Teachers And Experts Are Roasting Ron DeSantis’ Bizarre New ‘Stop WOKE Act,’ Which Bans CRT From Schools That Aren’t Teaching It

For months, Critical Race Theory has been a curse word among Republicans, its every invocation sending their base into outrage mode. Only problem: Conservatives don’t seem to know what it actually is. It’s an academic approach, largely employed in law schools and other collegiate departments, as a way to understand how longtime systemic racism has affected American society. One place you won’t find it is in K-12 education, but conservatives have baselessly claimed otherwise, so their base must believe it so.

So of course Florida governor and COVID denying grifter Ron DeSantis announced new legislation that, if passed, would ban CRT from the schools in which they’ve never been taught. And as per The Daily Beast, educators and people who actually know what they’re talking about alike are shredding it to bits.

DeSantis calls it the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” the acronym awkwardly standing for “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act.” It will allow parents “private right of action” to sue schools where CRT is being taught. It even allows them to collect lawyers’ fees if they win the lawsuit.

Only problem? There’s never been any evidence that K-12 schools were teaching CRT. But that didn’t stop DeSantis from expanding his focus to the workplace as well, railing against consultants who go to corporations to discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion. “This has become a cottage industry,” DeSantis said. “They basically will get tens of thousands of dollars to go in and do a training.”

Oh, and DeSantis also invoked Martin Luther King Jr. while bragging about legislation that would make it hard for teachers to, say, teach about the existence of slavery in America or the civil rights movement, of which the man he quoted was a major part.

The announcement, from a figure who’s risen the ranks of the Republican party by making bold, Trumpian moves (to Trump’s fury), was decimated by teachers, experts, and others. One teacher-turned-Democratic candidate reminded DeSantis that the thing he’s banning simply isn’t taught in the schools his bill would target.

Legal expert Qasim Rashid pointed out that DeSantis banning CRT only stresses why it’s important to not erase discussion of racism’s place in American society.

Another Florida politician begged DeSantis to “stop creating fake problems.”

But perhaps the most bizarre part of DeSantis’ bill is that graduating students will have to take what is essentially a Soviet-style loyalty test. “We’ll be doing exams when people leave school, which will be like the citizenship exam that naturalized immigrants have to take,” DeSantis crowed. “At the end of the day, everybody that comes through our school system… everyone is going to be an American citizen, and they’re going to have duties and responsibilities. They need to understand what that means, and they need to understand the principles that our country was founded upon.”

In any case, it all sounds an awful lot like that Simpsons episode where Springfield citizens make their top priority protecting them from the nonexistent threat of rampaging bears.

(Via The Daily Beast)