Florida Fosters Fear, Daily Brief June 19, 2024

Let’s start with a statement of moral clarity we can all agree with: slavery is bad.

Chattel slavery in the US, for example, in which enslaved people were treated as the property of their owners for life, bought and sold like cattle, was particularly horrific. It meant centuries of forced labor, rape, and torture for millions of Black Americans.

This is no more than a statement of the obvious. It’s hardly controversial.

Unless you’re in a public school in the US state of Florida, where teaching the truth about slavery can get you into trouble with the authorities.

As one educator from Miami puts it, the law in Florida allows schools to teach slavery, “but not the bad parts.”

Instead, new state history standards require teachers to say ludicrous things. For example, they’re supposed to teach that enslaved people gained valuable skills, and so the institution of slavery benefitted enslaved Black Americans.

It’s beyond preposterous; it’s deeply insulting. It’s as if someone breaks your right arm and then tells you, hey, but you’re going to learn the valuable skill of using your left arm more, so you should really thank me.

And, of course, Florida’s censorship of school curriculums doesn’t just try to rewrite the history of slavery. It covers up or distorts other critical aspects of US history along racial lines, too: terror lynchings, segregation, and the civil rights movement. It also downplays the cultural and scientific contributions of Black Americans.

Florida is probably the worst case in the US when it comes to such educational censorship. It’s home to the harshest curriculum restrictions and the most banned books.

But Florida is not alone. As a new report points out, there’s a national crisis of educational censorship in the US. More and more US states have been passing laws restricting classroom discussions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and US history.

What all this leads to – apart from breeding ignorance, of course – is fear. The new report details teachers afraid to tell the truth and students terrified of the consequences. Teachers describe being reprimanded for violating the new laws and policies, and there are reports of teachers being investigated and fired.

Black students in Florida’s public schools say they feel demoralized, unseen, and unheard, same as LGBTQ students feel, confronted by Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” law. The discrimination in information devalues their lives and experiences – at the same time, it pumps up others.

The Proud Boys, a militant white supremacist group, attends school board meetings across Florida, wearing clothes with violent messages and making hateful remarks. It’s designed to intimidate local officials, parents, and students.

Clearly, educational censorship in Florida, and in the US generally, is not simply about hiding the nation’s past; it’s about reshaping its present and future. It’s about trying to indoctrinate children with an ideology of ignorance. Saying the white supremacy of yesterday was just fine and dandy, gives a pass to the white supremacy of today.

It’s a pack of lies with an ugly political motivation at its core.

Primary and secondary education in the US is largely controlled by state and local governments. However, it’s clear here, the federal government needs to be doing a lot more to address school censorship that promotes discrimination and fear.