Ron DeSantis responds to critics of his campaign to stamp out “critical race theory” by saying that Florida mandates a high school course in Black history. What he doesn’t say is that the course is offered in only 11 of the state’s 67 districts.
It isn’t offered because the state has not funded the development of a curriculum and has ignored the “mandate.”
The unenforced mandate was passed in 1994 in an attempt to make amends for the atrocities that occurred in Rosewood, Florida, exactly 100 years ago.
In 1923, 200 white terrorists sacked and burned the all-black town of Rosewood, Florida. The town was burned to the ground, and some who resisted were lynched.
Mary Ellen Klas wrote in The Miami Herald:
The painful details of the unpunished lynchings and vigilante violence went from being family secrets to the foundation for legislation awarding the first reparations paid by a state in the nation’s history to survivors of racial violence. They also became the catalyst for the 1994 law requiring the teaching of Florida’s Black history in K-12 schools. The law requires that courses comprise five components: African beginnings, the passage to America, slavery, the Reconstruction period after the Civil War and the “contributions of African Americans to society.”
DeSantis and his education commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. object to any mention of the state’s violent racist history, and they certainly don’t want people today to know that the state agreed to pay reparations to the few survivors of the Rosewood massacre. That may be why they objected vehemently to any mention of the reparations movement in the AP course. They have a guilty conscience.
As DeSantis defends against charges that he is “erasing the state’s Black history,” he cites the 1994 law as evidence that it is required to be taught, but he is confronted with contradictions:
▪ Budget records show that the implementation of the law that has been on the books for decades has been not only understaffed and barely enforced, but DeSantis and legislative leaders have rejected requests to beef up resources to expand the teaching of Black history in Florida.
▪ The word “reparation,” which is central to the Rosewood saga that spawned the Black history law, is now considered off-limits in Florida classrooms because state officials have determined that discussion of the reparation movement, which involves offering financial restitution to the descendants of enslaved people for the harms of slavery and racial discrimination, is an attempt at “indoctrination.”
“We proudly require the teaching of African American history. We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education,’’ wrote Education Commissioner Manny Diaz on Twitter last month as he defended the Department of Education’s decision to reject the Advanced Placement course in African-American Studies because it “lacked educational value.”
Hypocrites. DeSantis is hoping to become President by appealing to racism and to white grievances and resentment towards Blacks. He has amplified false claims about critical race theory, which involves the study of racism. He wants to make open bigotry respectable by loudly proclaiming that anyone who wants factual history and wants to eliminate racism is “woke.”
Lincoln spoke to “the better angels of our nature.” DeSantis appeals to the worst instincts of our nature.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article271882322.html#storylink=cpy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Along with “freedom,” woke is the second most overused word by propagandist, Ron DeSantis. His targets and language are tools in his provocative bag of tricks. The GOP is operating from the Russian playbook where down is up, and up is down. Russia seeks to rid Ukraine of “Nazis,” while Sarah Huckabee Sanders declares Joe Biden a “radical,” and Ron DeSantis attempts to normalize racism and sanitized history.
They are SO good at that and have been for decades.
I grew up in the 1970s when the word “liberal” was something to be proud of. Then, in 1988, I watched Lee Atwater/Karl Rove/Roger Ailes turn the word “liberal” into an object of such derision and contempt that even liberals were running away from that word as if it was a nuclear bomb. I didn’t get it, and all attempts by anyone to stop it were met from shouts from all quarters on the right and left that they were wrong. Because the left was validating the contempt for the term as much as the right was, just for different reasons whose distinctions were lost and resulted in them just validating the right’s demonization of that word. That’s when “card-carrying liberal” started.
What finally happened after way too many decades is that liberal was replaced by ‘progressive’. The right tried to demonize that as “socialist”, but it wasn’t working, and they tried other ways, but then they landed on “woke” and got some self-serving Democrats (mostly a handful of aging academics accustomed to sycophancy who resented the fact that they might have to do some self-reflection about their privilege and certainty of their own virtue and all-knowing intellect) to legitimize this. And they had the so-called liberal media so desperate to prove their “fair and balanced” credentials to Fox News that they were complicit and instrumental in amplifying as “absolute truth” that being “woke” is something awful, and that all who are woke should be derided and ignored as crazies.
Being woke is a good thing. I wish the left could do to the right what the right does so well to the left — turn the word “anti-woke” into meaning folks who spew racist attacks and condone violence directed at innocent folks who aren’t white. Anti-woke folks condone when young white men gun down lots of school children and say that is the price we have to pay to keep our society anti-woke. Anti-woke people want to lock up all people who who don’t agree with them that white supremacy is superior to anything else. Remember it does NOT have to be true. The right wing invents “woke” bogeymen all the time – I have seen certain folks here post links to some hapless teacher as a scare tactic. It doesn’t matter if something is true — the propaganda is all about scaring Americans THAT ANTI-WOKE FUTURE IS COMING. And not by making reasonable comparisons to fascism, either. It is about amplifying some out of context statement and getting the media to repeat your talking points about how that out of context statement represents the anti-woke folks who have sworn to take away everyone’s Social Security and Medicare and give all the money to rich people to pass on to their heirs only. Followed by 5 – 10 daily articles interviewing “regular” Americans about how totally terrified they are about the Republican’s hatred of anyone who isn’t white and their promise to end all Social Security and Medicare their first day in office.
