It appears as if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made the controversial and “divisive” Critical Race Theory the focal point of his legislative agenda, as the popular governor asserted his disdain for the education concept and his effort to defund it during a recent appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity” political show.
“We're happy to have abandoned it in Florida, it's not going to be allowed in Florida classrooms,” stated Gov. DeSantis, before adding that “spending tax dollars to teach kids that America is a rotten place is absolutely unacceptable.”
Congressional Democrats have demonized DeSantis’ effort to ban critical race theory, which he believes divides children along racial lines, targeting law enforcement as oppressors, and dismissing the narrative that his targeting of CRT is “not a conspiracy theory.
“If you look at how some of this stuff manifests itself in classrooms that we have seen examples of, it's not a conspiracy theory,” said DeSantis. “Dividing kids based on race, trying to say some are pressers and some are oppress based on race, attacking law enforcement saying law enforcement attacks people based on race.”
Tampa-area Congresswoman Kathy Castor (D) defended the teaching of critical race theory, telling The Floridian that DeSantis was trying to “whitewash history” and that it was “more important for students to understand the history of this country.”
“He loves a strawman. He loves it,” stated Rep. Castor. “You can’t whitewash history. It’s more important for students to understand the history of this country and there are some very unfortunate episodes.”
But DeSantis has said that he wants to see all important aspects of American history, including Slavery and Segregation, taught and accurately portrayed.
“We should be doing a solid curriculum based on the actual facts of American history and teaching kids what it means to be an American, and part of what it means to be an American because we judge people not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character you know,” concluded DeSantis.
DeSantis recently pressed the state’s Department of Education to rule to ban the education concept in all public schools and announced that he would be targeting school board candidates statewide who support CRT.
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and Rep. Charlie Crist, both Democratic gubernatorial candidates, have come out in support of the critical race theory education concept.
According to Brittanica.com:
Critical race theory (CRT), intellectual movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of colour. Critical race theorists hold that the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.
