By Pastor Rasheed Z Baaith
“Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)
The lies, misrepresentations, and half-truths Gov. DeSantis is regurgitating about Black History is nothing short of a calculated strategy to destroy the truth of who we are and what we have accomplished. And what has been done to us by those who enslaved us.
He wants those who support what he is doing to believe our history is some sort of ephemeral reality that can be changed or rearranged as he and others please. It is neither ephemeral nor something that can be altered at will.
And our history is not the only history he and others who think like he does would change and make incomplete.. In this continuing revision of the past, he wants no mention of the true horrors of slavery. Nor does he want the responsibility for this economy of human cargo to be put where it belongs. On European and American white people.
It is equally true that some Black Americans do not want to believe the crucial part Africans played in selling us. But their role cannot be denied. It is what it is.
Also DeSantis’ belief that intersectionality has no place in history is intellectually dishonest. Nor is CRT socially without merit. Why? Because it puts the responsibility for racism on thought, not biology.
As far as Critical Race Theory is concerned, it is not nor has ever been taught in elementary schools, middle schools or in public high schools anywhere in Florida. If someone has information to the contrary please send it to me.
I find it amazing that Critical Race Theory is challenged on the theory’s premise that intentional racism exists to some degree in every system in our society. How could it not when the social construct was one in which segregation, deliberate exclusion of blacks and other people of color was an intentional governing policy?
At some point in America, every choice made in law, education, business, entertainment, the armed forces, evolved with the intentional marginalizing of every person of color, especially black people. Done for hundreds of years, it would be an history first if American society today did not have that hateful dogma still reverberating after all those years. Our present political atmosphere clearly says as much.
No, there is no legal discrimination, no black codes, and no overt red-lining. Yet the boldness of those who believe they can treat any person of color as they please, even to the point of killing them, is undeniable.
Even worse, these attempts by politicians like DeSantis encourage social and political violence as those looking for a reason to hate find it in these embedding themselves with so-called “mainstream” disguised racists like DeSantis.
Lastly, if there is any indoctrination happening, it is with these people so determined to classify everyone who does not look like them as an “other”.
