Gov. DeSantis: You're a history grad. Tell me when systemic racism ended - By Jeff Cohen

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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What's notable here is the author's continual effort to reframe the debate, which is what the Left always wants to do. So according to the author, this is simply about teaching black history. And DeSantis opposes this, which means DeSantis hates blacks and supports white-washed history.

The Left has always debated this ways. They never, ever discuss the issues or even want a back-and-forth. They always will avoid the issue, or attempt to make their position seem innocuous, while simultaneously trying to make their opposition into haters and racists. 

Therefore, the author's purpose is not to inform, explain, or clarify. He's not intending to impart information or understanding. This is not written to contribute to the debate. 

In fact, the Left has no interest in education in Florida. They are not interested in Florida students. Black history doesn't matter. They don't even really care about DeSantis except for how they might use him as a tool. They are solely interested in promulgating The Narrative in service to The Agenda. 

The Narrative is the Leftist talking points of the day, the factoids and verbiage that always appear simultaneously all over the media landscape, designed as a barrage to overcome the intellect so as to facilitate The Agenda. The Agenda is the elimination of the current system to install Marxism.

The Agenda. The goal of every leftist is to dismantle the system and install Marxism. That's it. That's the agenda. 

The bottom line is, systemic racism hasn't ended, because it will never end. It cannot end, because the system is the problem. It must be overthrown and replaced. That's the whole point. The problem cannot and must not be solved.

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When Ron DeSantis was asked by a Fox News host two years ago if the United States is "systemically racist," the Florida governor quickly responded: "It's a bunch of horse manure." He went on to boast that he had banned such ideas in Florida's schools. (Hooray for DeSantis. Leftist indoctrination has no place in any public school.)

Boisterously banning books, educational curricula and college programs that address racism or LGBTQ dignity - (Actually, banning a curricula that is nothing more than political agitprop and ahistorical, agendized story-telling.

Plus there is the fact that the Left has no problem banning books that disagree with The Agenda.)

or both (with added bigotry toward writers like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde) - (Bigotry, what? The link brings us to DeSantis actually explaining his position. There he says no to indoctrination and yes to education. That's it.)

DeSantis is building his national "anti-woke" profile as he seems to be readying a presidential campaign against his former hero Donald Trump. (Yes, the free political process, where people actually dissent from one another.)

DeSantis is a Yale history and Harvard law graduate, who taught high-school history after Yale. (The author tacitly assents that DeSantis is not stupid. He's educated, capable, smart, and articulate. This of course doesn't matter to the author. For leftists like the author, Republicans or conservatives can only be one of two things: Stupid or Evil. So if DeSantis is not stupid, he's obviously evil.

The fact that DeSantis has actual expertise in the field  and actually knows and has taught history is irrelevant for the author. The idea that DeSantis might have something to offer eludes him. We would suggest that he might be a little more circumspect, and consider the possibility that DeSantis knows more the him about the subject.)

Even DeSantis probably agrees that U.S. slavery was systemic racism. (The author never defines the phrase. So speculating that DeSantis would agree about systemic racism is meaningless.)

And I'm somewhat certain he agrees that legally enforced Jim Crow racial discrimination in the U.S. South was systemic racism, including Florida's toxic racial-oppression-by-law that lasted for 100 years after the Civil War. (The author continues to speculate, attempting to put words in DeSantis' mouth.)

As late as 1967, sixty miles from where DeSantis would later grow up, this law was enacted by the city of Sarasota, Florida: "Whenever members of two or more "races shall" be upon any public "bathing beach within the corporate limits of the City of Sarasota, it shall be the duty of the Chief of police or other officer" in charge of the public forces of the City...with the assistance of such police forces, to clear the area involved of all members of all races present."

Gov. DeSantis, who dislikes questioning from actual journalists (as opposed to Fox News hosts), (Irony alert. Leftist politicians avoid conservative media outlets like the plague.

And by the way, we can hardly blame DeSantis. We also would avoid the leftist media.)

seems bent on riding white fragility, anger and grievance into the White House. He should be confronted at every opportunity to answer a simple question: If it's currently "horse manure," when did systemic racism end in our country? (When will the author define "systemic racism?")

If his answer is 1964, when Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act, DeSantis should be directed to Sarasota's 1967 city ordinance. (More than 50 years ago. Interesting that the past is only relevant to the Left when it services The Agenda.)

 If his answer is that it ended with the 2008 election of biracial Barack Obama, he should be asked to explain persistent patterns of racial discrimination that outlived the Obama presidency. (The author seems to be confusing "racism" with "systemic racism." We are happy to concede that there are some people out there who are racist. No one disagrees. The author's issue is "systemic racism," which he has yet to define.)

