Florida,
that popular tourist destination with lots
of sun, beaches and Mickey
Mouse, has become a circus of white
supremacist madness. A state with
a long, unaddressed history of racial
oppression and genocide is
going back to the future and staking a claim
for fascism. Welcome to
the insurrection capital of America.
Those
who need proof need only look at the
latest move by Florida Governor
Ron DeSantis. who
has banned the teaching of Advanced
Placement African American
Studies
in Florida high schools under a College
Board pilot program.
According to Florida’s Department of
Education, the new AP
curriculum “is inexplicably contrary to
Florida law and
significantly lacks educational value.”
This
decision to block the teaching of Black
history is par for the course
for DeSantis, who is waging a full-scale
war on racial justice, civil
rights and voting rights in the Sunshine
State. Under his Stop
W.O.K.E.
Act,
DeSantis has blocked the teaching of race,
Black history and
so-called “critical race theory” or CRT in
K-12 schools. And the
presidents of Florida’s state
colleges
and universities
said they would scrap any academic program
“that compels belief in
critical race theory or related concepts
such as intersectionality.”
What’s
more, Florida under DeSantis has engaged
in human
trafficking
by bussing migrants and asylum seekers to
northern states and falsely
arresting Black, brown and poor people
with felony convictions for
voter
fraud.
And
his “Don’t
Say
Gay”
law wages violence against LGBTQ+ people
by prohibiting “classroom
discussion about sexual orientation or
gender identity in certain
grade levels or in a specified manner.”
As
Congressman
Ritchie
Torres
(D-N.Y.) tweeted: “SHOCKING: Ron DeSantis
has BANNED the teaching
of AP African American Studies in Florida.
Florida has gone from
Don’t Say Gay to Don’t Say Black.”
“DeSantis
is criminalizing African American Studies,
making life difficult for
gay and trans people and created a law
enforcement unit to arrest
black people for voting. Is this why @elonmusk
and other self-described centrists like
him?” tweeted Davidson
College professor Issac
J.
Bailey.
Channeling
the
Jim Crow petty dictators who came before
him - those who blocked
the schoolhouse doors and sicced police
dogs and water hoses on Black
children - Ron DeSantis would make George
Wallace,
Theodore Bilbo
and Ross
Barnett
proud. And yet Florida is the headquarters
of two rival autocratic
“strongmen”
- DeSantis and former President Donald
Trump - who are competing to
be the leader of the American tinfoil-hat
white supremacy brigade.
And DeSantis, who is as cruel and racist
as Trump but without the
charisma, wants to beat Trump in the race
to the White House.
And
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago is more of a problem
for democracy than the
governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. On Jan.
8, supporters of
defeated Brazilian President Jair
Bolsonaro - known as the “Trump
of
the Amazon”
- stormed Brazil’s legislature, supreme
court and the presidential
palace. This, after Bolsonaro’s son
Eduardo traveled to Mar-a-Lago
in November to meet with Trump and speak
tp Trump
advisers
like Steve Bannon and Jason Miller to
discuss overturning the
Brazilian election. And before the
attempted coup in Brazil - a
country with the largest Black population
in the African diaspora -
Bolsonaro skipped the inauguration of his
successor Luiz
Inácio
Lula da Silva
and fled to Florida. In Florida, Bolsonaro
ate
at KFC,
shopped at the insurrectionist-supporting
Publix supermarket and brought in the new
year with Trump at
Mar-a-Lago.
Meanwhile,
waiting
in the wings is Rep.
Matt
Gaetz,
who is under federal investigation for child
sex
trafficking
and sought a pardon
from Trump. The Florida congressman, who
said he is ”proud
of
the work we did”
on Jan. 6 and is “ashamed of nothing” - is
eyeing a 2026 run for
governor.
Leading
the
nation
in people arrested for attacking the U.S.
Capitol, Florida is a hot
mess. There is a reason why neo-Nazis feel
comfortable projecting
swastikas
onto buildings in some Florida cities.
After all, they know they live
in a fascist-friendly state where they are
just as welcome as
tourists and right at home with their
hate.
It
is no accident that DeSantis would ban the
teaching of racial
history, including Florida’s own history
of racial injustice, voter
suppression and racial massacres, enabling
him to repeat those
atrocities in the present day. Some of
these atrocities include the
Ocoee
Massacre
of 1920 - when at least 50 people were
brutally murdered for
exercising their right to vote - and the Rosewood
Massacre
of January 1923 - when a white mob
lynched, burned and destroyed a
Black town, killing
as
many as 200.
Removing
Black history from the curriculum also
attempts to silence those
important stories about Black resistance
to enslavement. One example
is the Black
Seminoles,
Maroons who liberated themselves from the
Southern plantations and
joined forces with the Seminole nation in
Florida.
Banning
the teaching of this history does not
protect white children from
shedding tears of “discomfort,
guilt
or anguish.”
Rather, DeSantis disarms and disempowers
children when he withholds
knowledge that could create solutions for
eradicating white
supremacy, placing everyone in peril in
the process. But that’s his
point.
One
hundred years later, Florida has not come to
terms with the legacy of
Rosewood, and it shows. As Trump would say,
Florida is not sending
their best.
This
commentary
is also posted on The
Grio
