White and straight. This is how it seems that one has to be to fit into the model of society proposed by the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who is establishing himself as an institutional champion of American neoconservatism. From his state vantage point, he has dedicated himself to passing a series of laws that directly violate the rights of minorities or, as he likes to call it, against the thought woke. To a similar extent to pin parental Defended by Vox, DeSantis has taken his crusade to the classroom, where he is blocking children’s and adolescents’ access to books that address sexual orientation, gender identity or critical racial theory.
Books are a danger to ultra-conservative thinking: in the face of this fear, the Florida Congress approved HB 1467 law in March of last year, whose objective was to “protect the right of parents” to control the material to which their children are exposed. children in schools. This law included parents in the selection process for school books and specifically prohibited materials that contained “pornography and materials harmful to minors”, and that were not “appropriate for the age group”.
In practice, this ambiguous text, complemented by two other controversial laws baptized by its detractors as “Don’t say gay” and “Let’s stop the woke”, has served to attack LGTBI and anti-racist content.
The first law limited teachers to addressing gender identity and sexual orientation until third grade (8-9 years old), while the second prevented educational institutions from teaching anything that would cause someone “guilty, distress or any form of psychological distress” because of your race, skin color, sex, or national origin. Ultimately, however, a federal judge struck down much of the bill, calling it “totally dystopian.”
classrooms without books
The regulation that attacks books (HB 1467), which came into force in July 2022 and was amended in December, when the Florida Department of Education (DOE) extended its application to libraries in the institute classrooms. From then on, all school supplies must be pre-authorized by a “specialist.” Otherwise, teachers who break the law could face fines of up to $5,000 or even jail terms of up to five years.
Photo of a classroom library at Bayshore High School in Manatee County, Florida after they banned all classroom libraries. Florida considers books to be more dangerous to students than assault rifles. This is truly a dystopian state. pic.twitter.com/CizSGR40ub
— Alejandra Caraballo (@Esqueer_) January 23, 2023
Faced with such fear, the classrooms have been emptied of books, leaving a devastating image, which some teachers have dared to show through their social networks. In other words, self-censorship has taken over the teachers, who are already suffering a significant reprimand. Despite the fact that the law is applied differently in each of the state’s 67 school districts, which complicates monitoring, the NGO Florida Freedom to Read Project estimates that as of September, more than 900 titles have been challenged, of of which more than 400 had been temporarily withdrawn from the libraries and 65 suffered definitive censorship.
The organization updated at the beginning of February the number of withdrawal requests in the State, which already amounts to 1,858 titles. Among them are the biographies of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to become a Supreme Court judge, or those of two Latino and black icons, such as the Cuban singer Celia Cruz or the Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Clemente. In addition, the association denounces the withdrawal of titles referring to the activist Rosa Parks or the Dalai Lama.
Since y’all wanna play the “this isn’t really happening” game https://t.co/bVUFOXPc6a pic.twitter.com/fUUkJgi5ls
— JagsFanBrian✊????✊????✊ (@JagsFanBrian) January 27, 2023
The substitute professor at the Mandarin Institute in Jacksonville, Florida, denounced in a tweet at the end of January that “they removed each and every one of the books” from their children’s classrooms. Given the perceived disbelief in the comments, the next day quoted the tweet with a video in which several empty shelves were visible. At a press conference, DeSantis referred to the viral video as further proof of the “false narrative” that American progressivism is supposedly fabricating, warning against the censorship model of the Florida governor. Finally, due to the pressure received, this week the teacher who posted the video has been fired by the school.
“That video is a false narrative, it is not true,” the governor said. According to his version, the school “hadn’t even released the books at first. These narratives are trying to show us as if we somehow don’t want books.” DeSantis added that the only thing his administration has prohibited is “an adult providing pornographic content to a child at school.” In this way, he dismissed the video, and all the criticism that his administration has received in the last year, as “politically motivated.”
However, he immediately added that “parents are concerned because children in sixth grade (11-12 years old) have the ability to access a book that has pornographic acts, and that is happening around the country. One only needs to read gender and queer books to see that what is there is inappropriate. So we’ve given parents the ability to object to it and make sure they’re getting education and not indoctrination.”
Q: Here in Duval County, we have seen bookshelves in schools empty in response to Florida’s new guidelines for boo–
DESANTIS: Actually, you know, that video, that was a fake narrative pic.twitter.com/KELcdZChxF
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 14, 2023
The general anti-woke
Ron DeSantis’ fame is fueled by this type of controversy, which is not only limited to high school. At the end of January, the controversy produced by an African-American studies course, known as AP (Advanced Placement), which is taught in universities and some institutes, came to the national scene. Restrictive Florida law forced the removal of parts of his resume that included references to queer theory or the intersectionality of gender, class, or racial oppression. This fact has led some thirty human rights organizations to request the resignation of the president of the College Board (organizing entity of the course), who made the decision to adapt the curriculum in order to continue offering it in Florida.
Another of the governor’s great controversies has to do with the ban on trans people being able to participate in sporting events at their institutes and universities. In addition, more recently he asked in a survey of 12 state universities to provide the number and ages of all students who had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and had sought treatment, including sex reassignment surgery or prescriptions. of hormones. Without further explanation, the DeSantis administration claimed that it is about “governing institutional resources and protecting the public interest.”
This ingenious politician is carving out an image of intransigent in the face of progressivism, which places him in a privileged position, not only on the state scene, but also on the federal one. In fact, despite the fact that he has not officially announced it, he sounds like the best positioned name to challenge Donald Trump -his father, his politician- for the leadership of the Republican Party in the face of next year’s presidential primaries. .
After the mid-term elections held in November, in which the Republicans performed worse than expected and DeSantis managed to expand his majority to be re-elected governor, he reaffirmed his political convictions: “We fight against the woke in the legislature. We fight against woke in the schools. We fight against woke in companies. We will never ever give in to the rabble woke. Florida will be the grave of the woke”.