By Diane Roberts
Despite all those Ohioans and Michiganders moving to The Villages or Margaritaville or other white folks’ play pens, despite the cosmopolitan sheen of the coastal cities and the impossibility of getting decent grits in Miami, when it comes to race, Florida is a Deep South state.
Florida’s plantations were worked by thousands of enslaved people; Florida’s per capita lynching rate was the highest in the South; and from the 1920s to the 1960s we experienced more than our fair share of racist violence.
There was a time, in the 1970s and 1980s, when it looked like we might drag ourselves out of the 19th century.
For a couple of decades, the state was seen as forward-thinking. We had the nation’s strongest open-government statutes. We expanded and improved education and we embraced diversity.
These days, Florida is going backwards. Our government is increasingly secretive, increasingly authoritarian, and increasingly racist.
The state is channeling Alabama c. 1965.
We even have our own George Wallace.
Remember when Ron DeSantis took office in 2019? Despite those idiotic “Build the Wall” campaign ads, he didn’t seem to be a Trump-style racist. One of his first acts as governor was to pardon the Groveland Four, the Black men who’d been falsely accused of rape in 1949.
Those of us who didn’t vote for him felt hopeful: Maybe this guy would acknowledge our sad history and move us toward a more equitable society.
But he didn’t. And he isn’t. Maybe the Napoleonically ambitious DeSantis decided white nationalism was his ticket to the Republican presidential nomination.
Or maybe he was always like that.
George Wallace
In the 1950s, George Wallace, then a circuit judge, gained a reputation for being a moderate, respectful to Black lawyers in his court, even granting probation to some Black people convicted of crimes.
In 1958, he ran for governor but lost to a candidate backed by the KKK. (He would later serve four terms as governor of Alabama.)
After that, Wallace vowed never to be, as he famously said, “outni****ed” again. He surrounded himself with rabid racists connected to the violent thugs who attacked singer Nat King Cole when he appeared in Birmingham and beat up civil rights activist Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.
Anticipating Donald Trump’s attack on Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “murderers,” Wallace warned that Black men wanted nothing more than to rape white women and kill white men.
DeSantis’ racism is less overt but almost as damaging. Black people in Wallace’s Alabama pretty much couldn’t vote; here in Florida, DeSantis’ policies have undermined Black representation: He forced the Legislature to destroy two majority Black congressional districts, redrawing them to favor whites.
With his new Elections Police intimidating and laws restricting access to the ballot, he’s made it harder to vote.
Wallace embraced Confederate battle flags; DeSantis tries to keep just enough distance from that kind of imagery to give him plausible deniability.
When small groups of supporters with swastika flags and “DeSantis Country” posters show up, as they have in Tampa, Orlando, and Jacksonville, the governor insists it’s nothing to do with him.
When his political shop put out a video using Nazi imagery, they first denied they made it then admitted they had and fired some staffers.
DeSantis refused to take responsibility, though he emits what you can’t even call a dog whistle. It’s more like an air raid siren.
He has promised that, as president, he’ll overturn the Biden administration’s removal of military bases’ Confederate names.
Vehicle for racism
Nevertheless, DeSantis’ White House run seems to be faltering. Most people don’t want to make America Florida, any more than in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976, when George Wallace ran for president, they wanted to make America Alabama.
Wallace did, however, win the 1972 Florida Democratic primary. It is unclear that DeSantis can do the same in 2024.
Both DeSantis and Wallace used education as a vehicle for racism.
In 1963, Wallace “stood in the schoolhouse door,” trying to block Black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama. Integration, Wallace said, would lead to intermarriage, venereal disease, and “mongrelization.”
DeSantis also stood in the schoolhouse door, in a legislative sense, with his “anti-woke” laws mandating teachers present a warped, frequently inaccurate, version of American history — especially the history of slavery.
They didn’t worry about that in 1960s Alabama: Most textbooks still romanticized the Civil War and played down slavery.
Wallace insisted he improved education in his state. In a 1964 letter to a woman in Michigan, he rejected charges of racism, boasting that he’d raised Black teachers’ salaries and “served on the Board of Trustees of Tuskegee Institute, one of the finest Negro Institutions in America.”
