If there’s anything we learned from this legislative session in Florida, it’s the undeniable reality that racism is alive, and unfortunately thriving, in the highest corridors of the Sunshine State.
Time for the hashtag #SOSFlorida.
Somebody come rescue what lawmakers left of our civil rights.
“This is where ‘woke’ goes to die,” Gov. Ron DeSantis bragged in a speech to the conservative Federalist Society — and the Legislature went to work doing the dirty work of hiding horrific Black Florida history from students and grown-ups in the name of white comfort.
On Thursday, senators passed HB 7, the last of several bills fueled, not by need, but by political culture wars in a year when the governor is up for re-election.
DeSantis wants the “free state” of Florida “to be known as a brick wall against all things ‘woke.’ ”
But there was no “freedom,” none at all, dispensed by the Florida Legislature this session, only censorship, hate of The Other made official and the stoking of divisions.
The Republican-ruled legislative body — eager to please maximum leader DeSantis — brought back the ghosts of the Confederacy, passing an agenda fraught with assaults on minorities’ civil rights.
No freedom in anti-woke
The so-called “anti-woke” bill endorsed by the Senate was the last feather on the racist cap of white conservatives, so angst-ridden by the rise of African Americans in this country that they have to strip minorities and women of as many rights as they possibly can.
Set them back. Put them in their place is the message Republicans sent with one measure passed after another, from making it harder for Blacks to win elections — minorities are most affected by limiting access to voting, while the known cheaters are GOP operatives — to telling schools and workplaces what they can teach about race and sexual identity.
“Leveraging our power . . . to enforce strict guidelines on curriculum in education is done by authoritarian regimes, not democratic republics,” admonished Sen. Janet Cruz of Tampa, one of several Democratic senators who made impassioned 11th-hour appeals to stop the whitewashing of Florida’s Black history.
But to Republicans — including, to our shame, Miami-Dade’s Sen. Manny Diaz, who shepherded through the Senate this racist bill (multiple sources say he’ll be rewarded with appointment as education commissioner at a salary of $276,000) — this is about “individual freedom.”
Censorship as freedom?
In what country is censorship of schools and businesses conducive to freedom?
It’s horse-manure rhetoric, perpetrated to convince some voters that they’re losing rights to stave off “socialism” coming down the pipeline. It’s nothing but a Miami-made, nationally adopted, GOP talking point to justify shackling free speech and fear-mongering. It’s a well-established, successful campaign tactic to get Floridians who fled totalitarianism regimes to blindly vote for the GOP ticket.
It doesn’t make any sense if your head is not immersed daily in the alternative, distorted world of NewsMax, FoxNews, America TV and Spanish-language radio in Hispanic Florida, where the GOP is making inroads convincing gullible Latinos that there’s a Communist apocalypse coming.
But the boogieman among us, the governor and Florida Legislature have shown, is fascism.
As if they were Vladimir Putin’s or Francisco Franco’s minions, GOP lawmakers carried their state leader and the party’s national agenda to discredit the successful national reckoning brought about by those eight minutes and 46 seconds on videotape that killed George Floyd.
“We hear the word ‘freedom’ tossed around a lot these days. But this bill, like others we’ve seen this session, not only strips freedom from the classroom, but takes direct aim at the history of people of color,” said Sen. Bobby Powell of West Palm Beach, chairman of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus.
The hours and hours of debate on “wokeism,” gay rights, abortion and an educational curriculum where partisan parents and legislators get to decide what school children will read, put all that Republican white discomfort on display.
Veteran Sen. Audrey Gibson of Jacksonville — an African-American lawmaker who has first-hand experience of the open racism her colleagues are capable of — voiced the fear hiding behind this bill so well.
It is an attempt, she said, to “blot out history” stemming from “the fear of our young people coming together to bring down divisions,” as is already happening in so many families, including hers and mine.
And in Gibson’s voice, lies the only hope, that the next generation of Floridians isn’t buying what this one is shamelessly selling.
Legal challenge
The soon-to-be law isn’t likely to survive legal challenges. Similar attempts by former President Trump to mandate how Americans should think and behave were thrown out by federal courts.
At the end, the stupidity of DeSantis’ anti-woke law is obvious.
“Why is it bad to be awake, to be conscious of things, aware of what is happening, aware of what has happened?” asked state Sen. Gary Farmer of Broward, who is white. “Discussing it, learning it. Make no mistake about it, racism is alive and doing all too well here in the year 2022.”
True, sadly, and the only antidote to hate is voting like your as if depends upon it — because in Florida, it does.
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