Stoking fury keeps focus on DeSantis
Analysts see governor running for president without announcing it
As soon as Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed outrage about the notion that some Florida high school students might learn about “queer theory” in a college-level course on African American studies, the political-cultural vortex revved up to high speed.
It’s become a familiar script in the last two years, especially as he has been seen as preparing to seek the 2024 Republican presidential nomination: DeSantis says something, critics erupt, fans fawn — and the facts and details are lost amid the resulting fury.
“This is just more proof that he’s running for president, because he’s taking on topics that he doesn’t need to be taking on in Florida. He just won reelection. He’s riding high. He doesn’t need to be opening up these fronts on the culture war, but he’s doing so,” said Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies who specializes in politics and voting at Nova Southeastern University.
“This is his pre-primary approach to running for the office — to situate himself without having to say, ‘I’m running for president,’ ” Zelden said.
Much like former President Donald Trump, DeSantis is a master at making himself the center of attention, dominating the conversation, and getting opponents — and the news media — to talk about the things DeSantis wants talked about, usually on the terms he wants to talk about them.
‘Queer theory’
On Monday, DeSantis offered his explanation for the state rejecting the College Board’s Advanced Placement African American Studies course based on a pilot version of the class.
“This course on Black history, what are one of, what’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory? Now who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids, and so when you look to see they have stuff about intersectionality, abolishing prisons, that’s a political agenda, and so we’re on,
that’s the wrong side of the line for Florida standards,” DeSantis said. “We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them. When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”
Marvin Dunn said DeSantis is the one — dangerously in his view — making false claims to rev up his political base. Dunn is a professor emeritus in psychology and Florida International University, and author and historian whose books include “A History of Florida: Through Black Eyes” and “Black Miami in the Twentieth Century.”
“If they took queer theory out of it, he’d still oppose it. If they took reparations out of it, he’d still oppose it,” Dunn said. “This is a cheap play on racial theory. It’s a dog whistle . ... He creates a monster that he then rises to flay.”
Dunn said DeSantis is trying to scare people with falsehoods. “This queer thing, that’s being used as a cudgel,” he said. “One of the fears DeSantis is pressing is that they’re coming after your children, they’re going to make your children queer.”
The course
The Florida Department of Education, led by Manny Diaz Jr., whom DeSantis picked as state education commissioner, had previously told the College Board that the African American studies course would be rejected unless changes were made.
The College Board produces a range of collegelevel courses offered to high school students who choose to take them.
A chart Diaz posted to Twitter said the course promotes the idea that modern American society oppresses Black people, other minorities and women, includes a chapter on “Black Queer Studies” that the administration finds inappropriate, and uses articles by critics of capitalism.
The state graphic cited selected six topics of concern. Several news organizations reported the course contained more than 100 topics and CNN said a version of the course last year ran 81 pages.
Controversy as strategy
Assuming he does, indeed, run for president, DeSantis’ first objective is winning his party’s nomination, and that means pleasing Republican primary voters in other states.
The criticism that came this week, and has before when DeSantis has taken stands that inflame passions on both sides, serve that objective.
“That means he’s part of the conversation. My enemies define who I am to my friends. Being attacked by the gay community is not likely to hurt someone who’s seeking the Republican nomination. The same thing [about criticism from] the African American community,” Zelden said.
On cue, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a potential Democratic presidential candidate, rejected the notion of making any change in the national course curriculum “in order to fit Florida’s racist and homophobic laws,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“In Illinois, we reject any curriculum modifications designed to appease extremists like the Florida Governor and his allies,” Pritzker wrote in a letter to the College Board.
The Rev. O’Neal Dozier, senior pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, was once a prominent Black Republican. He quit the party in 2017 because of then-President Donald Trump and has since said the nation must rid itself of Trumpism.
Dozier said the African American studies course was “an opportunity for this governor to do what he does so well: take cultural issues that the base would be afraid of and he uses those as a political prop.”
Dunn said DeSantis miscalculated.
