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Did Gov. DeSantis Get the ‘Stop Woke Act’ Wrong?
When I saw that the court’s Judge Walker rejected key parts of the “Stop Woke Act”(Individual Freedom Act) in Florida, I assumed that he was just another Leftist judge attacking the Conservative legislation. But then I saw that he was responding to a lawsuit brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) on behalf of a faculty member, a student, and a student group. FIRE is a highly regarded organization that champions free speech. You can review their lawsuit here. FIRE stated that the act was unconstitutional in that it disallowed free speech on public college campuses.
Judge Walker’s blistering criticism referred to the work of George Orwell:
‘In this case, the State of Florida lays the cornerstone of its own Ministry of Truth under the guise of the Individual Freedom Act, declaring which viewpoints shall be orthodox and which shall be verboten in its university classrooms,’ Walker wrote.
‘[T]he First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints, and cast us all into the dark,’ Walker concluded.
The legislation was intended to bring a halt to curricula that ignored or defied traditional teaching of values and subjects, since universities were condemning traditional education and providing Marxist and socialist content to students. The judge, in his objection, said that the state could provide educational curriculum, but explained that there is no precedent for the State of Florida’s assertion that the state “has an unfettered right to prohibit professors from expressing viewpoints with which it disagrees.”
It’s important to note FIRE’s position in this lawsuit:
FIRE’s suit is limited to higher education and does not take a position on the truth of the prohibited concepts of race and sex. Rather, FIRE takes the viewpoint-neutral approach that faculty retain the right to give an opinion—whether that opinion supports or opposes the prohibited concepts in the Stop WOKE Act….
For those of us who believe the university has corrupted education by distorting content and attacking traditional viewpoints, this ruling creates a few dilemmas:
- How do we return our universities to teaching an appropriate curriculum?
- How do we limit the propaganda being taught without violating the constitution?
- Is there a way to ensure that at least a balanced curriculum is offered to students?
- Was the writing of the “Stop Woke” Act insufficient to meet the state’s agenda?
Is this ruling a message that the universities can’t be stopped in their march to destroy the foundations of the United States?
You can read the “Stop Woke Act” here.
Published in Education
The fact that your comments make sense would drive the Left crazy, Al. I’m all for your suggestions: close some state schools. There are too many of them that teach nonsense anyway.
As avid and enthusiastic supporters of Hillsdale, I wholeheartedly second that motion! It is a rare gem in the more and more depressing firmament of higher education in this country. The only way to really get a feel for what Hillsdale stands for it to go to one of the many functions it puts on all across the country every year; warning, however: once you do, you will be well and truly hooked on that great institution and the superb faculty, staff and, most important, students who are the heart and soul of Hillsdale.
If freedom is not the supreme value, what is?
Why do you feel that having the view that freedom is indeed the supreme value is so wrong as to be pernicious?
I’m not posing those questions to be hyperbolic, but simply out of a desire to learn the basis for an opinion which seems to be the polar opposite of mine, and it is always a good thing to learn about the basis for other opinions not one’s own.
The reason I didn’t ask Jerry is that many encounters with him suggest that he tends to look at the worst practice of a freedom. In other words, freedom can be abused and misused because there are those who don’t hold it as a value to be respected and practiced with honor. Of course, I would never laud freedom to be used in those ways, as you know, Jim. I,too, treasure it; after all, G-d blessed us with one of the most powerful aspects of freedom: free will.
Racism is not a personal moral failing, it’s part of our culture – so to the extent that a culture is racist, we all carry some of it and we all also have the power to do something about it. That doesn’t make us bad people, only humans who live in a human society.
I am not claiming that students are specfically taught to call themselves oppressors.
imnsho the issue isn’t that the matter is examined and discussed, but that they fail to give it context, to universalise it.
In every society with a dominant group that dominant group makes assumptions about themselves and about the rest. And it’s easier for them to stick with their assumptions, because dominant, they don’t really have to listen to what the others think or say because it isn’t a day to day necessity. This is a human tendency, and any of us – when we find ourselves a part of the dominant group in our society, or even in a situation – have the potential to go with it.
Dumbing this down to ‘whiteness’ in America does nobody any favours. But the response should be to teach it better rather than not teaching it at all.
It WAS being taught better, and comprehensively. It’s the left who have weaponized it into their identity politics.
We live in a society that encourages the worst expressions of freedom. Hedonism is the order of the day.
If it was being taught better and comprehensively the Left should have been unable to do this.
That’s naive.
Well taught and largely untried people get comfortable. Comfortable people stop being on guard. It’s an opening to be taken advantage of.
And even if they weren’t comfortable, it’s like Zafar has never met the left, or something.
Or?
