Ron DeSantis's Attack on Black Studies Is Textbook Proto-Fascism [View all]

[Nevilledog]

https://truthout.org/articles/ron-desantiss-attack-on-black-studies-is-textbook-proto-fascism/


Florida’s unapologetically racist governor, Ron DeSantis, announced last week that he is banning an Advanced Placement pilot course that would have taught Florida teenagers about the Black freedom movement, Black cultures and contemporary issues that impact Black people. Anyone who has glanced at the newspaper in the past decade, let alone read a book on the subject, knows that issues of mass incarceration, police, prisons, intersectionality and the politics of sexuality are all deeply relevant to the experience of African American communities.

With a nod toward his homophobic base and illustrating his own ignorance, DeSantis asked the question, how could queer theory be relevant to African American studies? Perhaps if he had taken an African American studies class somewhere along the way he would know the names of world-renowned award-winning writers, artists and courageous activists whose long careers and eloquent words answer that question from myriad angles. He would know about the grand poet Audre Lorde who wrote about love uncircumscribed, facing cancer heroically and the dangers of living our lives in closets and compartments. He would know about the unrivaled James Baldwin, who taught more about the U.S. to the U.S. than any mainstream textbook ever could, and also nurtured his readers into a larger humanity. And he would know about political figures ranging from Bayard Rustin, one of the organizers of the great march on Washington, to Miss Major, the Black trans activist who led in the historic Stonewall protests against unchecked police violence against New York’s LGBTQ (especially trans) community in the late 1960s. Their lives and stories are why queer theory is important to Black history.

Perhaps DeSantis would have known this had he not had a skewed and impoverished education. If he had taken an African American studies course in the 1980s and ’90s when he was in school, perhaps DeSantis would also know about the long and bloody history of racism in Florida, and the righteous freedom fighters who organized against it. These struggles were not just against “hate” or prejudice; they were a response to systemwide discrimination, greed and domination.

For example, NAACP organizers Harry and Henriette Moore were blown up on Christmas night in 1951, 130 miles from DeSantis’s hometown of Jacksonville, by white vigilantes who knew nothing of the Moore family’s culture, motives or life experiences — and likely didn’t want to know. The Moores lobbied for the right of Black teachers to have equal pay and working conditions comparable to their white counterparts.

*snip*