The 2024 Republican presidential primary race can be seen in microcosm in the DeSantis administration’s ban on Florida public schools teaching an Advanced Placement African American studies course.
PBS NewsHour said it was “a pilot course by the College Board focused on Black history, arts, science and culture.”
The right-wing governor whose name sounds like Rhonda Santis said scornfully, “What’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory. Now, who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory?”
Correct answers include James Baldwin, Bayard Rustin, and Audre Lorde.
In related news, Daily Kos reported, “Florida teachers are told to hide books or face felony prosecution.” In Manatee County, only books approved by certified media specialists can be accessed by children.
DeSantis said, “Florida is where woke goes to die!” Setting aside his peculiar promotional pitch, what is the radical “woke” agenda he wants to stamp out? It is, simply, any teaching about the struggles of non-straight and non-white people. This suppression is done in the name of protecting the very children it is robbing of the truth.
Millions of white voters, it appears, are seething with rage at the prospect of having to share what Baldwin sardonically called “the glittering republic” with anyone who doesn’t look and think and love like them.
A few years back, people like homocon Andrew Sullivan raged against The 1619 Project, which Nikole Hannah-Jones developed for The New York Times. Donald Trump, noted fan of dictators, created the 1776 Commission to develop a “patriotic curriculum.” The commission included no specialists in American history.
Patriotism means different things to different people. For some of us, loving our country means striving to make it live up to its creed. For others, it means jealously banishing any portrayal of our past except as a stately march to Mt. Rushmore — carved, mind you, into the Black Hills, which are sacred to the Lakota Sioux, who want them returned in accordance with the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868.
Black History Month is a perfect time to discuss what Michael Harriot of The Grio calls Wypipoing. He explains, “Wypipoing is calling oneself a ‘patriot’ while waving a confederate flag. Wypipoing is whining about widespread voter fraud while rubber-stamping gerrymandering, voter suppression and felon disenfranchisement. Wypipoing is screaming about freedom of speech while outlawing critical race theory.”
I suppose I am not the most loyal member of the Wypipo, since I enjoy Mr. Harriot’s sharp commentaries. Behind the wit is a profound outrage. When the stories of entire portions of our population are denigrated and delegitimized, it should not surprise us that they are the targets of official violence. The disenfranchisement of Black voters is part of a system that denied the humanity of Tyre Nichols and took his life one terrible recent night in Memphis. As to the race of the arrested cops, Elie Mystal writes in The Nation, “The race of a cop is ‘cop.’”
When a governor eyeing the White House punishes Disney Corporation for LGBTQ-affirming policies, bans the teaching of Black history, and threatens teachers with prison for giving a child a book, he is the one bent on indoctrination.
One wonders what surveillance this purportedly freedom-loving governor plans to impose on children’s electronic devices to ensure they are not exposed to the growing list of ideas he is determined to keep from them.
DeSantis will not easily reverse the social progress opposed by the white Christian nationalists he is courting. Black voters who know what is at stake defied efforts to suppress them. Gay people are integrated into marriage and the military. Trans people facing persecution and hate crimes show far more courage every day than those who feign fragility over the slightest gender variance.
As Steven Beschloss writes, “It’s no show of strength to deny people the ability to think for themselves and learn their own history. It’s an expression of fear.”
What sells in the reddest states will not sell in the rest of America. Hundreds of January 6 insurrectionists are still facing trial. The fascists’ refusal to learn any lessons could be their undoing — like shooting straight up at a Chinese surveillance balloon without realizing that bullets that go up will come back down at 150 miles per hour.
If those of us who embrace our nation’s diversity stand together, we can beat back the bloody and boneheaded forces of reaction and write a different, worthier page in our history.
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at [email protected].