Troubled waters are already troubled before anybody fishes in them.
Regardless of what was taught before, the government shouldn’t be teaching their students to be racists, which is what the Left is doing.
You’re stating a number of premises that I simply don’t agree with, Zafar. The one just above–it may have been a part of our culture, but it has been greatly reduced no matter what the Left says. They have blown up the issue far beyond the attention it deserves. Since it’s not part of the culture, I don’t think we all carry some of it. We will all continue to work on the small amount of racism that exists, in our own way. We don’t need to condemn, shame and insult people to make appropriate changes, and we don’t need to tell people that they have been oppressed when they haven’t been.
True. You said that I made that claim, so I responded that I couldn’t provide the evidence without a lot of effort, but all the other things that have been done to these kids is terrible.
I don’t know what this means.
I don’t know where to begin. I have never thought of myself as part of a dominant culture, and I don’t believe that I have “dominant assumptions” that I should have to change. I don’t mind listening to others opinions, but I refuse to be accused of beliefs that I don’t hold, or to be punished for actions I haven’t taken. A person may have the potential to behave as part of a “dominant culture”; I’d say to you that those who are being dominating and oppressive are on the Left. And the Right hasn’t dumbed issues down to “whiteness” (so I assume you speaking about the Left). We have always taught about slavery in this country, but not sufficiently according to the Left, that prefers to attack all those who were slaveholders (which was permissable in their days) and hold all of us today accountable for their behavior 200 years ago.
.
As US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said, “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
The Left says it is opposed to racism but then advocates racism as the cure for racism. It’s just racism directed at a different racial group.
We all have assumptions, right? Though it’s fair to question what exactly is ‘dominant’ these days. With that caveat, Pew did a survey on this stuff last year, from which:
Which is an interesting breakdown of stats. I am not saying who’s right or who’s wrong or who should amend their views – perhaps all of them, perhaps none of them – just pointing out that there are differences in how we all see the world, and ‘race’ seems to be one prism when it comes to this issue.
For another example – some months (?) ago there was either an OP or conversation regarding antisemitism in the US. One point of view was that it wasn’t a big deal – going by the numbers. But a lot of Jewish Americans feel that there is an increasing problem of antisemitism in the US. And they should know, right? I’m certainly not at ease dismissing their experience and beliefs on that.
That’s right. It reminds me of the Whoopi Goldberg tamasha when she said that the Holocaust wasn’t because of racial prejudice, but was one group of white people going after another group of white people. Which is, imo, completely crazy – it was all about racial prejudice – but she was projecting her own limited undestanding of what race is onto a context when the understanding was different. I’m not saying that anybody has an unlimited understanding of any term, just that we need to keep in mind that our understanding is, because we’re human, limited.
Oh yeah, no agenda THERE!
Ok we all have assumptions. Some people don’t like the assumptions being forced on them by their government. This law ends that force. People remain free to assume the whiteness is a problem, but they dont get to force that anymore. Good.
I’d drifted away from this thread, but Zafar got me back into it! I agree with this comment.
You don’t think there’s any possibility that various minority groups think they have to protest etc not because it comes from inside, but from outside?
I can’t remember ever denying that possibility. Or in fact it coming up. Anything is possible, of course. Remember when Obama called us “bitter clingers”? Did it give you warm, affectionate feelings toward a president bold enough to insult you to your face? Was it only right wing web sites and Fox News that hammered away at you until you numbly started repeating that you didn’t like it?
Or did you actually not like it? We can accept that it’s possible, in fact likely, that people who claimed they’re insulted actually are. Sure, most people will exaggerate even genuine suffering, and some people will make it up altogether. Can’t rule that out with any race, any group of people.
There was a popular theory among adults when I was a kid that blacks liked roles they were comfortable with, like shoeshine ‘boy’, elevator operator, and maids, but outside agitators from the Communist Party convinced them that they resented whites. This theory is–let me put it gently–nuts. And that’s the problem with Song of the South. Blacks didn’t have to be talked into protesting. They have been of two minds about this movie since the day it opened. This isn’t some new thing.
I projected that movie in 1981 in New York. I was surprised at the kind of audience it drew. Black grandparents and grandchildren; from what I overheard during intermissions, the film was a history lesson, if a rather soft and idealized one, for kids about where they came from, a sunny place down South with old fashioned country ways. There’s a conservative myth that they just loved the film. They didn’t; but they also didn’t hate it, the liberal myth.
On the other hand, actual Indians (Native Americans, i.e., “feather” not “dot”) don’t share the mostly-white left’s indignation at sports teams names etc.