“I think he stepped in it. I think Mr. DeSantis misjudged America on this issue,” Dunn said. “I think he did not anticipate the outrage, not just from Black people, but from white people. Most of the people who are in touch with me about this, and are outraged about this, are white.”
‘Stop the Black Attack’
Two days after DeSantis’ comments, Black elected officials and activists held a rally at the state Capitol, in which they both criticized DeSantis and sought to frame the debate differently — not playing to the governor’s wording.
Depicting DeSantis as someone who wants to decide what people can think, House Democratic
Leader Fentrice Driskell of Tampa said the governor “demonstrated he wants to dictate whose story does and doesn’t belong. He wants to control what our kids learn based on politics, and not sound policy.”
State Sen. Rosalind Osgood, D-Fort Lauderdale, a former member of the Broward School Board, is an associate pastor at New Mount Olive Baptist Church, one of the biggest, most important Black churches in Fort Lauderdale. She delivered the invocation at the Capitol rally.
Osgood in an interview rejected the idea that students shouldn’t be exposed to ideas just because DeSantis and some of his supporters don’t like them.
“I am a Christian,” Osgood said. But as a Baptist seminarian, she said she studied Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and other religions. “That’s what you do in educational settings.”
Osgood said she didn’t want to judge DeSantis’ motives. But she said his efforts in the last year to stop so-called woke ideology are misguided. “For African Americans, woke means that you’re aware that racial injustices are taking place so when you say ‘stop woke’ it means you don’t want us to be aware or speak about racial injustices.”
State Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens — who taught Advanced Placement chemistry when he was a schoolteacher — sees political motives in DeSantis’ move.
“It’s no secret that Gov. DeSantis is considering or is being encouraged to run for president in 2024, because his tone shows that’s the direction,” Jones said. “And that’s why we’re seeing what we’re seeing right now, because they found out what draws their base in. It’s children. It’s parental rights. It’s the banning of books because they speak of racism. None of that deals with the issues that are actually in Florida.”
‘We support our governor’
The Christian Family Coalition Florida praised DeSantis for “making good on his promise to battle ‘woke’ indoctrination in our schools by banning” use of the AP course in Florida. Executive Director Anthony Verdugo said in a statement that the governor was protecting taxpayers and students “from being forced to subsidize their own and their children’s indoctrination into the socialist, racially divisive and sexually depraved ideologies of the left.”
Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party, said there is strong support for DeSantis from a range of people.
Barnett spoke Tuesday night to the Palm Beach County chapter of the LGBTQ political organization Log Cabin Republicans, and said none of the group’s members raised the issue. “They’re great supporters of the governor.”
“Whether they’re Log Cabin Republicans, Black Republicans, women, men, whatever, we’re pretty much united in that we support our governor, and we support conservative values,” Barnett said.
He said he has “no problems with higher institutions of learning teaching African American history as long as it doesn’t teach Americans or Floridians to hate one race of people over another.”
DeSantis’ office referred questions to the Department of Education, which did not respond.
Black-LGBTQ relations
Many people in the African American and Caribbean American communities have long been culturally conservative on issues related to LGBTQ orientation. Jones said DeSantis objecting to “queer theory” as an element of African American studies could rekindle differences.
“Anti-gay feelings are rampant in the Black community,” Dunn said. “In our African American culture, the antipathy toward gayness is a problem.”
Osgood said there is tension and, for some, “a lot of stigma. But I think that there has been a lot of progress. I think the African American community has become more willing to have conversations, to learn how to better love and support our brothers and sisters in the LGBTQ community.”
Jones, the first openly gay Black member of the Florida Senate, said there has been a shift.
Younger Black people, especially, have different views than earlier generations, Jones said. And as more Black LGBTQ people are out, some older people are changing their views as well, he said.
“The Black community is moving,” Jones said. “I hate that people keep putting that narrative out there, that the Black community and the gay community they don’t mix with each other. That has something that has been said for quite some time, and even I used to believe that,” he said.
Jones won two successive state Senate elections after coming out, even though supporters of his opponents sought to make his sexual orientation an issue against him. “That helped me realize the only thing that people want to see on display is what you can do for them.”