A DeSantis Speech Too Dangerous to Teach in Florida
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis does not often find himself attempting to deliver a unifying message, but in the aftermath of the killing of three Black Floridians by an alleged white supremacist in Jacksonville last week, he tried.
“What he did is totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said during a speech at a vigil for the three victims, A.J. Laguerre, Angela Michelle Carr, and Jerrald Gallion, last Sunday. “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”
That’s a welcome message, but it didn’t go over well. The that DeSantis “was loudly booed” as he addressed the vigil. Among the potential reasons is that DeSantis has spent much of his time in office cracking down on “wokeness,” to the delight of his conservative fans. The state has passed laws censoring classroom instruction that might lead students to conclude that racial discrimination, against Black Americans in particular, persists into the present, even as it engages in such discrimination .