And since “cops shoot unarmed blacks for sport!” is demonstrably false, they can’t be REALLY upset about something that isn’t happening. They’re being TOLD to be upset about something that isn’t happening by Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson, and CNN…
There’s no doubt that we all have our prisms for seeing the world, and those prisms are influenced by many different things. The outside influences come from our environment, including the people we interact with, the media, our life experience. Just like you said with the anti-Semitism issue–I may have written the post and can pretty much guess who argued with me–our perceptions and facts (depending on who collects them) can differ radically. I just have a lot of frustration with people who pursue an agenda that is black and white–only this group is at fault, even for events they didn’t participate in. I also refuse to discuss issues with people who try to use anecdotes and propaganda as facts–that is certainly not you, Zafar. We have different reference points and data we rely on, but they are almost always mainstream. I think on this last comment, we mostly agree, and I always appreciate your willingness to understand my perspective. I’d like to think that I mostly try to understand yours!
Or they think they are being lied to when presented with evidence that police are not shooting unarmed blacks for sport. Like they were lied to about the jab, and about the origins of the CCP virus, and the Tuskegee experiments, and the eugenicist goals of Planned Parenthood, and about Trump being racist, and about the FBI being a fair and law-abiding organization, or that racism has ended, or that racism is worse than ever.
It’s one thing for a school teacher to teach students about slavery and racism in America. It’s quite another thing to teach students that if they have white skin they are oppressors and if they have black skin they are oppressed.
One can support for former without supporting the latter.
The Song of the South? That movie was from 1946 taking place during the Reconstruction era. I’ve never even seen it and probably will never get the chance. Regardless, 2022 is not 1946 or 1876 and we’re supposed to get wee-wee’d up over a Disney movie from seventy-six years ago that wasn’t a gritty portrayal of reality?
Anyway, “communist agitators” were actually a thing, all wrapped up with the Dems to varying degrees. Maybe they’re not actual communist agents anymore – maybe – but the tactics remain, as do organizations that were home to some agitators or that were sympathetic.
What was the point of this offshoot discussion anyway? What does any of this have to do with compelling racialism/racism/guilt as a condition of employment or schooling in 2022?
Since we are on the topic of truth, ye should know that Democratic Senator Mark Warner has admitted President Trump was right about TikTok being an enormous threat. A flying pig watch has been issued. That is all.
I think that what happens is that most of the stuff happening to our kids is an offshoot of CRT. So although they seem like separate areas of discussion, they are connected. I’m not saying we should continue that part of the discussion, but that would be my explanation.
The problem with that “mixing,” though, is that it can be seen as muddying the waters, or showing how they are all related. Not sure if either or both of those outcomes are helpful.
Back in 2020 there were some articles in The New York Times about the lack of diversity within orchestras in the United States. Data was collected and it was found that in classical orchestras, the proportion of black and Latino musicians were low.
The argument was that classical orchestras were perpetuating systemic racism. Supposedly, in the absence of racism the proportion of people in orchestras who are black would mirror the proportion of black people in society. But this was not the case.
So, some Leftist music critics argued that blind auditions should be eliminated. Blind auditions are where musicians audition behind a screen so that the people doing the hiring can hear the music but not know the race of gender of the musician. Under blind auditions, the percentage of women in orchestras rose from 6 percent in 1970 to about 33 percent today. However, only 1.8 percent of the musicians in the top orchestras were Black and 2.5 percent were Latino.
The solution proposed was a racial quota system where a certain number of seats would be set aside for each racial group.
This is the racism that the Left supports. They oppose meritocracy. They want us to make the United States into a more racist society, not a less racist society.
I remember that activity. It gets kind of scary, too, when you think of airline pilots being chosen according to racial criteria, not proficiency.
The discrepancy here, and in many places similar to orchestras, is just access. Having enough money to get your kids into private lessons early and for years on end is necessary to succeed in the orchestra or ballet. Other styles of music and dance have an easier entry point where self-taught can make you very competitive. A great number of whites are locked out of that system for the same exact reason.
The left’s aversion to private action and pushing public action for specific groups is a big part of the problem. Private action can be exclusive. Lobbying could be applied to wealthy patrons to set up exclusive scholarships for music and dance. The left’s bugaboo about discrimination only being allowed to cut one way is making the situation worse, not better.
You keep discriminating against white men, they are going to get more racist, not less – simply as a means to keep their freedoms intact. And without recourse through government, there aren’t a great many corrective actions. I support a government corrective on the left’s use of the CRA and CRT. It is better than the alternative.
This is called, the the left, white fragility, but it seems to me this portion of the left won’t be happy until whites are literally enslaved. The very juxtaposition of reparations and “work ethic is white culture” points in that direction. “Blacks, it’s not in your culture to work hard and diligently. Sit back and let the white man do the work for you and take his earnings, as you are entitled to.”