Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing a bill that would prohibit public schools and private businesses from making white people feel “discomfort” when they teach students or train employees about discrimination.

But white people SHOULD feel uncomfortable about how many of our systems discriminate against Black and brown people. They should feel uncomfortable and want to end systems of oppression.

The Florida bill and others banning Critical Race Theory in schools join many others introduced in state legislatures across the country that work to eliminate Black history from K-12 education. Successful bills have already passed in over nine states, and have been proposed in dozens of others.

Republican lawmakers are pushing to ban “Critical Race Theory” in K-12 schools in a massive effort to create a culture war, exploit it as a wedge issue in local elections, and silence Black dissent.

Entire GOP political action committees exist dedicated to combating Black history education in K-12 schools. Many of these groups operate at the local level and bear ties to right-wing aristocrats and political operatives. Republicans utilize manufactured anti-CRT panic to sway local elections and create racial and political divides.

This is a dangerous, anti-democratic effort that suppresses and denies the experiences and power of Black and brown people in America. Opponents of CRT have gone as far as to ban books, primarily authored by Black writers, in an attempt to bury the atrocities of our past and stifle activism to address these atrocities.  

If we can’t think critically about U.S. history and U.S. laws and power structures, we can never justly move forward. As Janai Nelson from the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund puts it, “Without truth, there’s no basis for our demands for justice. And that’s why we must fight fiercely to preserve truth.”