“Either this nation shall kill
racism, or racism shall kill this nation.” (S. Jonas, August, 2018)
I could not find a good caricature of him, and I surely don’t want to post a just a photo of the man, on his way to becoming one of the most dangerous men in America.
As is by now well-known, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has
successfully engaged in a widespread censorship operation on what
may, and may not, be taught to students in the Florida school/college/university
system. The irony of the fact that the
formal announcement that U.S. College Board has acceded to the DeSantis demands for significant
chunk of the meat of Afro-American history from the Board’s advanced placement
course on the subject came on the same day as the funeral of the latest Black victim of U.S.
police brutality, in Memphis, cannot be understated. (Let me state right here that I have no
criticism for the College Board and what they did. They had to.
A significant chunk of their income comes from fees paid for the use of
the Advanced Placement courses, and about two dozen other states have already made
noises critical of the African-American Studies course as it was previously
released.)
There are several different speculations that can be made about why
DeSantis did this. One is that he is a
genuine racist and that while as such, given the modern climate, he has to accede
to certain demands made for increasing recognition of the importance of the
Black experience, positive and negative, in the track of (North) American
history since 1619. That is, he has to give way some on what can
and cannot be taught to students at all levels about the subject. But, the thinking would go, based on his
personal racism, given his political power in his state he can draw a series of
lines around the subject(s). On the
other hand, he may be a political racist, consciously wanting to stir the
subject up to help him achieve his political goals and programmatic ends, whatever his personal beliefs may be. First and foremost, of course, that would be helping
him to gain the Republican Presidential nomination. But in a governing authority, conscious, political, permanent racism is far more dangerous for the future of the country than evanescent emotional racism is. The former gets into governing; the latter is useful only in elections.
But whatever
the case is with him personally, DeSantis is cranking up government intervention in the matter of what
and cannot be taught in Florida schools, colleges, and universities to heights
not seen in the South since the formal censorship days of Jim Crow. And because College Board Advanced Placement
courses are used all around the country, his intervention will have a very
negative effect even in liberal states. This
censorship operates at two levels. The first
is the formal one achieved by the political censoring of course content. The second is the climate of fear created
among school teachers and higher education faculty about what might happen to
them if they were to slip up and make a mention of or a referral to one of the pieces
of forbidden fruit, and get reported to some authority for it.
For example, in this day-and-age, in
the United States of America: “Florida Teachers Hide
Their Books to Avoid Felonies: Panicky teachers in Florida are emptying their bookshelves, afraid
of a five-year jail term for having an unapproved book in the classroom.” Take a look at that once again folks, and
just imagine what might be coming down the pike after it. If a teacher simply displays an “unapproved
book” on a class-room shelf, under this Florida legal DeSantis-monstrosity they
would not simply be asked/ordered to remove it. They could go to prison for up to five years!
What books might be included? Well: “In Duval County,
which comprises Jacksonville, PEN America found
that 176 titles had already been banned, including at least one
Berenstain Bears book; biographies of Henry Aaron, Harriet Tubman, Celia Cruz,
Rosa Parks, and Malala; a preponderance of books about non-white children and
families; as well as those dealing with sexual themes. Weirdly, many focus on
stories centered around ethnic foods: Dim Sum, Dim Sum For Everyone!, Dumpling Soup, and Fry Bread: A Native American
Family Story are all verboten in Duval.” (A biography of Henry Aaron!?! Oh my.)
And what about the prohibition of certain authors from
the reading list of the College Placement course. Well that would include such U.S. authors as
the Nobel Prize winning Toni Morrison. What writing of hers might be found objectionable under the Doctrine of DeSantisization? Well consider this example from an article by Ms. Morrison from “The Nation magazine, ‘Racism
and Fascism’ (May 29, 1995, p. 760):”
“Let us be reminded that before there
is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a
third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then
another, then another. Something, perhaps, like this:
“1. Construct an internal enemy, as
both focus and diversion.
“2. Isolate and demonize the enemy by
unleashing and protecting the utterance of covert and coded name-calling and
verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges
against that enemy.
“3. Enlist and create sources and
distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process
because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works.
“4. Palisade all art forms; monitor,
discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of
demonization and deification.
“5. Subvert and malign all
representatives of sympathizers with this constructed enemy.
“6. Solicit, from among the enemy,
collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.
“7. Pathologize the enemy in scholarly
and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of
racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.
“8. Criminalize the enemy. Then
prepare, budget for, and rationalize the building of holding areas for the
enemy especially its males and absolutely its children.
“9. Reward mindlessness and apathy
with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny
seductions: a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press; a little
pseudo-success; the illusion of power and influence; a little fun, a little
style, a little consequence.
“10. Maintain, at all costs, silence.
“In 1995 racism may wear a new dress, buy a
new pair of boots, but neither it nor its succubus twin fascism is new or can
make anything new. It can only reproduce the environment that supports its
own health: fear, denial and an atmosphere in which its victims have lost the
will to fight.”
I have to tell you that in the writing of the earlier column
from which Ms. Morrison’s text above is excerpted, I of course at the time had re-read it
very closely. And then for this column,
I read it again. Indeed, Ms. Morrison,
who died in 2019, might have been describing just what DeSantis and his collaborators
are doing right now in Florida —- and elsewhere, all around the country. As I said then in the column I wrote at the
time: “Wow. Did she get it right.” Unfortunately, her words are right on the money again.
Folks, we have a major problem on our hands, and the sooner we
recognize it the better will we be equipped to fight it. Historically, the Republican Party has been a
home for xenophobia
and racism since the xenophobic “American Party” of the 1850s was one of
its founding components. The modern
adoption of open anti-Black racism in the Party began with the development of
the “Southern Strategy” by Richard Nixon in 1968. But as in its name, it was focused on winning
over to the Republican side the formerly Democratic, racist, “Solid
South.” Donald Trump began expanding
Republican racism to the national scene
with his involvement in the anti-Obama “birtherism movement” of
2011-12. But Trump, going back to his
early days in real estate with his
racist father, was more of an emotional/personal-interests racist than a
serious intellectual one, as in my view, is DeSantis.
DeSantis’ racism is much more dangerous because it is
intellectual and because he is injecting it into much more than pure politics. Trump used his brand of “emotional racism,”
and still will if he becomes a serious candidate for President in 2024. (Of course I think that he won’t be one,
because in my view he will be out of the country before
the race, even the one for the Republican nomination, gets serious). Whether or not DeSantis is a personal racist
(and I have no way of knowing whether he is or not), in policy he is a serious,
intellectual racist, and in so being one, he is much more dangerous for the
future of our nation than is Trump.
(Article changed on Feb 02, 2023 at 4:16 PM EST)
This content was originally published here.
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