree to that. The actual number, 93%. Okay. Another one, it is important that every American student learn about slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation. Democrats thought only 32% of Republicans would assent to that. The actual number, 83%. There's a huge, huge perception gap here. And it's very true that these perception gaps are not a phenomenon restricted to one side or the other. This is everybody. And I think you mentioned our earlier report,

and just to circle back to that, in 2019, we released our first Perception Gap Report. And in that report, we asked questions about a range of issues. We covered immigration, policing, climate change, attitudes towards then President Trump, attitudes towards gun control. We asked about a very long list of different kinds of political issues. And we found that on average, Americans held fairly large perception gaps about their political opponents in terms of what they actually believe. But in 2019, interestingly, what we found was that the magnitude of perception gaps, so how large or how inaccurate somebody was about their other side side was different across different segments of the population. And basically what we found is that the more politically engaged

someone was, either as a Democrat or a Republican, the less accurate their understanding of the other side was. So interesting. So the least politically engaged Americans had a perception gap on average about half the size as the most politically engaged. And that's true on both sides. In this study in 2022 on the history wars, what we find is that everybody has large perception gaps, that wherever they're consuming information, wherever they're trying to form their opinions about what Republicans and Democrats believe about teaching history, it's wrong. And it's wrong in the same way. So Democrats, again, across the board, kind of feel like Republicans mostly want to teach a history that entirely kind of whitewashes the history of slavery, of racism, of any kind of injustice. And Republicans only want to elevate kind of a

purely American exceptionalist kind of history, whereas Republicans feel that Democrats only want to teach a history of shame and oppression and the failures of the country. And neither view is accurate. And it obscures actually the large amounts of common ground that we share in terms of teaching both, right? Looking both critically at our failures and celebrating the achievements

and framing it as an overall story of progress, which is what most Americans feel should be how we teach history. Yeah, it's so important that you highlight this because, look, if you base it on the statements of some of the activists, it certainly can seem that those extreme, you know, interpretations of American history prevail. I mean, you do hear people on the left kind of constantly stressing our foibles, our sins, that we were conceived in sin as a country and can never transcend it. And on the right, you do get these projects, and certainly Trump was part of this when he was president, of only wanting to teach children to indoctrinate them really to say, you know, we want to teach

them to love their country instead of saying we want to teach history honestly, which means, you know, yes, there are absolutely things to be proud of. And there are also things to be ashamed of. And that's life. You know, that's honesty. Yeah, absolutely. And on the website, we include audio clips because we did focus groups on this topic. Because to your point, it's really helpful when you actually hear Republicans and Democrats talk about this. Because one of the conditions that enables conflict entrepreneurs to be so successful in ripping us apart is that we actually don't often talk to people who have a different ideological viewpoint. We don't hear their actual views, all the complexity that people convey their

ideas, right? When you actually talk to somebody, you get out of the meme and kind of Twitter expressions and you hear them say, well, you know, on the one hand this, on the other hand that. And I'm just thinking about this one Democrat that we were doing a focus group with named Chandra. And this statement came up about whether students shouldn't be made to feel guilty or disempowered by the actions of prior generations. And she's so emphatic. No, of course not. I think she uses the exact word. They should never be made to feel guilty. What they can do is learn from the past and try to make the future better. And that's something that you would hear from overwhelmingly most Americans, and they're getting a very curated version of reality, it is possible for politicians to exploit this. So Mike Pompeo, it looks like he's about to launch a campaign for president, and he's making education a signature issue, which is interesting. I mean, he was former military, former secretary of state, but this is apparently his big issue.

And he is not framing this as, we need to all come together and find our areas of agreement, Dan. Okay, here's what he said. I don't have an audio of it, but I'm just going to read this quote. The most dangerous person in the world is Randy Weingarten. It's not a close call. If you ask, who's the most likely to take this republic down? It would be the teachers unions and the filth that they're teaching our kids and the fact that they don't know math and reading or writing. So there's a lack of agreement and subject for agreement in that sentence, but nevermind.

