Renee Graham: Ron DeSantis — white supremacy’s helicopter parent
Why stop at banning American history? Florida governor Ron DeSantis now wants to outlaw white ‘discomfort’ and ‘guilt.’ So begins this blistering op-ed from a columnist for the Boston Globe.
“We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” DeSantis said in a statement. “We also have a responsibility to ensure that parents have the means to vindicate their rights when it comes to enforcing state standards. Finally, we must protect Florida workers against the hostile work environment that is created when large corporations force their employees to endure CRT-inspired ‘training’ and indoctrination.”
This is not a “Saturday Night Live” skit. This is the governor of the nation’s third-largest state.
CRT, of course, is critical race theory. According to Kimberlé Crenshaw, the UCLA and Columbia University law professor who coined the term more than 30 years ago, CRT examines the “ways that racial inequality is facilitated, and the ways that our history has created these inequalities that now can be almost effortlessly reproduced unless we attend to the existence of these inequalities.”
Critical race theory is not taught in elementary or secondary schools. It is not anti-white. It does not teach white people to hate themselves or their country. Neither do workplace diversity training sessions, which are also on the Florida GOP’s growing enemies list. Yet DeSantis knows a primary rule of demagoguery — fuel irrational fears as a means of domination. Last week, a day-long seminar on the civil rights movement for elementary school teachers in Florida was abruptly canceled by district officials worried that certain materials might promote “critical race theory.”