DeSantis Will Avoid The Truth In Education At All Costs
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and other like-minded bigots are scared stiff of educated, sophisticated African Americans because of six little words: The truth will set you free.
Freedom is the last thing on the agenda of bigots like DeSantis and others who believe that a true telling of the African American experience in the U.S. will resort in a revolution and speed up the conspiracy that African Americans and other minorities are being brought to the U.S. to replace whites as the dominant population, the so-called “replacement theory.”
Florida and DeSantis have been doing the major gaslighting in opposition to African American and LGBTQ studies in schools. The Florida law bars K-12 schools and public colleges from adopting any instructional materials or engaging in any professional development programs that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” belief in certain ideas about race, sex, color, or national origin. Classroom instruction related to past racial injustice may not “indoctrinate or persuade” students to believe the ideas.
But dozens of other states have taken similar tacks.
For example, Arizona’s bill bans “training, orientation or therapy that presents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex.” It applies to state agencies and political subdivisions.
Georgia prohibits K-12 schools from promoting certain concepts related to race or U.S. history. Idaho bans public schools and institutions of higher education from “direct[ing] or otherwise compel[ing] students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere” to the outlined “critical race theory” tenets.
North Dakota requires that all instruction in public K-12 schools be “factual” and “objective” and prohibits inclusion of any instruction related to critical race theory, defined as “the theory that racism is not merely the product of learned individual bias or prejudice, but that racism is systemically embedded in American society and the American legal system to facilitate racial inequality.”
Texas bars teachers from being “compelled to discuss a particular current event or widely debated and currently controversial issue.” Teachers who do so should “strive to explore the topic from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”
DeSantis, the leading Republican dog whistler, has a whole suitcase filled with bogeymen. African American writers who throw the DeSantis gang into spasms, paroxysms and fits of hysteria, include Gloria Jean Watkins aka bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Roderick Ferguson, Leslie Kay Jones, and Robin D.G. Kelly.
Despite DeSantis’s rhetoric, the writers are all revered in their fields.
Watkins, better known by her pen name “bell hooks,” was an American author and social activist who was Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea (Kentucky) College. Berea College was the first college in the Southern United States to be coeducational and racially integrated. Hooks is best known for her writings on the intersectionality of race, feminism, and class. She published around 40 books, and works that ranged from essays and poetry to children’s books. She taught at the University of Southern California, Stanford University, Yale University and The City College of New York, before joining Berea College in 2004.
Crenshaw is a civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory. She is a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, where she specializes in race and gender issues. Crenshaw is known for introducing and developing intersectional theory, the study of how overlapping or intersecting social identities, particularly minority identities, relate to systems and structures of oppression, domination, or discrimination. Crenshaw’s work has been cited as influential in the drafting of the equality clause in the Constitution of South Africa.
Davis is a political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the author of more than 10 books on class, gender, race, and the U.S. prison system.
A Marxist, feminist and lesbian, Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). In 2020, Davis was listed in 2020 on Time’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Ferguson is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He was previously professor of African American and Gender and Women’s Studies in the African American Studies Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His scholarship includes work on African-American literature, queer theory and queer studies, classical and contemporary social theory, African-American intellectual history, sociology of race and ethnic relations, and black cultural theory.
Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers, New Brunswick, specializing in social movements. She draws extensively on the fields of race and gender, critical race theory, and online social media in her study of collective mobilization. As a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, she held fellowships at the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy (2018–2019) and the Price Lab for Digital Humanities (2017–2018).
Kelley is an historian and academic, and is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California (USC) and from 2003 to 2006 he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University.
During the 2009–2010 academic year, Kelley served as Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University, the first African-American historian to do so since the chair was established in 1922. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. He is also the author of a 2009 biography of Thelonious Monk.
As far as those favorite dog whistles of the right, let’s turn the light on a few.
Intersectionality. The theory of intersectionality explains how being part of multiple social categories can change the way people experience social systems. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage including gender, caste, sex, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, disability, weight, and physical appearance. DeSantis has wrongly said that intersectionality is a system of ranking people based on race, wealth, gender, and sexual orientation.
Critical race theory (CRT). Critical race theory is primarily concerned with understanding how beliefs about racial differences have affected the application of law across time and place. Contrary to DeSantis’s claims, CRT does not claim that “members of one race, color, national origin, or sex are morally superior.” Another DeSantis misrepresentation is that critical race theory argues that any individual or group is inherently racist. It does not.
AP African American history. The Florida Department of Education rejected The College Board’s proposed Advanced Placement African American Studies course, citing concerns about six topics of study, including the Movement for Black Lives, Black feminism and reparations. DeSantis has argued that learning about disparate racial experiences in the United States will “indoctrinate” people to hate the nation. The College Board revised the course, excluding lessons on the intersection between Black history and queer studies and any mention of the reparations movement.
Florida’s rejection of the A.P. course flies in the face of the state’s mandate that all students be taught “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 contributions of African Americans to society.”