The fact is, look, I have a lot of problems with teachers unions. I really do. And I think they have really not been a force for progress in many ways, but this is so extreme. Who's going to take this republic down, he's saying. And he talks about teaching filth. Wow. No, and it's, I mean, it's apocalyptic language. And that's, again, textbook conflict entrepreneur approach. And it's, why does it work? In the report, we do highlight that although there is this overwhelming common ground, we don't see it. And the second factor is we are also so charged in terms of negative viewpoints towards our political opponents. So seven in 10 Democrats

and Republicans feel like the other side is racist, brainwashed, and hateful. And it's the same number, only about one in 10 Democrats and Republicans feel like the other side is humble, kind. And so that high level of what social psychologists call affective polarization, it does prime us to see the other side as a threat. So when somebody makes this kind of statement, describing a particular group that has a strong ideological orientation, you know, is associated with the Democrats in this case, as a threat, it does feed into that feeling that many Americans have that the other side is actually a threat to the survival of the nation, or at least the survival of the nation that they value. It brings out the worst of us because it pushes us to retrench back into our most extreme

ideological identity. It makes us unwilling to see the complexity of views that the other side has. And unfortunately, it also leads people to give a lot of money to groups that are fomenting division and not support the groups that are actually trying to elevate and build on the common ground. You know what else struck me reading your report is that these people who are attempting to sort of use the culture wars, the history wars in particular, as a lever for political power, I mean, they never actually talk about initiatives to help the schools. Let's get involved in our local school, and let's go examine the curriculum. And if we have any issues with it, let's reform the curriculum. And let's all, you know, talk about this as communities. I mean, it's more like,

click this button, send me money, you know, and that's the end of it. If we were to get people in communities like mine, I live in Northern Virginia, right? There are people on both sides of these history wars in my community, but we never come together and have a discussion about the curriculum. Actually, respond to that. And then I want to ask you something else, though, about the actual reforms at the state level. But respond to that, if you would. Yeah, and I think it speaks to something that we touched on in the report a bit, but is also part of the broader context, which is, one, we actually have a genuine crisis in education as a function of the pandemic in particular, but large amounts of learning loss

across the board. Every state is grappling with really significant challenges in terms of how do we ensure that we're preparing our students to succeed and thrive in the 21st century? And how do we address the negative impacts of the pandemic? So this is actually a moment when it would be a good thing for public policymakers and the public to really think and elevate the importance of education. And unfortunately, it's not being done in a really thoughtful manner in the national conversation, I think, and would be happy to talk about. There's lots of states doing really interesting work, red and blue, around actually kind of making education better. But it obscures, like, we have a really significant opportunity and need to address this, and it's not being given anywhere near the amount of attention and resources because so much attention, so much money is going to these more polarizing efforts that are presenting the most extreme views as threats to the country. And the other second piece about education that I think is also tragically lost in this conversation is that actually we've gotten a lot better.

So the Fordham Institute, which is a very thoughtful education think tank, very diversity of views in their team. They've done reviews of state standards for years. And in 2021, they published a comprehensive review of all of the state standards on civics and U.S. history. And they had done one previously in 2011, looking at U.S. history. And across the board, what they find is a story of progress. We still have a long ways to go. History and civics are, for a lot of reasons, still kind of underdeveloped from a standards and curriculum standpoint in a lot of cases. But overall, what they find is that states are doing a better job of trying to embrace the complexity of our history, teach students with rigor and with authenticity about what happened and how to learn from it. And that the states that are exemplifying this, it's not a liberal or conservative thing. The five states that they scored as highest in their 2021 review are Alabama, D.C., Tennessee, California, and Massachusetts.

So there's a lot that is happening out there that we can build on. But unfortunately, it's getting kind of washed out by the history wars. So you said a minute ago, you know, that there are really good state initiatives or certain states that are doing good things. Were you referring to those or were there other things that you wanted to highlight that could be models for how to do this well? Yeah, sure. I mean, I think just in the last couple of years, both Massachusetts and Indiana have adopted kind of new standards. New Indiana passed a new law requiring civic education in a more rigorous way for all of their students and adopted new standards. They had a robust community engagement through a task force to try and build out these standards so that everybody felt like their voices were heard in terms of how should we teach our

history and civics. And it's, again, it's not perfect, but it is one of those success stories that too few people know about. And it's an example of what we can still do, even as the kind of intense polarization is playing out in the national debate. A lot of states are still finding ways to make progress. And it'd be better if we were resourcing and supporting those efforts even more robustly.

