Advice for culture warrior Ron DeSantis: A satire

FROM: Withstanding Hyperbolizing Instructors Teaching Exceedingly Wearisome Assessments of Shared History Re: Reimagining slavery

Dear Governor DeSantis,

We here at the conservative nationalist think tank WHITEWASH applaud your shrewd attempts to use slavery as yet another front in your culture wars campaign for president. You obviously understand that if you can engage the left in a debate over how that history is taught, you can rally to your cause Americans whose narrow concept of patriotism won’t tolerate an accurate accounting of this nation’s historical sins.

But sadly, so far your attempt to interject, well, “alternative facts” into the discussion isn’t going any better than your overall presidential campaign.

As we see it, your problem isn’t that you’ve gone too far but that you haven’t gone far enough. Highlighting the invaluable occupational skills like blacksmithing that enslaved people learned while in instructive captivity is an important start, but you really need to offer an entire counternarrative — and to connect it to current conservative grievances. To that end, our skilled revisionist scholars have written you this speech:

“For some decades, well-intentioned Americans transported Africans here from their dangerous native continent to help them acquire new job skills. Their journey imparted a transatlantic travel experience few Americans of that era shared — and all for free!

After some years of what might be termed indentured internships, a feeling arose in certain more fractious regions of the country that the Africans and their fathers and mothers before them and possibly another seven or eight generations prior had served those apprenticeships long enough and so should start to be compensated.

This initially caused some Southern concerns, the more so since some of the aforementioned interns had already taken to slipping away from the gracious plantations that had been their homes, without providing any reimbursement for the room and board they had long enjoyed gratis.

But after some trifling interstate unpleasantries, things resolved themselves amicably. The internships ended and the former interns were allowed to open their own blacksmith shops. Others happily went to work for their former masters — um, mentors — or shared in the profits or crops from interracial collaborations.

It had not previously been anticipated that these transports from afar would want to participate fully in voting or other aspects of American civic affairs. So naturally enough, it took a little time to adjust when they started to express such an interest. At about the same time, a recognition grew among the two races that they didn’t really need separate water fountains and schools and the like, and could probably even sit in close proximity on public transit.

Governmental leaders everywhere would certainly have been receptive to those pleas. Unfortunately, however, some descendants of the former interns and their associates began engaging in loud and disruptive gatherings. Why, they even recruited schoolchildren to skip classes and join the cause! Worried that those youngsters might suffer heat stroke as they marched in the hot Southern sun, benevolent law enforcement authorities on one occasion treated them to cooling spray from fire hoses. The results certainly prevented possible heat-related harm, though some accidental bruising might have occurred.

As the races increasingly intermingled, it turned out that interracial romance was another unforeseen possibility, and so old laws discouraging interracial marriage were quickly swept away.

Given the relative ease with which America adapted to the idea of racial equality, it is unfortunate that some athletes have persisted in agitating in ways that have disrupted mainstream America’s sports-viewing habits. Yet taking a knee silently during the national anthem at professional football games and other sporting events briefly became a fad.

Because the related gesture of kneeling had long been reserved for petitioning one’s king or queen or praying or proposing marriage, the new trend was understandably disquieting, the more so since these attention-seekers simply seemed to be objecting to the treatment of Black motorists at the hands of police officers who had stopped them for slippery slope offenses like driving with a burnedout taillight, which as everyone knows can lead to drug-trafficking, counterfeiting, plane-hijackings, and even revolution if not immediately nipped in the bud.

So it’s appropriate that at least one athlete who exploited his prominence to engage in such a socalled ‘protest’ suffered career-ending ostracism. After all, the left cancels people too.

To sum it all up, then, in the distant past, America briefly underwent some racial tensions, caused by ill-advised behavior on both sides, but that era is in the distant past. No matter what the critics say, if there ever was any racism in America, it’s gone now. So let’s make American history great again!”

We hope that helps, governor. For as we say at WHITEWASH, when it comes to race, this country has always been nearly perfect.

Or three-fifths so, at least.