From xxxxxx <[email protected]>
Subject Ron DeSantis’s Attack on Black Studies Is Textbook Proto-Fascism
Date February 3, 2023 1:05 AM
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[ Florida’s unapologetically racist governor, Ron DeSantis, has
effectively declared war on the Black freedom movement.]
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RON DESANTIS’S ATTACK ON BLACK STUDIES IS TEXTBOOK PROTO-FASCISM  
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Barbara Ransby
January 28, 2023
Truthout
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_ Florida’s unapologetically racist governor, Ron DeSantis, has
effectively declared war on the Black freedom movement. _

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Florida’s unapologetically racist governor, Ron DeSantis, announced
last week that he is banning an Advanced Placement pilot course that
would have taught Florida teenagers about the Black freedom movement,
Black cultures and contemporary issues that impact Black people.
Anyone who has glanced at the newspaper in the past decade, let alone
read a book on the subject, knows that issues of mass incarceration,
police, prisons, intersectionality and the politics of sexuality are
all deeply relevant to the experience of African American communities.

With a nod toward his homophobic base and illustrating his own
ignorance, DeSantis asked the question, how could queer theory be
relevant to African American studies? Perhaps if he had taken an
African American studies class somewhere along the way he would know
the names of world-renowned award-winning writers, artists and
courageous activists whose long careers and eloquent words answer that
question from myriad angles. He would know about the grand poet Audre
Lorde who wrote about love uncircumscribed, facing cancer heroically
and the dangers of living our lives in closets and compartments. He
would know about the unrivaled James Baldwin, who taught more about
the U.S. to the U.S. than any mainstream textbook ever could, and also
nurtured his readers into a larger humanity. And he would know about
political figures ranging from Bayard Rustin, one of the organizers of
the great march on Washington, to Miss Major, the Black trans activist
who led in the historic Stonewall protests against unchecked police
violence against New York’s LGBTQ (especially trans) community in
the late 1960s. Their lives and stories are why queer theory is
important to Black history.

Perhaps DeSantis would have known this had he not had a skewed and
impoverished education. If he had taken an African American studies
course in the 1980s and ’90s when he was in school, perhaps DeSantis
would also know about the long and bloody history of racism in
Florida, and the righteous freedom fighters who organized against it.
These struggles were not just against “hate” or prejudice; they
were a response to systemwide discrimination, greed and domination.

For example, NAACP organizers Harry and Henriette Moore were blown up
on Christmas night in 1951, 130 miles from DeSantis’s hometown of
Jacksonville, by white vigilantes who knew nothing of the Moore
family’s culture, motives or life experiences — and likely
didn’t want to know. The Moores lobbied for the right of Black
teachers to have equal pay and working conditions comparable to their
white counterparts.

Even closer to Jacksonville, in what is heralded as the country’s
oldest city, St. Augustine, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
was renting a house in the summer of 1964 when local vigilantes shot
into the house to intimidate him into leaving the state. Perhaps in
his hypothetical African American studies class, little Ronnie would
have learned about that heinous attack, along with the Tallahassee Bus
Boycott, which protested the humiliating Jim Crow treatment that was
meted out to Black citizens on the city’s segregated public buses,
or the fact that for much of Florida’s history, its beautiful
beaches were for whites only.

Of course, DeSantis’s attack on Black studies curricula is only in
small measure about education and ignorance. It is true that he is a
part of an unabashedly ignorant political sect comprising people who
are averse to evidence, research and empirical facts that don’t suit
them. So, in that context, DeSantis’s decision to foster the
miseducation of Florida students to suit his own ends, is not
surprising. But the story is bigger than that.

In attacking African American studies, DeSantis has taken one more
step toward not only a full-on embrace of white nationalism and
authoritarianism, but also toward situating himself in a truly
“alternative reality,” where facts don’t matter, research is
irrelevant, expertise is sidelined, and young people are scurrilously
miseducated.

This is apparently what a dress rehearsal for a GOP nomination for
president looks like in 2023. But, how does one decision about
textbooks in a small set of pilot high school AP courses warrant such
a conclusion? Because it is not one action, but one among many
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and it mirrors a long legacy of brutish repression of ideas and
persecution of dissident educators and intellectuals carried out by
the kind of leader that DeSantis aspires to become.

