TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Civil rights activists cheered when Ron DeSantis pardoned four Black men wrongfully convicted of rape as one of his first actions as Florida’s governor. But four years later, as DeSantis eyes the presidency, their hope that the Republican would be an ally on racial justice has long faded.
Instead, African American leaders decry what they call a pattern of “policy violence” against people of color imposed by the DeSantis administration that reached a low point after the recent release of an “anti-woke” public school curriculum on Black history. Specifically, Florida’s teachers are now required to instruct middle-school students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
DeSantis has repeatedly defended the new language while insisting that his critics, who include Vice President Kamala Harris and at least one high-profile Republican congressman, are intentionally misinterpreting one line of the sweeping curriculum. Civil rights leaders who have watched DeSantis closely dismiss such explanations.
“DeSantis has perfected the art of using policy violence that we must stop,” said Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP. His organization issued a travel advisory for Florida in May warning African Americans against DeSantis’ “aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.”
The divisive debate highlights the political and practical risks of DeSantis’ approach to racial issues as he seeks to reset his struggling campaign and the Republican Party works to strengthen its dismal standing with voters of color.
Ambitious Republican leaders have long seized on white grievance to animate the party’s most passionate voters, who are almost exclusively white. But DeSantis, a combative conservative who leads one of the nation’s largest states, has embraced far-right positions on race perhaps more aggressively than anyone in the 2024 presidential contest as he tries to position himself to the right of Trump.
The 44-year-old governor was as defiant as ever on Thursday when asked about the critics within his own party who echoed the Democratic vice president’s concerns.
“At the end of the day, you got to choose: Are you going to side with Kamala Harris and liberal media outlets or are you going to side with the state of Florida?” DeSantis told reporters as he campaigned in Iowa. “I think it’s very clear that these guys did a good job on those standards. It wasn’t anything that was politically motivated.”
DeSantis is now facing criticism from Florida teachers, civil rights leaders and the Biden White House. Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, traveled to Florida last week to condemn the curriculum. Many of DeSantis’ GOP presidential opponents have stayed silent, including Tim Scott, who is the Senate’s sole Black Republican member. He declined to comment for this story.
Other Black conservatives have begun to speak out. Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., one of the most powerful Black Republicans in the state, said he has a problem with the part of the curriculum that suggests enslaved people derived any benefit from their situation.
“To me, yes, that section needs some adjustments,” he told southwest Florida’s WINK News this week.
“The talking point narrative around it, yeah, it sounds awful,” said Donalds, who, like almost every Republican in Florida’s congressional delegation, has endorsed Trump over DeSantis in the primary. “Nobody should be accepting of that. But when you read through the standards, they actually did a very good job in covering all aspects of Black history in the United States.”
Donalds said he planned to work with the State Board of Education to “bring refinement” to that topic.
The DeSantis administration later went on the attack against Donalds, a popular conservative seen as a rising star in the GOP.
The state’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., vowed on social media Wednesday not to change the teaching standards “at the behest of a woke @WhiteHouse, nor at the behest of a supposedly conservative congressman.” DeSantis’ spokesperson, Jeremy Redfern, piled on, posting that “supposed conservatives in the federal government are pushing the same false narrative that originated from the @WhiteHouse.”
As the dynamic unfolds under the bright spotlight of presidential politics, DeSantis’ approach risks alienating would-be conservative supporters while undermining his core message to Republican voters, which relies on the notion that he is more electable than Trump against President Joe Biden in the general election.