While enjoying our two-week stay, local Florida friends warn us about a future for the United States that looks like Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis.
And, my Chicago friends, they weren’t talking about the weather.
“What explains him,” I asked.
“He’s got millions of dollars from corporate backers and a ton of support from the Christian right. Plus the press and Democrats here have folded before him like a cheap suit.”
DeSantis did get some push back the other day for his decision to prohibit an Advanced Placement high school course on African American studies.
Attorney Ben Crump accused DeSantis of violating the federal and state constitutions by refusing to permit the course.
DeSantis’ state Department of Education ruled that the class is “inexplicably contrary to Florida law.” DeSantis requires lessons on race be taught in “an objective manner” and “not used to indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”
Like that slavery was bad.
Black community leaders, parents and teachers say the law is so broadly framed that it is clearly aimed at excluding any Black history from being taught in Florida classrooms.
DeSantis has a history of stuff like this. Going back 20 years when DeSantis first graduated from an Ivy League college, he briefly was a teacher at a private school near Atlanta and even then was known for his arrogance and racism.
DeSantis’ latest attack on Black studies included a bizarre argument that some unknown force was trying to “shoehorn” what he called Queer Theory into the teaching of African American history.
“This course, when I heard it didn’t meet the standards. I figured, ‘Yeah, they may be doing CRT,’'’ DeSantis said at an event in Jacksonville. “It’s way more than that. This course on Black history, what is one of the lessons about? Queer Theory. Now, who would say that’s an important part of Black history, Queer Theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids.”
“We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them. When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in Queer Theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”
DeSantis went on to claim that the course was “advocating things like abolishing prisons. Now that’s a radical political position. You’re free to take that in your own life, though I don’t think very many people would think that would actually work. But how is that being taught as fact?”
No specific examples of his “shoehorn” conspiracy was provided by the Governor.
A survey by the group We the Parents found teachers leaving Florida at a rate higher than any other states, with 6,000 vacancies statewide, and 61% considering leaving.
DeSantis apparently thinks Florida's loss of quality teachers is a small price to pay for his presidential ambitions.
The reason teachers are leaving? Governor Ron DeSantis’s targeting public school teachers, their unions, his anti-woke hatred, with bans on books, on critical race theory, and on sexual orientation and gender identity discussion and instruction.
Our Florida friends warned us that DeSantis isn’t just a Florida problem.
He has bigger ambitions.
He’s coming for the rest of us.