DeSantis escalates his authoritarian purge: GOP bounty hunters are the next frontier.
The Supreme Court just offered their blessing to the Texas abortion ban, which rewards bounty hunters for snitching on those who "aid and abet" abortions. Now less than one week later, Republicans are looking to use similar mechanisms to ban not just abortions, but the teaching of history.
In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has offered up the use of this novel enforcement mechanism to fight the culture wars in classrooms and corporations, which should send a chill down any freedom-loving person's spine. Called the "Stop WOKE Act," the bill would allow any parent to sue a school district for teaching "critical race theory."
While "critical race theory" is a scare term the right uses to make it sound like there's some novel and esoteric indoctrination going on in schools, a little digging shows what Republicans actually mean by the term is any lessons or materials that acknowledge racism had any impact on American history. Conservatives groups are demanding schools ban books about the 1963 March on Washington or Brown v. the Board of Education.
In Texas, a Republican state representative circulated a list of books he wants banned, which includes books by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Margaret Atwood, and John Irving. Virginia's winning GOP gubernatorial candidate, Glenn Youngkin, ran ads exalting an effort to censor "Beloved" by Toni Morrison. And schools officials in a Texas suburb argued that the restrictions required them to teach "both sides" of the Holocaust.
In light of this, it's not at all subtle what DeSantis is trying to do here: Intimidate schools into erasing much of American history. The Florida law bans teaching "that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems." Two of the most prominent historical examples of legal systems embedding racism are slavery and Jim Crow. If every Trump-loving parent can sue the school for teaching kids about the Civil War or the civil rights movement, some schools may decide it's not worth the hassle to teach American history in any meaningful way at all. Teachers and other school officials may leave the state or the profession, rather than spend every waking moment worrying about being sued by racist parents for doing the job of educating students.