Jonathan Cox faced an agonizing decision. He was scheduled to teach two classes this past fall at the University of Central Florida that would explore colorblind racism, the concept that ostensibly race-neutral practices can have a discriminatory impact. The first, “Race and Social Media,” featured a unit on “racial ideology and color-blindness.” The second, “Race and Ethnicity,” included a reading on “the myth of a color-blind society.” An assistant sociology professor, Cox had taught both courses before; they typically drew 35 to 40 undergraduates apiece.
As recently as August 2021, Cox had doubted that the controversy over critical race theory — which posits, among other things, that racism is ingrained in America’s laws and power structure — would hamstring his teaching. Asked on a podcast what instructors would do if, as anticipated, Florida restricted the teaching of CRT in higher education, he said that they would need to avoid certain buzzwords. “What many of us are looking at doing is just maybe shifting some of the language that we’re using.”But a clash with state law seemed inevitable, once Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, proposed what he called the strongest legislation in the nation against “the state-sanctioned racism that is critical race theory.” Last April, DeSantis signed the Individual Freedom Act, also known as the “Stop Woke Act,” into law. It bans teaching that one race or gender is morally superior to another and prohibits teachers from making students feel guilty for past discrimination by members of their race. And it specifically bars portraying racial colorblindness — which the law labels a virtue — as racist. A DeSantis spokesperson, Jeremy Redfern, told me in an email that the law “protects the open exchange of ideas” (italics in the original) by prohibiting teachers from “forcing discriminatory concepts on students.”
A month before the fall 2022 semester was set to start, he scrapped both courses. Students scrambled to register for other classes. “It didn’t seem like it was worth the risk,” said Cox, who taught a graduate course on inequality and education instead. “I’m completely unprotected.” He added, “Somebody who’s not even in the class could come after me. Somebody sees the course catalog, complains to a legislator — next thing I know, I’m out of a job.”
Fearful that legislators will retaliate by cutting their budgets, few top university administrators have publicly criticized the laws, which put institutions as well as individual teachers at risk. Indeed, UCF Provost Michael Johnson told faculty last July that the university would “have to take disciplinary action” against any faculty member who repeatedly violated the Individual Freedom Act because it couldn’t afford to lose a “catastrophic amount” — $32 million — in state funding linked to graduation rates and other metrics. (Johnson declined an interview request.)
So this anti-woke movement is not aimed only at protecting young children. The broader goal is completely cancelling discussion of inconvenient history and human behavior in education at all levels. This looks, talks and walks like bigoted Christofascism, even if there is no single iron fisted leader heading the charge of the radical right against democracy and inconvenient truth.
The US is becoming at least two different countries over time. Red states are looking less and less like blue states. People are sorting themselves and moving to where they are more comfortable. The Union and respect for it is slowly fading away.
