Gov. Ron DeSantis made a name for himself by bragging that his state of Florida is where "woke goes to die." He, like most Republicans, sprints away from anyone asking him what exactly he means by the word "woke." Still, the past year in Florida, where educators have been crushed under various "anti-woke" laws signed by DeSantis, has made the parameters quite clear: "Woke" is acknowledging that racism is a thing that ever happened and/or accepting that LGBTQ people exist. DeSantis' vision for Florida is very much Disney in its most reactionary, "Song of the South" era. But probably with fewer kids reading since books are categorically viewed with suspicion in DeSantis' "anti-woke" paradise.
Despite DeSantis' Florida-centric language when he talks about schools, however, it's long been clear that the ambitious plans to decimate education extend past the Sunshine State's borders and across the U.S. He's not a lone figure who just happens to have a crippling obsession with keeping kids from reading. DeSantis is really just the most prominent figure in what is a national GOP campaign to destroy the educational system, remaking it into a propaganda system for various right-wing hobbyhorses, no matter how disassociated from reality they may be.
The GOP war on education dramatically expanded last week in when the Republican-controlled state government in Texas wrested control of the House Independent School District from local leaders.
State Education Commissioner Mike Morath, appointed by Texas's Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, will be able to replace all the elected leaders of the school board with his own people. Morath claims this is a temporary and necessary move to "fix" Houston schools, even though only one high school out of 50 in the district was cited for poor student performance. Democrats in the state, however, disagree, arguing that this is simply
Racist hysteria is a not-exactly-subtle aspect of the entire GOP temper tantrum around schools.
Texas Republicans refusing to accept the local control in a largely Democratic — and racially diverse — city.
"It's a national movement," Rep. Alma Allen, a Democrat who represents Houston in the state legislature, told reporters last week. "The Republicans are planning to take over education in the United States."
"This is an upfront power grab," Rep. Ron Reynolds of Missouri City, TX, said at a press conference. He accused Abbott of doing this for ideological purposes. Progressive groups in Texas have also been speaking out.
.@GovAbbott and @TEAinfo are hell-bent on manufacturing any "justification" they can to implement their right-wing agenda at the expense of Houston students. #HISDTakeover https://t.co/k1hed30OAQ
— Texas Organizing Project (@OrganizeTexas) March 15, 2023
It has definitely not passed notice that the Houston superintendent, Millard House II, is Black. Or that the mayor of Houston, Sylvester Turner, is also Black. Despite decades of self-congratulatory rhetoric from Republicans about "small government" and "local control," when people of color get power, Republicans demand that white outsiders swoop in to take over. We're also seeing this dynamic in Missouri, where the GOP-controlled state government has wrested control of the St. Louis police away from the city government. You guessed it: The mayor of St. Louis, Tishaura Jones, is Black. The Republican-dominated state legislature in Mississippi recently created a court system with only white officials to oversee the state capitol of Jackson, which is 80 percent Black.
Racist hysteria is a not-exactly-subtle aspect of the entire GOP temper tantrum around schools. DeSantis' war on "woke" is very much about using his power in Florida to push racist agenda on all national education. Florida is one of the biggest states in the country, which means that if the state demands an erasure of certain facts about history from textbooks, that will often mean educational materials for the entire country are white-washed.
On Thursday, Sarah Mervosh of the New York Times reported that the confusing new censorship regime in Florida is wreaking havoc on the ability of publishers to put historical facts in their textbooks. "One publisher created multiple versions of its social studies material, softening or eliminating references to race — even in the story of Rosa Parks," she writes. One does wonder what students are meant to believe about why Parks was arrested, if not for her refusal to obey a racial segregation law.
But, as the Houston example shows, this cloud of authoritarian oppression of education has expanded well beyond Florida. Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported about teachers across the country being censored in ways that have a distinctly North Korean flair of silencing apparent truths. One Iowa teacher reported that his superintendent warned him that it was against the law to tell students "slavery was wrong." Another teacher in North Carolina was disciplined for letting students read Christopher Columbus' own writings about his travels, lest they learn that he captured indigenous people for slavery. Another teacher in Arkansas was harassed by school administrators for teaching students that women in the 18th century petitioned for the right to be educated.
Time and again, we've seen feigned concerns about "sexual materials" offered as a fig leaf for people whose real objection is to books that are critical of white supremacy.
Still, Republicans nationwide continue to be outraged that facts could slip through their censorship wall to students.
In Florida, the GOP is escalating its already draconian war on books. Republicans in the state legislature have kick-started a bill that would allow a single parent the power to ban all copies of a book in schools simply by complaining that it offends them. All the parent needs to do is claim the book has "sexual conduct" in it, and the school would be forced to remove the book, which would "remain unavailable until the objection is resolved."
This should be absurd on its face, of course. For instance, if a single parent gets mad because "Romeo and Juliet" has a "morning after" scene, then the school would be required to pull all copies of the collected works of Shakespeare. But it's even more disturbing in the context of the past couple of years of Republican hysterics over books.
Time and again, we've seen feigned concerns about "sexual materials" offered as a fig leaf for people whose real objection is to books that are critical of white supremacy. This proposed bill will mainly empower a small minority of rabid racists to ban any book that offends their delicate sensibilities. Especially since "sexual conduct" is a vague and broad category, and can encompass even just hand-holding and kissing. If that sounds hyperbolic, it's not. In Florida, objections about "sexual content" were used to ban one book on the grounds that it portrays a wedding.
As Ashley Parker of the Washington Post wrote last week, "dark undertones and apocalyptic rhetoric" "have pervaded much of the Republican Party in the era of Trump." Republicans, led by Donald Trump, keep speaking to their voters as if the country is in the end times. As the economy is good and the pandemic is winding down, there can be no doubt that the impetus behind this feeling is racist panic, a fear held by a minority of white Christians that they can no longer pretend they are the only "real" Americans. The assault on education is the most visible manifestation of this: Angry white conservatives across the country, trying to impose their ethno-nationalist vision of what America should be on students, one book ban at a time.