DeSantis declared his war on anti-racism in his gubernatorial
acceptance speech on the 2022 election night. In doing so, he
indirectly also declared war on the Black freedom movement itself.

“Florida is where woke will come to die,” he proclaimed to a
cheering throng of supporters.

It is ironic that “wokeness” is what a right-wing movement has
galvanized itself against. “We want to be asleep, uninformed and
unaware” is what they are conveying. _Not knowing _is celebrated.

In this way, DeSantis and his allies uphold the kind of indoctrination
he claims to oppose. He stands in the tradition of the Nazis who
burned books for fear that their antisemitic lies would be challenged
in print. He stands in the tradition of the 1976-1983 Argentinian
dictatorship that jailed and exiled dissident professors and killed
their students. He stands in the tradition of Turkey’s dictator
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
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who has purged, jailed or exiled over 100,000 educators and
intellectuals 
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they wrote and taught ideas he saw as a political threat.

DeSantis’s dangerous actions are textbook proto-fascist measures.
His militant opposition to any teaching of the Black freedom struggle
is also reminiscent of the South African apartheid regime’s book
banning and curricular and speaker censorship, which limited the
circulation of ideas that could undermine the legitimacy of an unjust
system.

DeSantis’s actions are about intimidation, silencing potential
dissident voices, preempting critical thinking from young people that
might lead to informed political action, and flexing his muscle to
silence voices that do not echo his own. But his actions are also
racist.

Racism is part and parcel of capitalism, rooted in slavery and
genocide of Black and Indigenous people. Telling lies about those
people — erasing who and what they/we really were — was a
necessary corollary to land theft, genocide, kidnapping and
enslavement. Maintaining those lies today is integral to upholding
racial capitalism.

DeSantis’s actions and what they are harbingers of cannot be
ignored. As I write, there are over 50 hate groups, some of them
armed, operating in the state of Florida, according to the Southern
Poverty Law Center. Florida is the state where unarmed Black teenager
Trayvon Martin was killed with impunity by a local racist vigilante.
These are consequences of half-truths, lies and erasures. But again,
racism is not just about ignorance or “hate,” but also about
power, domination and exploitation. The spurious ideas and omitted
truths are what the political and economic practices get wrapped up
in.

DeSantis’s efforts are a part of a larger attack on progressive
scholars and teachers. Florida teacher Amy Donofrio was fired for
hanging a BLM flag in her classroom
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Another teacher in Texas was fired for wearing a BLM mask to school.
Over a dozen states have laws passed or pending that seek to censor
and suppress the teaching of issues related to race, racism, gender
and Black Americans.

The idea of “critical race theory” — a label broadly misapplied
by the right — has been the lightning rod, but the right’s attack
on knowledge and education is much broader. Professors speaking and
teaching about Palestine and supporting the Palestine civil
society-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign to protest
Israel’s racist, repressive and discriminatory policies against
Palestinians is another node of the McCarthy-like anti-education push
by the right.

But here is the good news. Florida is not only home to the likes of
Ron DeSantis. It is also home to the smart, young, radical organizers
in the Dream Defenders, the Florida Rights Restoration Project,
Florida Rising and the Power U Center for Change. These are the forces
of the future. These are the young organizers who are pushing back
against the bullish backwardness of DeSantis and Trump, and they have
peers in every state. We have to support them as much as we oppose the
racist and repressive agenda of the right.

_[BARBARA RANSBY is a historian, author and longtime activist based in
Chicago. She is author of Ella Baker and the Black Freedom
Movement and is president of the National Women’s Studies
Association. Follow her on Twitter: @BarbaraRansby
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_Copyright © Truthout [[link removed]]. Reprinted with
permission. May not be reprinted without permission._

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* Ron DeSantis
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* Florida
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* AP African American Studies
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* U.S. history
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* Black Studies
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* African American history
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* Black culture
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* Critical Race Theory
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* CRT
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* 1619 Project
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* Intersectionality
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* African Americans
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* Racism
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* slavery
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* jim crow
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* segregation
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* censorship
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* Education
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