And then another daily “think piece” analysis every day for another 2 months about whether the Republicans’ promise to end Social Security is hurting their popularity. And then another daily “think piece” every day for 3 months about why the Republicans’ are so bad at messaging because “polls show” that everyone knows they want to end Social Security their first day in office and that bad idea has made them unpopular. And of course blaming the Republicans for why everyone believes they will cut Social Security their first day in power. Because anti-woke is hating Social Security and imprisoning anyone who says anything to question the Republicans’ laws that white supremacy is good.
The left should work on better, more effective messaging, and they should stay on their message just like the right.
The problem is that the right’s message is “effective” because they can lie.
It’s like blaming Florida teachers for not having a better “message” when DeSantis and the Republicans can just say “teachers are INDOCTRINATING your kids, forcing ‘woke’ culture on them,and teaching white kids to hate themselves.”
Why can’t Florida teachers get a better message? Because they tell the truth and the “effective” messages lie.
I don’t agree that the left media—or politicians—should attempt to weaponize the language as the right does. That’s not based on some altruistic “we go high” notion. Just that it doesn’t, and can’t produce any advantage. Demonizing the opposition is WannabeAutocracy Populism 101. Mirroring the opposition’s words in opposite context so as to co-opt their words is their go-to tactic, and feeding it achieves zilch. Calling out anti-democratic tactics and hypocrisy is good (and necessary). Pointing to their failures is good. Beating one’s own drum is great: repeatedly point to our accomplishments, publicize gains to public immediately and specifically [e.g. infrastructure $’s that went to x place & how many new jobs will be reqd, et al]. Speaking assertively and competitively with smiles and exhortations, telling them what you want from them: Biden is good at that.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s DeSatan is getting rubles from Russia.
The whole article in Miami Herald is quite good.
I think the solution is for every teacher in Florida to teach African-American history and Literature a little every day.
Also African-American and all athletes in Florida need to speak up. Take the upcoming March Madness venues out of Florida and the FDOE will take notice very quickly.
I think the solution is for every teacher in Florida to teach African-American history and Literature a little every day
Yes! Those teachers who aren’t members of the DeSantis White Citizens Militia, that is.
And totally agree about the boycotts until Flor-uh-dush straightens up its act! Thanks, Mr. Jordan.
PERFECT! Yes, that is a solution. Good one…teach African-American history and literature a little every day.
Speaking of Black history, here’s an insightful in-depth analysis of the historically fraudulent 1619 Project on Hulu that former historian Diane Ravitch believes is wonderful stuff.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/the-1619-projects-confusion-on-capitalism/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WIR%20-%20Sunday%202023-02-12&utm_term=WIR-Smart
The reaction of right-wing, mostly white and male and old historians to the 1619 Project provides, ironically, examples of just the sort of whitewashing that the 1619 Project decries.
This would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic and weren’t metastasized throughout rightwing social media.
What a pathetic comment, just a white guy trying to be woker-than-thou. So Gordon Wood is a right-wing historian, and his opinion about the 1619 Project is just whitewashing? Wood is by consensus opinion among serious scholars the most insightful, learned, and careful historian of early America. Unlike you, I’ve actually read Wood and many other first-rate scholars of that era in American history, so I know the lead author of the 1619 Project is purely a political activist, not a real historian. She pretty much admits to that.
Lol. Hilarious.
You should follow that up with a nice chorus of “Wish I Was in the Land o’ Cotton.”
Please share widely, Ms. Hester:
Click to access Saidiya-Hartman-Venus-in-Two-Acts-1a1v7bq.pdf
Then let’s have a talk about the commodification of “fancy women” (e.g., girls) and of federal, state, and local redlining (in a nation where generational wealth is created mostly by the selling of houses) and about the expropriation not just of the surplus value of a people’s work over many centuries–the theft almost entirely of their labor. On second thought, not really interested in talking to anyone as dense as the author of that essay you posted about matters like these. Head in the sand much?
Let’s talk about turning it almost all into surplus value and then stealing what little that wasn’t away by various other cruel and shifty and systemically discriminatory means over hundreds of years.
But one expects this drek from the National Review.
Every time you feel the urge to parrot the word “work,” Ms. Hester, just substitute the word “aware.” This might help you wake TF up.
That essay by Hartman, btw, is about erasure. And about minding what are not the gaps but the abysses.
