How the State of Florida is Perpetuating Systemic Racism

16 May 2023

Introduction

This January, Florida’s Department of Education rejected an Advanced Placement course covering African American studies.^[1] The Department’s office of articulation, which oversees accelerated programs for high school students,^[2] has described the course as ‘inexplicably contrary to Florida law.’^[3] Bryan Griffin, Governor Ron DeSantis’s press secretary, has referred to the course as a ‘vehicle for a political agenda.’^[4] Regardless of how the course has been framed by its critics, its rejection by the Florida Department of Education serves not only as a brutal reminder of the systemic racism that is embedded in American society, but also acts as a tool with which systemic racism can be perpetuated. The action taken by the Department serves as one example of how Ron DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE Act,” signed nearly one year ago, has allowed the state of Florida to perpetuate systemic racism.

Course Curriculum: How and Why Exposure Matters Vis-à-vis the Perpetuation of Systemic Racism

Course Curriculum

Christopher Tinson, the chair of the African American Studies department at Saint Louis University, told NPR that he, as well as the other scholars involved in creating the course curriculum, ‘wanted to give a comprehensive view of the culture, literature, historical development, political movements, social movements’^[5] of African Americans. Tinson also stated that the course ‘will explore the origins of the African American diaspora to Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the civil rights movement, and then some,’^[6] and expose students to traditionally underrepresented historical figures (e.g., Valerie Thomas, “a scientist who invented the illusion transmitter”^[7]) and events (e.g. the Haitian Revolution^[8]).

The Significance of Exposure: Misunderstanding Fuels Racism

Taking Tinson’s description of the course into consideration, it is fair to say that Florida’s Department of Education has denied students a valuable learning opportunity. Back in 2020, educator Keina Cook told NBC Philadelphia that the United States has ‘always taught history from the Eurocentric point.’^[9] Indeed, the civil rights movement for example, “often gets boiled down to ‘lessons about a handful of heroic figures and the four words ‘I have a dream,’ according to a 2014 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.”^[10] Florida’s Department of Education, in denying students the opportunity to gain exposure to the experiences of African Americans, especially considering that such exposure has been severely limited to begin with, is, regardless of intent, complicit in the reproduction of racism in the U.S. This is due to the fact that it limits students’ means of what a 1996 report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) deems as one of the four purposes of an education— “learning to live together.”^[11] To learn to live together, as the “De Lors Report” states, is to “develop an understanding of other people and an appreciation of interdependence.”^[12] Developing an understanding of other people is integral to fighting against racism. Psychologists Steven O. Roberts and Michael Rizzo, in identifying seven factors contributing to racism in the U.S., asserted that the first three of those factors are: “Categories, which organize people into distinct groups; Factions, which trigger ingroup loyalty and intergroup competition; and Segregation, which hardens racist perceptions, preferences and beliefs.”^[13] Roberts and Rizzo noted that there is a “considerable body of research showing that people, adults and children alike, tend to feel and act more positively toward those they consider to be like them and in their ‘ingroup,’ and “for many White Americans, their ingroups do not include Black Americans,”^[14] partly due to “America’s fraught history of racial segregation.”^[15] The researchers point to studies showing that the amount of exposure a child has to other racial groups influences their perception of, as well as their actions toward, those groups when they reach adulthood.^[16] In sum, Roberts and Rizzo have shown that racism can be fueled by misunderstanding. It falls to reason, then, that Florida’s Department of Education, in limiting students’ opportunities to gain an understanding of the experiences of African Americans, has the potential to play a role in keeping African Americans out of the ingroups of White Americans, and in turn, reproducing racism in the U.S. That a Department of Education, operating within a state which belongs to a country that prides itself on its alleged adherence to democratic values of equality and freedom, can play such an instrumental role in reproducing racism warrants an acknowledgement that the U.S. is not the “land of the free.” Instead of actively improving upon its past of slavery and de jure segregation, the U.S. has allowed Florida to take a measure that further adds to the residue this abhorrent past has left behind.

