I’m not much interested in the debate between Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum about the precise language in Florida’s Stop WOKE Act. From what I can tell, people are generally justified in characterizing the law as prohibiting educational instruction in the state’s public schools which makes anyone feel discomfort about their “race, color, national origin, religion, disability, or sex.” As Drum notes, the word “discomfort” may have been removed from the bill at some point in the process but the law still states “a person should not be instructed that he or she must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress for actions, in which he or she played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”
Still, in that last sentence, the word “must” is doing a lot of work. If applied fairly, the only thing really prohibited should be a teacher expressly demanding that some of his or her students feel “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress,” which presumably includes “discomfort.” If a student arrives at one of those psychological states of their own volition, then that’s unfortunate but not actionable.
But, of course, the purpose of the law is twofold. First, it’s a pandering vehicle for Ron DeSantis to build a base of support for his presidential campaign among parents groups that oppose “Woke” instruction in schools. Second, it’s intended to have a chilling effect on teachers which will lead them to self-censor what they teach out of an abundance of caution.
However you look at it the driving force is the idea that white children should not be taught some of the ugly history of America’s treatment of racial minorities, lest they start to feel some kind of way about their self-worth. The law doesn’t directly prohibit this but instead goes about its task through innuendo and intimidation.
To be clear, as the father of a white, male 13 year old with plenty of German ancestry, I’d be pissed if a Social Studies teacher told my son he “must” feel guilt or anguish” over his racial and ethnic ties to the Holocaust or the Slave trade or the treatment of Native Americans. I very much doubt that would ever happen, but I acknowledge that it could. And, if it did, I would not expect the solution to be a state law, but rather a talk with the school’s administrators.
All of this is some perverse combination of weird people on the one hand treating their white children as snowflakes who can ever have a negative feeling and on the other hand insisting that glorious America, as settled by whites, has no faults.
It’s tiresome, but it does have a lot of political juice.