For example: racial segregation in housing and wide-ranging barriers to black home ownership like redlining and predatory bank lending. That's also systemic racism and it's happened in both North and South -- as Newsday showed recently in its exhaustive study of discrimination faced by minority potential homeowners on Long Island, New York. (Back to talking about racism. Will the author ever tell us what "systemic racism" is?)

Today, racially segregated neighborhoods lead to segregated schools, with people of color systemically offered inferior educational opportunities. The highest percentage of predominantly single-race schools in the 2020/21 school year were found not in the South, but in the Northeast and Midwest, according to a study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. (It apparently surprises the author that races congregate together, and that the schools in the area would reflect the racial makeup of the students who come from these neighborhoods.

But more to the point, it was leftist housing policies that created the black ghettos. It is leftist policies that keep them there. The leftist Agenda is to ensure a permanent disaffected, disgruntled underclass in order to foment revolution. The Left needs a downtrodden, resentful group of poor people, i.e., the proletariat, to rise up against the system, i.e., the bourgeois. 

Thus the problem must never be solved. It must in fact grow bigger. In order to overthrow off capitalism and self-government, they need more angry poor people.)

Environmental racism is long-standing and enduring in our country as pollution and cancer-causing industries hit communities of color disproportionately, causing death and disease - compounded by pervasive racial disparities in the provision of medical care. (The Left has forced blacks into government housing in the inner cities, which have degraded into cesspools of crime, illegitimacy, and drugs. No one who can get out would stay there. No one with half a brain would want to open a business or a hospital there. 

The Left is to blame for the plight of the inner city black. If there is systemic racism, it is perpetrated and perpetuated by the Left.)

DeSantis hopes to run for president as a "law-and-order" candidate with the endorsements of police unions. He should be asked about criminal justice and police practices that systematically treat black citizens and other people of color differently and worse than whites. That's a present-day problem, as shown in study after study across the country. After the police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, for example, the U.S. Justice Department investigated the Ferguson, Missouri, police department and found that racial bias and the city's need for revenue resulted in routine Constitutional violations that disproportionately affected African Americans - with officers "stopping people without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without probably cause, and using unreasonable force against them."

When DeSantis was reelected governor last November in a landslide, he received only 13 percent of the black vote, according to exit polls. (Cherry-picking data. The author concedes the landslide, but immediately walks it back by citing the black vote. Typically Republicans get 8 or so percent of the black vote. So DeSantis did pretty well at 13%.)

I've been spending my winters in Florida, where it's hard not to see black poverty, despair, and segregated neighborhoods. Yet DeSantis looks away. (What has the author done about the problems he sees? Has he gotten out his checkbook? Has he fed a black child a meal? Has he volunteered on a work crew or in a soup kitchen? 

He's been spending his winters in Florida, hmmm? That makes him a snowbird, going back and forth between his two homes. He basically takes 6 month vacations in Florida every year because the weather is nice. 

He has no compassion for the plight of blacks in Florida, let alone in his home state. Most likely, this elitist snob winters in Florida with the hope that he won't be reminded of or exposed to poor people.)

When I attended public elementary and middle schools in Detroit in the 1960s, we didn't learn much of any black history. (Irrelevant anecdotal experience.)

Today's champions of white victimhood claim that the teaching of ethnic history and ongoing/systemic racism (Notice again how the author attempts to recharacterize or misdirect what the leftist Agenda actually is. It's just history, he says. It's about the fair telling of marginalized peoples' stories. We just want to expose students to a side of history being censored from them. Yes, that's it. No big deal.)

stokes guilt feelings among white students and anger between students of different racial groups. (That's exactly the goal. Get some anger stoked up between the races. The worst thing for leftists would be if the races loved and lived with and helped one another. Revolution would fizzle out, and the left would have to get real jobs.)

If we'd had such teaching back in Detroit, I think it would have indeed prompted anger among black and white students -- not at each other, but at the persistent patterns of racism in our country . . . with many motivated to activism.

But greater unity around a shared understanding of history (The author doesn't want a shared understanding of history, he wants his version of history to be imposed.)

is exactly what DeSantis fears. (Again the author somehow knows what DeSantis feels. This is dishonest and manipulative.)

He's a divide-and-conquer politician, (This is exactly what the left wants to do, divide and conquer. It's in their DNA. That's what Marxism is about. What we have here is the leftist technique of accusing your opposition of wanting to do what you're already doing. We call this Mountain Man's Law.)

in the tradition of George Wallace, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. (Gratuitous mentions of unrelated parties. And by the way, Wallace was a Democrat. And neither Nixon or Trump were/are racist.)

He knows exactly what he's doing, and he has the Ivy League degrees to prove it. (Not dumb, so must be evil.)

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Jeff Cohen is co-founder of RootsAction.org, a retired journalism professor at Ithaca College and author of "Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media." In 1986, he founded the media watch group FAIR.

Jeff Cohen was director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he was an associate professor of journalism. He founded the progressive media watch group FAIR.org in 1986.