And if you need a little refresher on what terms like “Socialism” and “Capitalism” and “surplus value” means, here:
cx: to parrot the word “woke”
Of course, guys like Wood and publications like the National Review consider themselves experts on capitalism while the peddle the Best of All Possible Worlds fairytale about the virtues of the “free market” while pretending to be oblivious to the facts that ordinary people are systemically completely shut out of any possibility of participating in many of these “markets,” that many of the subsystems of Capitalism are design to ensure that the rich get richer and are enabled to steal from the poor (see, for example, fractional reserve banking, which is designed to issue contracts to create imaginary money and then charge people for borrowing it, thus making of those people wage slaves to banks), that the surplus value of the labor of ordinary is stolen from them by the ownership class, and that some people (e.g., black folks in America in most places for most of their time here) have not only the surplus value of their labor stolen from them by the Capitalists but also the paid labor, via various means, such as charging black folks with the same credit ratings higher credit rates, operation of company stores, blah, blah, blah, blah (one could enumerate these all day long).
but in the face of facts such as these, one gets in pieces like this one by the ancient Gordon Wood bald-faced apologia, and people who haven’t thought carefully about what he is saying bobble-head this bs and go about reposting it on social media.
The rich eat the poor and then figure out ways to pretend in public that what they are doing is noble.
And then they hire court singers, some of whom are called historians.
Here is more drek from National Review. The writer defends public school teachers, but because this essay is published in National Review it has no value. Such is the mindset of this blog in general and Bob Shepherd in particular. Ad hominem 24/7/365.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/02/in-defense-of-public-schools-and-their-teachers/
So, your argument is that because something appeared in the National Review that was reasonable, therefore most things in the National Review are reasonable?
This is know as the fallacy of hasty generalization and as the fallacy of unrepresentative samples.
Glad I could straighten that out for you. –That pathetic Bob Shepherd in particular
This apple is not rotten. Therefore, all apples are not rotten.
Sure. Makes loads of sense.
Sorry, that would be
–The pathetic Bob Shepherd of the ad hominem 24/7
LMAO
Come with specific examples, not references to things you’ve likely not read. Read one of Diane’s books if you are capable of doing so. And try to comprehend it while you’re at it. But claiming something is fraudulent without a single example (two may be a stretch) doesn’t cut it around here.
Mia—I suspect you may have read this, but if not, the first is a link to the critique by 5 prominent historians [including Gordon Wood], followed by the NYT response. This exchange demonstrates the sort of back and forth among historians as they wrangle over evolving framing of historical events. Much more on that in the second link, which illustrates phases of that evolution regarding this and related topics.
This link may be of interest. NYT describes in detail the editorial process for print and digital versions of the project, which answers questions about certain changes, in response to charges of waffling or “correcting.”
Y’all simply do not understand. Ron is the Gov from Above. Even when he’s wrong, he’s right. This is no optional. It’s mandatory.
Get with the program, troops!
Sarcasm alert
One of the most hilarious and frightening twitter feeds is New York Times Pitchbot. It basically “pitches” the typical “right wing narrative masquerading as tough journalism” stories that can be found in the NYTimes far too often. And too often, it links to REAL stories that are basically versions of the satire on NYT pitchbot but are actually (and sadly) totally real.
Just now the feed was:
“The real winner of tonight’s Super Bowl? Florida governor Ron DeSantis.”
A few from earlier:
“The Chiefs are down 24 to 14 at halftime in the Super Bowl. But in this Overland Park Houlihan’s, they’re less worried about Andy Reid stopping the Eagles’ aerial game than they are about Joe Biden stopping China’s aerial game”
“A freight train derailment in Ohio near the Pennsylvania state line left a mangled and charred mass of boxcars and flames. Here’s why that’s good news for Ron DeSantis.”
(In case you’re wondering, lots of things are randomly “good news for Ron DeSantis” in the NYT Pitchbot, because that reflects the tenor of their stories about DeSantis.)
“A park in deep blue North Oakland might seem like a strange place to meet Trump supporters. But over the rustle of an amateur poet leafing through an old New Yorker, you can hear whispers that Biden is the reason a new beret costs 40 bucks.”
And one that is posted over and over:
“Dems in Disarray”
Humm. Some poets read the New Yorker. Yes. They do. Unlike most Republicans, who do not read.
“I love the uneducated.” –Donald Trump
“And boy, do they love you back, Donnie.” –The Pathetic Bob Shepherd
Maybe people muttering paeans to bronze-age sky fairies shouldn’t be so worried about others being “indoctrinated”.
haaaaaaaaa!
Florida doesn’t mandate a class, it does mandate the instruction.
In Florida, f.s. 1003.42 Required Instruction requires:
-The history of the United States, including the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement to the present.
and
-The history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the history and contributions of Americans of the African diaspora to society.
It does not mandate a stand alone class in African American History, but such a class can be offered in high school (including an honors version). Otherwise the instruction is woven into the American History classes.
That actually reflects what is in the US history textbooks. A lot of mentioning. Nothing in depth. Nothing memorable.