‘There Is a War on Blackness’: Right Determined to Erase Black Americans
DeSantis under fire for educational standards which claim "benefits" of slavery
Although Florida Gov Ron DeSantis has come under fire for new education standards in his state that say that students should be taught the “benefits” of slavery, the Republican’s support for them goes to the heart of his right-wing ideology.
That's according to a well-known scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.
DeSantis, who is running for president, set off a political firestorm earlier this month when he refused to denounce Florida state officials changing school curriculum to teach that slaves personally benefited from their bondage.
Among the changes approved by the Florida state board of education was a section of “benchmark clarifications,” and among those was one that states “instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
The governor has been roundly criticized for the move, including by some other Republicans, including rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination.
“I was the first Republican to come out and say that slavery is not a jobs program, and anybody that is implying that there was an upside to slavery is insane,” said former Republican congressman and presidential hopeful Will Hurd. “And — and what is even more shocking to me is that everybody has come out — Ron DeSantis' department of education doubled down on this.”
DeSantis’ position on the slavery standards goes to a deeper rot in his flagging presidential campaign, according to former Republican strategist Tara Setmayer.
“So, Ron DeSantis, I’ve never seen someone trip over their arrogance so much at a time when they’re supposed to be resetting their campaign,” said Setmayer , who today is a senior advisor at the Lincoln Project. “Can we just recap the week? You did a great job of explaining the idea that he’s white-splaining to black Republicans the slavery issue. He also had to — we forgot that he also had to cut staff, including a Nazi sympathizer who was on his staff. That’s not a great look when you’re trying to do a campaign reset.
“And he’s hemorrhaging donors. The Miami Herald put out a report this week that discussed how he’s also hemorrhaging white, college-educated Republicans. They don’t want to vote for him. So he’s going in the wrong direction and it’s been an absolute disarray for him, for Ron DeSantis,” Setmayer added. “And I don’t see how he comes back from it, but, you know, good luck with that. When you’re that arrogant and aloof, it’s not a winning combination, particularly when you have to be a retail politician in places like Iowa.”
But what DeSantis and others are doing with the educational standards is only part of a wider “war on Blackness,” according to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an American historian and cultural critic who is a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.
“Yeah, it's how the pieces fit together. So, there is a war on blackness at the ballot box, disenfranchising blacks. There is a war actually on blacks at their places of employment through the suppression of diversity and inclusion initiatives. And there is the war on blackness in education. And all of these things fit together,” said Ben-Ghiat. “And whenever I hear about DeSantis or others’ ‘anti-wokeness,’ I think of a line I have in my book from somebody who lived under the dictatorship in Chile. He says, ‘Dictatorships want people to go to sleep.’ And so, you know, all of the education initiatives of the GOP, they mirror the disenfranchisement of Black people at the ballot box by not only erasing major parts of their history, but rewriting history in ways that satisfy white people.
“So, it's an extension and it’s a way these things fit together. There is an overall plan which stands out to me as somebody who studies the GOP as an autocratic party,” she added.
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