Do you have a sense of how we're doing compared to other countries? Look, it's always hard for a country to confront the ugly aspects of its history. And there's no country on earth that doesn't have ugly episodes in its history that it has to either confront or deny or whatever. Do you have a sense of where we are compared to other places? It's such a great question. And more in common, we do have the benefit of we learn from our colleagues in across Western Europe.

And so I don't have any data to support this per se, although we've done some surveying work that is somewhat comparable across these countries. But there's a few points. One, I actually think America does a better job on talking about, thinking about and even wrestling with the issue of, in our context, race and history and the present. As polarizing as that conversation seems to be and as imperfect as people feel challenged and having conversations about that, I actually think that we do a better job and we've gotten better at it over the decades. And I think that relative to other countries, I'm just thinking about Germany, for example, where in many ways they're having these conversations now because they welcome so many refugees in the 2014-2015 crisis. They're having these conversations now about how do we contemplate national identity when we have a diversity of backgrounds and origin countries, right? Many other countries actually haven't had to wrestle with these issues or have chosen not to in as robust a way as America has. And again, I think it's always

been a challenge in our own country, but we have gotten better at it. It's hard to see that story of progress, but what I look at and what I listen to the dynamics in the other countries that More in Common is a part of, I think that there's a lot that we can point to to say, we are getting this better and that the next generation, next generation continues to find new ways to figure out how do we have these hard conversations across different lines of difference? How do we reconcile historical failures with our present? I was actually just thinking about, you know, I started my career in the army and just recently Fort Benning, for example, put in markers to acknowledge that a soldier was lynched at Fort Benning in the World War II era, that he had actually signed up to go and fight in World War II and was lynched on base. And it was overlooked for basically 60 years.

Or covered up. Or covered up. And I love the Army. I think the Army is one of the best institutions in the country, if not the world, that actually figuring out how do you bring together people of so many diverse backgrounds and build a cohesive identity that's able to go out and do incredibly hard things. I'm proud that we look at this and we say, yeah, we're going to acknowledge this. We're going to try and make ourselves better. Because if you look at Russia, China, so many autocrats can't even contemplate the idea that there's any imperfection in their own history story. They have to kind of absolve any wrongdoing in order to have this false story of dominance and power. And America says, no, we're going to try and learn from our past because we are committed to making the future better. So this is such a deep point. And I just want to like underline it with marker, you know, because I think there's a tremendous fear on the right

that acknowledging our errors, acknowledging our history of racism and even, you know, genocide against Native Americans and other things that we have done will diminish patriotism and will make us a country where, as Tucker Carlson put it, you know, we're teaching kids to hate the country or despise the country. But in fact, if you are teaching our past sins alongside the fact that we have transcended that and are always seeking to be better, that we are honest about ourselves and also are, you know, of course we have tremendous achievements as well, that that is a source of patriotism, that you're patriotic exactly because you live in the kind of country that can be honest and can see the bad as well as the good.

That is a source of pride. I am so grateful that my grandparents, in some cases great-grandparents, came to this country. I'm grateful every day that I was born here and not somewhere else. And that is the way millions of people around the world still feel. People who are willing to risk everything just to come to this country. It's why we have an immigration problem is that people want to be here. Absolutely. No, and I think that that's, when you talk to most Americans, they express that pride, that actually this is something that we should be able to do together and actually celebrate our willingness, not even our willingness, that we are committed to trying to make our future better. succeeded, and not imposing upon anybody today feelings of guilt or disempowerment, but really

encouraging folks to say, like, we're going to learn from this, and you're going to go out and try and do a better job, right? Making the world incrementally better year after year is something that I think is kind of profoundly American and incredibly patriotic. Yeah, I completely agree. Well, Dan, this has been a great review, and I recommend to all of our listeners that they look up More in Common. Is it moreincommon.org.com? How do people find you? Moreincommon.com, or they can look at the most recent report at historyperceptiongap.us. Okay, fantastic. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It was really interesting. And thanks for the work you're doing. It's so important.

Thank you, Mona. Really appreciate the conversation. Okay, take care.