Culture Wars: The Florida Fallout

"You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free." -- Clarence Darrow

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In our conservative corner of the country,“woke”culture has landed with a decided thud. Smaller towns and rural areas have, for the most part, been very outspoken in their rejection of “wokeness,” which Cambridge Dictionary defines as “being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has made it his mission to fight back against the “liberal” ideology of woke culture. After having introduced the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (Stop WOKE) Act last year, things took a decided turn when DeSantis took off his gloves and threw down the gauntlet with his declaration that “freed African-Americans benefited from chattel slavery, claiming it would teach students that enslaved people ‘eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.’”

He backpedaled and hastily added, “That means they developed skills in spite of slavery, not because of slavery. It was them showing resourcefulness and then using those skills once slavery ended.”

So Florida middle school students will now be instructed that slaves learned personally edifying skills during the time period. 

Well, well, well.

To even suggest that slaves somehow “benefited” from being kidnapped and abused at the hands of their superiors is a gross misrepresentation of the entire time period. 

The point was further highlighted this week when an excerpt from an interview with Jennifer Garner and Regina King in 2017 resurfaced. King, a Los Angeles native, discussed her love for all things L.A., and a tone deaf Garner cut in to ask, “But do you know where your ancestors are from?”

The news blurb brought me back to my time teaching in public school a few years ago. I had a sweet, shy student, Mia, who entered my room one day, visibly upset and needing to talk about what had just happened in her U. S. History class. 

“Mrs. Trumble, my history teacher said that slavery had to happen because without it, the entire culture and economy of the South would have disappeared. He said that there would have been no plantations without it.”

“He said that slave labor was necessary for tobacco, cotton, and rice.”

I waited for her to say that he then went on to censure slavery and its gross violation of basic human rights. 

I kept waiting.  

A beat later I composed myself and offered the condemnation that the history teacher did not. 

But the damage was already done. It wasn’t as much what that (white) teacher had said, but what he had left unsaid to his class. 

He had proposed that slavery was necessary for the economic gains of the time, but never once did he say that the means did not and could not in any way justify the ends. 

That simple statement would have gone a long way with his students. 

Mia was shaken, and her encounter affected me so much that I approached one of the administrators with it. If the experience had distressed her, there were likely other students who felt the same. 

The principal’s response was that he could facilitate a discussion between me and the history teacher where I could air my concerns. 

Wow. Not the answer I was looking for. 

Meanwhile, Florida continues to take the hard line on matters of race. Antonio Planas for NBC News reports that “DeSantis, whose entire brand has relied on championing himself as a crusader against ‘woke’ everything  . . . .[makes one] wonder what the Florida governor might have to offer beyond that.” 

Well, for one thing, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs will no longer be funded in Florida’s public colleges and universities. 

And DeSantis’s “brand” is catching on and spreading beyond the Florida border: the words “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” are now banned in Georgia’s education standards and classrooms.  

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We find ourselves firmly entrenched in the midst of a culture war. 

Will Florida’s politics result in a decrease in tourism dollars? Will Florida universities experience a drop in enrollment because of DeSantis’s initiatives?

So far the numbers are not indicative of any political fallout. Only time will tell. 

Reframing history to assuage our guilt is a dangerous practice. It’s that feeling of discomfort that ensures we will never again repeat our mistakes.