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NAACP: Black Folks, Do NOT Come To Florida

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis answers ques­tions from the media dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at Christopher Columbus High School on Monday, March 27, 2023, in Miami, Fla.

The Florida chap­ters of the NAACP has warned Black peo­ple to not move to or vis­it the state of Florida amidst their aggres­sive leg­is­la­tion against African American stud­ies, per NBC Miami. Their con­cern is that these edu­ca­tion bills may roll over into socioe­co­nom­ic leg­is­la­tion affect­ing Black people.

Can we be hon­est? The only rea­son to vis­it Florida is for the theme parks and maybe the beach for spring break, but even that is becom­ing tired. Gov. Ron DeSantis has been sign­ing bills left and right for the past two years that could con­vince any Black per­son not to move there unless they were fine with their kids being barred access to books like it’s Fahrenheit 451. Given the restric­tions of anti-racist learn­ing, the NAACP Miami-Dade branch vot­ed this month to ask the nation­al NAACP to advise Black folks to avoid the Sunshine state completely.

“Our ques­tion to Governor DeSantis is, ‘What sort of future are you fos­ter­ing for Black Americans through­out Florida while erad­i­cat­ing our his­tor­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions to this nation?’ There is no ‘feel good’ ver­sion of the hor­rors and inequal­i­ties that Black Americans have faced or con­tin­ue to face,” said NAACP Florida State Conference Chair Adora Obi Nweze. “Slavery, Jim Crow and lynch­ings fol­lowed by ongo­ing school seg­re­ga­tion, mass incar­cer­a­tion, police bru­tal­i­ty, hous­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion, health care dis­par­i­ties, and wage gap are all tough truths to face. Misrepresenting the real­i­ty of our his­to­ry pro­motes igno­rance and apathy.”

Last week, DeSantis shut down the idea of the trav­el advi­so­ry all together.

Read more of DeSantis’ reac­tion from USA TODAY:

“What a joke,” the gov­er­nor said. “What a joke. Yeah, we’ll see how effec­tive that is.”

“Our coun­try, you know, it goes through all these – we get involved in these stu­pid fights,” DeSantis added. “This is a stunt to try to do that. It’s a pure stunt, and fine if you want to waste your time on a stunt, that’s fine. Look, I mean, I’m not wast­ing my time on your stunts. OK. I’m gonna make sure that we’re get­ting good things done here. And we’re gonna con­tin­ue to make this state a great state.”

Think about it. So far, Florida has attacked his­to­ry cours­es with the Stop WOKE Act which endors­es the (fur­ther) white­wash­ing of American his­to­ry. DeSantis banned the new AP course on Black stud­ies before it was even intro­duced to schools and even advo­cat­ed for the ban of DEI pro­grams which may affect Black Greek orga­ni­za­tions. Aside from stu­dents, law­mak­ers are also intro­duc­ing more restric­tions of vot­ing includ­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments and more hur­dles to request­ing a mail-in bal­lot, per POLITICO.

The two biggest things that drove the Black community’s fight toward racial equal­i­ty was edu­ca­tion and the right to vote. DeSantis may be as ridicu­lous as the bills he signs but he knows what he’s doing.