In response to DeSantis’s actions, Chicago-based publisher Haymarket Books is offering multiple e-books by progressive Black authors for students to download free of charge. The books that the progressive publishing company has made available include: “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor; “Black Lives Matter at School,” by Jesse Hagopian and Denisha Jones; and “1919,” by Eve L. Ewing.
The 1619 Project. Nikole Hannah-Jones writes how Black Americans have been systematically denied the opportunity to build generational wealth, and what is owed descendants of slavery.
Black queer experience. DeSantis said queer theory had nothing to do with Black history and that his administration believes in “teaching kids facts and how to think,” not political agendas.
“We want education, not indoctrination,” he said. “If you fall on the side of indoctrination, we’re going to decline. If it’s education, then we will do.”
Those dangerous, queer African American trailblazers that DeSantis wants to keep out of ear shot of students, include:
Gladys Bentley (1907–1960) was a lesbian performer during the Harlem Renaissance. One of the best-known Black entertainers in the U.S., Bentley wore a top hat and tuxedo, while belting out the blues in Harlem establishments like the Clam House and the Ubangi Club.
Bayard Rustin (1912–1987) was an LGBTQ and civil rights activist and key adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He organized the 1963 March on Washington and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. In 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom pardoned Rustin for his arrest in 1953 when he was found having sex with two men in a parked car in Pasadena, Calif. Rustin served 50 days in Los Angeles County jail and had to register as a sex offender.
Stormé DeLarverie (1920–2014) was a biracial, lesbian. As a youngster, DeLarverie joined the Ringling Brothers Circus where she rode jumping horses. After leaving the circus, DeLarverie toured the Black theater circuit as the MC and only drag king of the Jewel Box Revue, the first racially integrated drag revue in North America. For her work as a volunteer street patrol worker, DeLaverie was called the “guardian of lesbians in the (Greenwich) Village.”
James Baldwin (1924–1987) was a writer and social critic best known for his 1955 collection of essays, “Notes of a Native Son,” and his 1956 novel, “Giovanni’s Room,” about homosexuality and bisexuality. Baldwin spent much of his literary and activist career educating others about Black and queer identity.
Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965) was an activist and playwright who wrote her groundbreaking play “A Raisin in the Sun,” about a struggling Black family on Chicago’s South Side. After the play’s release, Hansberry became the first Black playwright and youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle Award. Hansberry never publicly acknowledged she was a lesbian but contributed letters about feminism and homophobia to the magazine of “Daughters of Bilitis,” the nation’s first lesbian civil and political rights organization.
Alvin Ailey (1931–1989) was a choreographer who founded the famed, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. His signature work, including “Cry” and “Revelations,” continues to be performed all over the world. In 2014, Ailey was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his influential work in bringing dance to underserved communities.
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) was a self-described “Black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet, warrior” who wrote in the fields of feminist theory, critical race studies and queer theory. Among her most notable works are “Coal” (1976), “The Black Unicorn” (1978), “The Cancer Journals” (1980) and “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” (1982).
Ernestine Eckstein (1941–1992) was a leader in the New York chapter of Daughters of Bilitis and was the only Black woman present at early LGBTQ rights protests. Eckstein was an early activist in the Black feminist movement of the 1970s and was involved with the organization Black Women Organized for Action.
Barbara Jordan (1936–1996), a civil rights leader and attorney, was the first African American elected to the Texas Senate in 1966, and the first woman and first African American elected to Congress from Texas in 1972. Jordan never explicitly acknowledged that she was a lesbian but openly discussed her life partner of nearly 30 years, Nancy Earl.
Marsha P. Johnson was an outspoken transgender rights activist and is reported to be one of the central figures of the historic Stonewall uprising of 1969. Along with fellow trans activist Sylvia Rivera, Johnson helped form Street Transgender Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a radical political organization that provided housing and other forms of support to homeless queer youth and sex workers in Manhattan.
Major Griffin-Gracy is a Black transgender woman and activist at the forefront of the fight for trans rights. In 2005, Griffin-Gracy joined San Francisco-based Trans Gender Variant and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) as a staff organizer, and later as executive director, to lead the group’s efforts advocating for incarcerated trans women.
Ron Oden was elected mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., in 2003, and was the first openly gay African American man elected mayor of an American city.
Phill Wilson, an HIV/AIDS activist, founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999. In 2010, Wilson was appointed to President Obama’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. He also served as a World AIDS Summit delegate and advocated for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide additional funding for resources to educate and mobilize the Black community around HIV/AIDS issues.
Andrea Jenkins made history in 2017 as the first openly transgender Black woman elected to public office in the U.S. Jenkins, a Democrat, was one of two openly trans people to win a seat on the Minneapolis City Council in 2017. She is also a published poet and an oral historian.
Willi Ninja (1961–2006) was a dancer, choreographer and the “Grandfather of Vogue,” the dance style that he helped propel to the national stage.
Lori Lightfoot swept all 50 of Chicago’s wards in the 2019 mayoral runoff election after promising to end the city’s famed backroom dealing. She is the city’s first ever Black, female, openly LGBTQ mayor.