Florida Blocks the Left's Effort To Indoctrinate Rather Than Teach in Public Schools

Over the last several years, the nation has been turned upside down by magical thinking about race and identity because the Marxist Left has decided to force a revolution. Revolutionaries advance their cause by attempting to trap minorities in victimhood via the therapeutic politics of identity. This move is grounded in a quasi-spiritual focus on advancing the self-esteem of those who have allegedly been victimized by social oppression and systemic racism. This ravenous approach revels in its self-righteousness and revolutionary claims. Resisting this revolution, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis unveiled a plan to block state colleges from promoting programs focused on diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory (CRT).

Endorsed mainly by the academic Left, such programs refuse to focus on African Americans’ triumphs, tragedies, and accomplishments. Instead, America’s Left, consistent with Christopher Lasch’s view, has concentrated its attention on demolishing America’s foundations, thus enabling disenfranchised identity groups to contest the prevailing orthodoxy via the creation of alternative ideologies. Rejecting this viewpoint that betrays democracy, DeSantis has barred state university programs invested in what scholar James Lindsay calls Race Marxism. Race Marxism took center stage following the failure of Marxists to foment a “class struggle” on the backs of workers.

Consistent with DeSantis’ critique of  “woke” indoctrination, Florida education officials, in a separate but related development, rejected the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) course that focused on African American Studies. The College Board has traditionally offered courses and testing, allowing high school students to gain advanced placement in university courses. In conformity with Florida state law and policy, Florida’s education officials rejected the College Board’s proposed course. Whether or not it was responding to Florida’s move, the College Board revamped its AP course and finalized plans for a new AP course in African American studies. The new course eradicated content from Kimberlé Crenshaw, a critical race theory proponent, Angela Davis, a political activist best known for her membership in the Communist and Black Panther parties, and poet Amiri Baraka, who has experienced the “extermination blues” regarding Jews because they had allegedly stolen Black secrets. Baraka has also become infamous for his writings suggesting that white girls and their fathers be raped.

Florida’s rejection of the initial offering by the College Board and the College Board’s subsequent revision have provoked a fierce backlash. One leader of the Miami-Dade Black Affairs Advisory Board accused DeSantis of racism. While the board rejected this view, even apologizing to Governor DeSantis over it, Nicholas Goldberg, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, accused DeSantis of bullying the College Board. He claimed conservatives have been on a misguided mission to bar certain subjects in school. He argues that allowing politicians to control the curriculum amounts to nothing less than censorship and pandering to voters.  Unsurprisingly, when so-called experts and educators dictate what is in the curriculum, Goldberg defends their revolutionary political initiatives by calling for academic freedom.

But there is more to the story. Adequately understood, teaching CRT and Race Marxism is about something other than history. These ideologies are not focused on history. Instead, they foster a political and moral outlook. Consistent with this proposition, Nikole Hannah-Jones, curator of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, argues that there is a difference between being black and being politically black, a distinction that permits blacks to be expelled from the African American community when they fail to meet her exacting standards of victimhood membership. Professor Kate Aguilar, a white woman who is a trained diversity and inclusion activist, argues that black history is under attack, a view that is consistent with Hannah-Jones’ approach. Aguilar argues that history is not about facts. Instead, history is mainly about practice. In other words, history, specifically black history, is supervised by diversity and inclusion activists to fashion descriptive politics, which tackles alleged stereotypes, shapes the black experience, and develops prescriptive models designed to effect “change.”

Confirming her own political preferences and verifying her fixation on race and white privilege, Aguilar offers empathy for blacks allowing her to imaginatively project her consciousness onto blacks. Aguilar contends that black studies, which she conflates with black history, are all about the alleged fight for racial equality, thus bringing her political preferences into focus as she demands that black history center on white supremacy.

As I have shown elsewhere, efforts by educators to blame white supremacy for every disaster that hits minorities have many authors.  Such authors cast blame premised on a sweeping totalitarian vision that overlaps with President Biden’s pursuit of racial Balkanization to divide the country further.  Similarly, driven by his Neo-Marxist faith, Ibram X. Kendi, America’s leading woke theorist, argues that “[t]he most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ one.” Kendi’s views mirror Robin DiAngelo’s claim that the “‘regular American’ is worse than the cross-burning Klan member.” 

Fleeing historicity, truth, and reality, America’s cultural elites presume that race and other forms of human identity explain all disparity and inequality. Such claims deserve close scrutiny. Before accepting these claims deeply embedded in CRT, it is crucial to distinguish between a development narrative and a bias narrative to explain ethnic differences. This distinction helps clarify the difference between education and indoctrination.

Most Americans accept the development narrative grounded in data and common sense. The developmental model for human advancement emphasizes the value of traditional families, fatherhood, hard work, and study habits. But this analytical approach delivers unwelcome facts that the Left flees from. The facts show that Asian Americans, as well as West Indian blacks, often do better than white Americans in schooling, per capita income, and crime rates. Indeed, Syrian Americans, Korean Americans, Indonesian Americans, Taiwanese Americans, and Filipino Americans experience significantly higher median household incomes than whites, higher test scores, lower incarceration rates, and longer life expectancies. Oblivious to such facts and ignoring the power of the development narrative embedded in the lives of many minorities, the bias narrative, on the other hand, grounds itself in the “white privilege” thesis and the “white supremacy” hypothesis suggesting that only race matters.

The American Center for Law and Justice believes that commonsense Americans will rightfully reject the bias narrative and its deeply embedded Marxist ideology. Instead, Americans will demand that truthful facts, including unpleasant ones, support the teaching of history instead of indoctrination.  Americans should demand that their school boards, the College Board, and state universities support an accurate rendering of American history. Equally true, parents must carefully scrutinize public school teaching materials and teachers because Leftists are adept at avoiding CRT bans with a Trojan horse called “social emotional learning.” “Social emotional learning” has increasingly become the weapon of choice leftists use to advance political indoctrination in public schools. Parents should be wary of the possible misbehavior by educators in combination with the possibility that the College Board and public schools are prepared to give pride of place to indoctrination rather than history. Given this possibility, parents have an additional reason for supporting school choice. Given this vexed environment, the ACLJ will continue to strengthen its initiatives supporting school choice for all Americans.