Earlier this week, Gov. Ron DeSantis took time off from campaigning to be the GOP nominee for president to offer unconvincing sympathies to the community of Jacksonville, Florida after a white supremacist killed three Black people in a retail shop before killing himself. The audience at the vigil, however, was not having his lame language about how this is "unacceptable" or his efforts to sound tough by calling the killer a "major league scumbag." Instead, they loudly booed him.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was booed Sunday in Jacksonville at a vigil for the fatal shooting of three Black people by a 21-year-old white man. pic.twitter.com/7jJ70C5Ki7
— The Associated Press (@AP) August 28, 2023
He was, unfortunately, quickly rescued by Jacksonville County Councilwoman Ju'Coby Pittman, who unleashed a classic "civility" scolding.
"A bullet don't know a party."
False, when it's only one political party that works so hard to keep bullets in the hands of the deranged and the dangerous. But we shouldn't be too hard on Pittman, who no doubt is well aware that Republicans will often seize on the "civility" discourse to distract from their culpability for these hate crimes, both in terms of how they normalize bigotry and how they make it easier to get the weapons into the hands of terrorists.
I fully expected the usual fake umbrage over "incivility" in response to the booing or to people like Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon, a Democrat, who said "the governor has blood on his hands" because he's waged "an all-out attack on the Black community with his anti-woke policies."
'Blood on his hands': Sobbing Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon (D) attributes attacks on people of color in her state to Gov. Ron DeSantis' war against "woke." pic.twitter.com/fkIzNw5PbY
— PoliticsVideoChannel (@politvidchannel) August 27, 2023
And sure, the usual no-name racists are whining about it on Twitter. To my surprise, however, it's mostly been silence from right wing pundits and Republican leaders. Apparently, it's not worth wasting their breath trying to argue that DeSantis isn't a racist.
This week, we were offered another reminder as to how DeSantis has made himself hard to defend, even for even the bad faith troops of the GOP. The Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times joined together to file for the release of internal communications from Florida government, which led to state's education department rejecting the previously non-controversial Advanced Placement curricula for African-American Studies. As is typical for our times, the racism on display from the DeSantis-led government is somehow both shocking but not surprising.
Florida officials objected to teaching students that enslavers benefitted materially. Even though that would seem self-evident — why else enslave people? — the DeSantis-empowered reviewers complained it "may lead to a viewpoint of an 'oppressor vs. oppressed.'" They also argued that the lessons "may only present one side of this issue and may not offer any opposing viewpoints." One state evaluator objected to use of the word "enslaver," preferring the term "owner." There were also objections to teachings about the "Black is Beautiful" movement, which promoted acceptance of diverse skin colors and hair types, suggesting it is "rejecting cultural assimilation." Evaluators also wanted to force the textbooks to lie to students by implying slaves earned wages. By law, of course, slaves did not own property or make money of their own.
Republicans want people to believe there's no connection between this racist disinformation campaign and racialized violence against Black people. But, as the booers in Jacksonville understood, the lies and censorship emanating from DeSantis and his allies serve a purpose: It's propaganda to justify white supremacy. That, in turn, emboldens terrorists like the Jacksonville shooter. For instance, the objections to the "Black is Beautiful" campaign rest on the assumption that white people are "real" Americans and everyone else owes it to white people to change how they look. Once you buy that claim, it's not much of a leap to embrace the white nationalist view that it's impossible for people of different races to live in peace with each other.
The way DeSantis and his allies get away with this crap is to paint anyone who draws a link between racist lies and racist actions as "hysterical" and "overreacting." Renée Graham of the Boston Globe pointed out one obnoxious example from May, when DeSantis called it "a stunt" when the NAACP issued a travel advisory noting "the state of Florida has become hostile to Black Americans."
When the NAACP declared “the state of Florida has become hostile to Black Americans” and issued a formal travel advisory, DeSantis’s office called it “nothing more than a stunt.”
— Renée Graham 🏳️🌈 (@reneeygraham) August 27, 2023
That was May. Yesterday, a white supremacist murdered three Black people in a Florida store.
Other writers pointed out that DeSantis's historical revisionism must be understood in light of his actions that directly target the rights and safety of present-day Black residents of Florida. As Ja'han Jones of MSNBC wrote:
Through his administration's assault on inclusive learning plans that may make white students feel uncomfortable, its efforts to dilute Black voter power, its efforts to whitewash racist massacres against Black people and its efforts to tout the purported benefits that slavery afforded Black people, DeSantis has arguably become Florida's most prominent face of anti-Black rhetoric.
Ameshia Cross, writing for the Daily Beast, reminds us how DeSantis reacted after a series of neo-Nazi protests in Florida:
At the time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis slow-walked condemning the protests until national leaders from both major political parties did so. And even when he did, he still insisted that being asked to condemn the condemnable was just a ploy by "these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to do with that." The governor added, "We're not playing their game."
Condemning neo-Nazis isn't "virtue-signaling," Ron. One reason that terrorists act is they think they have a large-but-secret vein of public support. When you act like it's pulling teeth to disparage actual Nazis, those Nazis feel affirmed in their belief you quietly support them. And why would you signal such support if it's not how you feel?
Nate Monroe of Jacksonville's Florida Times-Union stood by the booing crowd, reminding readers, "DeSantis pressured the Legislature last year to pass a congressional map that, for the first time in decades, wiped out a Jacksonville district that allowed Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice." As anyone with a decent understanding of the history of Jim Crow could tell you, efforts to undermine Black voting rights and violence towards Black people go hand-in-hand. Politicians passed laws making it harder to vote, and that was taken as validation by white citizens to threaten, beat, or even kill Black people for trying to vote or otherwise live as full American citizens.
Of course, that's why DeSantis wants to rewrite the textbooks: So people don't know this history.
The whole "anti-woke" gambit has been presented to the public as not racist, so much as "anti-antiracist." The argument is that "anti-woke" people don't hate people of color, so much as they find the efforts of anti-racists to be overwrought, annoying, and unnecessary. Thomas Edsall of the New York Times wrote in July of political scientists who argue that anti-antiracism is "conceptually distinct from" the "various measures of anti-Black prejudice." Which is to say, it's the "I'm not a racist, but" crowd. Of course, the research shows "anti-antiracists" share the same prejudiced views as plain old racists. "Anti-woke" is more of a rebranding exercise for racism than a real shift in opinion.
These newly released Florida documents prove it again. DeSantis always frames his agenda as "anti-woke," as if his goal is curbing liberal overreach, instead of pushing a racist agenda. But the documents show that it's just a paper-thin cover for the same old racist nonsense: Claims that slavery was practically a gift, hints that Black people should be grateful to white people, anger at Black people who express pride instead of shame in their identity. The crowd in Jacksonville understood this thoroughly. The public reaction they're getting, which is more supportive than scolding, suggests that the lesson may be sinking in more broadly.
