https://archive.ph/ifWMt

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 color-blind 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.

Useless professor uses rage bait classes to draw in spiteful minorities…

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.”

We can’t say whitey bad in class anymore

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 color-blindness—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.”

The selective cherry picking of history led to this. Ask any black American who enslaved them and maybe 1 in 10 would say their fellow Africans which is the harsh reality.

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.”

Good, your job should be as a educator not a propagandist