Systemic Racism: Rejection as a Residual Effect of De Jure Segregation

Furthermore, the Department, in the process of reproducing racism, has fallen complicit in the perpetuation of systemic racism in the U.S. Systemic racism “refers to the rules, practices, and customs once rooted in law.”^[17] Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science and director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University, argues that “these may have changed over time, resulting in a façade of ‘equality,’ but the residual effects reverberate throughout entire societal systems.”^[18] Applying Gillespie’s logic, this article argues that the Florida Department of Education’s rejection of the Advanced Placement African American Studies course is one of the “residual effects”^[19] of de jure segregation (segregation resulting from actions of the state^[20]). The Department, in keeping the experiences of African Americans out of Florida’s classrooms, is, in essence, conveying the message that African Americans themselves are not welcome in those classrooms. With the rejection of the course, the Department has built upon the tradition of de jure segregation, and even added to the residue it has left behind. The experiences of African Americans, as with the experiences of all other human beings, are part of their very humanity. Therefore, if one is to exclude the experiences of a group of human beings, they also exclude the group itself.

The “Stop WOKE Act”

Setting the Stage for the Department’s Rejection

On April 22, 2022, Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law the “Stop WOKE Act,” which “prohibits workplace training or school instruction that teaches that individuals are ‘inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously’; that people are privileged or oppressed based on race, gender, or national origin; or that a person ‘bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress’ over actions committed in the past by members of the same race, gender, or national origin.’”^[21] The law “says such trainings or lessons amount to discrimination.”^[22] Although the Florida Department of Education “did not cite which law the Advanced Placement course violated or what in the curriculum was objectionable,”^[23] it is reasonable to deduce that the stipulations within the “Stop WOKE Act” set the stage for the Department to reject the course. Florida Education Commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., wrote in a Twitter post that ‘Florida rejected an AP course filled with Critical Race Theory and other obvious violations of Florida law.’^[24] He also added that ‘We proudly require the teaching of African American history. We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education.’^[25] However, as previously shown, the course curriculum did not contain the subject matter Diaz Jr. has described. The course was designed with the intention of broadening students’ exposure to African American history. The Department’s rejection of the course was, in fact, rooted in a misinterpretation of what constitutes “Critical Race Theory” and “woke indoctrination.” The “Stop WOKE Act,” as it has been previously described, could have allowed the Department to misinterpret the course curriculum as being in violation of state law. The course, for example, was not designed with the intention of teaching that individuals are “inherently racist.” But the department, if they wanted to argue that it was designed with that intention, could have cited the “Stop WOKE Act” as the law that the course had violated.

Conclusion

Although it is unknown whether the “Stop WOKE Act” was indeed the law Florida’s Department of Education found the course to be in violation of, such a scenario was possible. It is disturbing, and unacceptable, that in today’s America, a state’s Department of Education is, technically, allowed to deny students the opportunity to “learn to live together”^[26] if there is a law which they can use to misinterpret that opportunity as being in violation of. It is time, in the year 2023, for such a scenario to become impossible, so that the present, and future, generations of this nation’s students can begin breaking the cycle of the perpetuation of systemic racism.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia commons under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

^[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150259944/florida-rejects-ap-class-african-american-studies

^[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/us/desantis-florida-ap-african-american-studies.html

^[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/us/desantis-florida-ap-african-american-studies.html

^[4] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150259944/florida-rejects-ap-class-african-american-studies

^[5] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150259944/florida-rejects-ap-class-african-american-studies

^[6] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150259944/florida-rejects-ap-class-african-american-studies

^[7] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150259944/florida-rejects-ap-class-african-american-studies

^[8] https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150259944/florida-rejects-ap-class-african-american-studies

^[9] https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/national-international/how-to-transform-black-history-education-in-schools/2450465/

^[10] https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/national-international/how-to-transform-black-history-education-in-schools/2450465/

^[11] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2020/06/05/learning-to-live-together-how-education-can-help-fight-systemic-racism/