The NAACP has advised Black people to take precautions when traveling to Florida. In a move typically reserved for places experiencing war, social unrest or natural disasters, the group said that it was issuing the Florida advisory in direct response to \u201cGovernor Ron DeSantis\u2019 aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFlorida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color,\u201d the NAACP wrote in a press release issued last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s one of many public rebukes of Florida\u2019s current war against inclusion, in which schools have inevitably become a battleground. Along with slashing funds for diversity and inclusion initiatives at institutions of higher education, DeSantis also recently blocked a new high school AP African American studies class, calling it \u201ca political agenda\u201d and \u201cwoke indoctrination\u201d. Some of the offending topics in the course outline included intersectionality, the Black Lives Matter movement, reparations and prison abolition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NAACP\u2019s warning is important because it\u2019s a stark reminder of how Black erasure is weaponized in the project of white supremacy. History has taught us that any attempt to assert the dominance of whiteness necessarily involves the subjugation, destruction and erasure of Black people. Whether it\u2019s preventing Black people from voting, or blocking access to vital educational material that would teach kids why Black people once couldn\u2019t vote, Black struggle has always gone hand in hand with its own un-remembering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, DeSantis\u2019s war against \u201cwokeness\u201d is operating alongside a larger effort to make Black people feel unwelcome, their identities inherently un-American. And in a country where white victimhood has become a powerful motivator, and where misinformation is regularly used to further the cause of white supremacy, it\u2019s not difficult to see how dangerous it is to implicate children and young people in that system of ignorance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Excising Black Americans and their historical struggles from the larger story of the US also lets the country off the hook for the ways it continues to owe an immeasurable debt to its Black people. Yet as the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates highlights in his 2014 essay The Case for Reparations, for every noble effort to figure out how the US can right its wrongs, there have been forces waiting to explain why reparations for Black people are either impossible to achieve or unnecessary to even attempt. Erasing the very knowledge base that helps us remember why these reparations are important only helps further that agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unsurprisingly, rightwing white Americans are responding with jest to news of the NAACP advisory. \u201cMaybe they had a travel advisory because of the humidity, I know that it gets frizzy,\u201d podcast host Steven Crowder said on his show on Monday, apparently referring to the tendency for Black people\u2019s hair to respond to humidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He and his co-hosts lobbed racist jokes back and forth before Crowder finally said the quiet part out loud: \u201cAfter the advisory went up, 49 governors called the NAACP asking if they could be added to the list.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This banter is disturbing not because of how uninspired it is as far as \u201ccomedy\u201d goes, but because of just how close to reality their jokes come. DeSantis is, after all, launching his presidential bid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The US has never been fully safe for Black people, and as the country shifts toward a very frightening time in its history, it\u2019s taking specific aim at the very people upon whose backs the country was built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n