A column in the Boston Globe has declared Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) “white supremacy’s helicopter parent” because of legislation that would prevent corporations and schools from imposing Critical Race Theory on employees and students.
As Breitbart News reported last month, DeSantis proposed the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act (Stop W.O.K.E Act) to ensure the enforcement of prohibitions on the use of Critical Race Theory that the state has already adopted.
Colunnist Renée Graham, an associate editor of the Globe, called DeSantis’s policy “white supremacist” because, she claims (without evidence), he wants to ban teaching about “the Middle Passage, Trail of Tears, Chinese Exclusion Act, and Jim Crow.” Graham also claims, falsely: “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.”
Critical Race Theory, first explored in depth in a public policy context at Breitbart News in 2012, “holds that the United States is racist by design, because its Constitution and all of its other institutions emerged in a context where slavery was legal.”
It has since seeped into educational curricula, corporate boardrooms, and training manuals of state, federal, and local government agencies. It is not always identified by its name, but its concepts have been disseminated by left-wing activists.
The current text of the bill includes a passage that has falsely been reported as protecting white people from “guilt.” In fact, it protects members of all races from being made to feel guilt of “psychological distress” solely on the basis of their race:
Subjecting any individual, as a condition of employment, membership, certification, licensing, credentialing, or passing an examination, to training, instruction, or any other required activity that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual to believe any of the following concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin under this section:
1. Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally superior to members of another race, color, sex, or national origin.
2. An individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.
3. An individual’s moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.
4. Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, sex, or national origin.
5. An individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin.
6. An individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.
7. An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.
8. Such virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race, color, sex, or national origin to oppress members of another race, color, sex, or national origin.
The bill also requires “The history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the contributions of African Americans to society. Instructional materials shall include the contributions of African Americans to American society.” It also requires the teaching of “the civil rights movement to the present,” contrary to Graham’s claims.
Through the bill, Graham says, DeSantis “hovers as white supremacy’s defender,” and she accuses the governor of trying to be “yet another Republican employing racial division, marginalization, and white panic as a pathway to the White House.”
Graham concludes by embracing Critical Race Theory’s central argument: “Racism is America’s original remix,” she writes.
Read Graham’s full column, “Ron DeSantis — white supremacy’s helicopter parent,” at the Boston Globe, here.
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