A new bill in Florida would ban public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” when being taught about racial discrimination in U.S. history.
Florida Senate Bill 148 passed the state Senate Committee on Education on Jan. 18 with six yeas and three nays and will move on to debate among state senators.
According to the bill, an individual shouldn’t be made to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin,” reports ABC News.
The legislation takes aim at critical race theory (CRT), although it does not mention it in the bill, and the vote went along party lines, according to the Associated Press.
Democrats argued the bill isn’t needed, would lead to frivolous lawsuits, and would amount to censorship in schools. They asked, without success, for real-life examples of teachers or businesses telling students or employees that they are racist because of their race.
“This bill’s not for Blacks, this bill was not for any other race. This was directed to make whites not feel bad about what happened years ago,” said state Sen. Shevrin Jones, who is Black.
“At no point did anyone say white people should be held responsible for what happened, but what I would ask my white counterparts is, are you an enabler of what happened, or are you going to say we must talk about history?”
Last month, Governor Ron DeSantis held a press conference in which he called critical race theory “crap” and said he would seek legislation that would allow parents to sue schools and employees to sue employers if they were subject to such teachings.
Indiana – just like Florida and many other states, has House Bill 1134 (and its stalled Senate counterpart SB 167), which takes aim at “critical race theory,”
Indiana’s legislation, like Florida’s, is also race-neutral, according to the IndyStar, banning teachings that entail “that any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or political affiliation is inherently superior or inferior to another sex, race,” etc.
But the IndyStar points out that perhaps the “most concerning provision is the vague prohibition of ideas that cause feelings of racial ‘discomfort, guilt’ etc.” Teachers running afoul of this mandate run the risk of being fired and losing their credentials.
But even worse, mandates of this sort will blunt any attempt to seriously engage with our country’s troubling history of racism and other forms of oppression. And this does not just include racism perpetrated against Black Americans.
The history of this country is also rift with the persecution of other nationalities, including our Indigenous tribes, Irish, Chinese, Japanese and other groups. It is something to think long and hard about.
