In an ominous-sounding announcement this week, the National Association for the Advance of Colored People issued a “travel advisory” for blacks planning to visit The Sunshine State. The reason to avoid the state, the group claimed, is because Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to “erase Black history” and “restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion” in school classrooms.
“Beware that your life is not valued,” NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson told CNN, as if he was warning blacks to avoid the Deep South during the terrible Jim Crew era.
What the NAACP leader was referring to is an updated African-American history course for high school students in Advance Placement classes. That new version of the AP course, published by the College Board, was flagged by the Florida Dept. of Education earlier this year for its left-wing topics such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the demand for reparations, Critical Race Theory, and “queer” black history.
Those biased and controversial topics are banned in Florida’s public schools under the Stop Woke Act, which DeSantis signed into law in 2021.
After the State of Florida flagged the AP course's one-sided viewpoints, the College Board re-released a new version to U.S. high schools with the left-wing propaganda removed, Fox News reported in a February story.
Marxist-based Critical Race Theory, which mirrors the class-based Critical Theory, contends that minorities are oppressed because whites maintain a racist power structure in academia, business, politics, and law. When the topic of Critical Race Theory is exposed, such as in the AP course, the Far Left can never seem to agree if CRT is a non-existent right-wing fantasy or an important part of U.S. history that is being challenged.
According to the CNN article, the NAACP leader appeared to choose the latter.
“Let me be clear: Failing to teach an accurate representation of the horrors and inequalities that Black Americans have faced, and continue to face, is a disservice to students and a dereliction of duty to all,” Johnson said.
John Stemberger, who leads the Florida Family Council, tells AFN it is “patently absurd” to suggest the State of Florida is not teaching black history in high school classes.
“These people are grasping at straws,” he says. “They’re trying to do anything that they can find as a political weapon.”
Florida resident Mike Hill, a Project 21 member, tells AFN the NAACP is playing politics to mobilize and energize black Democrat voters.
"It's nothing more than leftist cliques and ideology,” he says. “They have to throw in they’re protecting LGBTQ, protecting abortion rights, and so forth."
The boycott won’t work, Hill predicts, because Americans know the NAACP is playing politics with a popular state and a popular governor.
“Florida is a place of opportunity and prosperity, and my family and others who live here are proof of that,” says Hill, an insurance agent who also served as a state legislator for the Pensacola area.
Stemberger likewise says Florida’s population is booming because of beautiful beaches and weather, politicians who care and families and children, and a business-friendly environment with no state income tax.
“It’s really a nonsensical thing,” he says of the NAACP’s warnings. “It’s scare tactics.”