The only problem in Alabama, he said, was those “outside agitators.”
Ron DeSantis might call outside agitators “woke” teachers, Marxist professors, and Drag Queen activists, instead — people who use the 21st century schoolhouse to “indoctrinate” innocent Florida children who must never feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” learning about systemic racism.
Facts
We now have a better understanding of how the slave trade and the plantation economy shaped the United States. Yet DeSantis’ education officials are hell-bent on suppressing it, from “The 1619 Project” to an AP African American History course which, according to the state evaluators who ended up rejecting the course, presented slavery in a way that “may lead to a viewpoint of an ‘oppressor vs. oppressed’ based solely on race or ethnicity.”
In fact, there was an oppressor (those who enslaved fellow human beings) and an oppressed (the enslaved), and it was based on race.
Florida’s AP course reviewers also complained it never presented “the other side” of slavery, by which I suppose they mean the happy mammies and cotton field banjo picking and job training — the version of history George Wallace favored.
Wallace’s Alabama was a place of state-sponsored terror against Black citizens, where the police beat and tortured people demanding basic human rights.
Ron DeSantis’ Florida has not — not yet — got to that level of institutionally-sanctioned violence. But he has created a Florida in which people of color must fear both his government and freelance bigots like that white supremacist who murdered three people in Jacksonville “based solely” on their race.
It remains to be seen whether DeSantis’ campaign of anger, bigotry, and lies will win him enough Republican votes to contend for the White House.
Saved soul?
George Wallace, of course, never made it to Washington. But though he lost his bid for the presidency, he may have saved his soul.
Wallace barely survived an assassination attempt in 1972: A bullet lodged in his spine left him paralyzed.
One Sunday in 1979, congregants at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, the church Martin Luther King, Jr. once pastored, were surprised to see Gov. Wallace rolling up the aisle in his wheelchair. Over the years he had come to regret his past politics and come to understand something of the pain Black people endured in America.
“I know I contributed to that pain,” he said, “and I can only ask your forgiveness.”
It’s hard to imagine Ron DeSantis coming to such a moment of grace. But there’s always hope.
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Her vision of Fl democrats is laugh able. Hope her arms are long enough to pat herself on the back. Her distain for De Santis is mentally challenging on her poor democratic brain. Thank god there are conservitives in Fl who know the real thruth! Cant wait to see the who the the democrats throw to the wolves, against Rick Scott?
JimboXYZ says
Sports Analogy: “Diane Roberts (author) thrown out at 2nd base, caught trying to stretch a single into a double.”
Somebody has to call her out on nonsense ? We recently saw the Bunnell School segregation thing. Two perspectives of looking at it ? The slideshow depicts that black students are sub par for test scores, I’m certain there are just as many if not more dumb white kids wandering the county. The 1st perspective is a call to “shame” The other a call to “step up game” to be better. Everyone is issued the same text book, everyone has the same internet too. One either accepts that they don’t put forth the effort and remain sub standard & mediocre or they put forth the effort and focus to master math, languages or whatever their interests & talents are. Somewhere in the middle there is proficiency at various levels. Playing sports is not going to make anyone better at math beyond being a scorekeeper for that games point accumulation for accomplishing the goal of scoring in that sport. That’s just basic addition.
K-12 you get a relatively free education. Sooner or later, one has to own that they did or didn’t do what it takes to build their foundation, hone their skills to learn. As life moves on overcoming that gets more difficult.
Roberts alludes to people long since gone & dead to create DeSantis as the villain. When in reality most of this is self inflicted by kids that don’t even learn from the sports games they play. The game of life is a series of games within the game. A battle within the grand scheme of a war. And it’s a free for all. Diane Roberts sole goal here is to create a system that protects certain race(s) as guaranteed outcomes. Life doesn’t work that way, we all compete, there are winners & losers, be the winner & not the loser within the same universe, same set of rules the majority of us are held to play the game of life. There iwll always be the Hunter Biden’s out there, cheating the system and beneficiaries of the white privilege that both exists & is exclusive that the masses of the majority of anyone never is included for. The simple fact that here are more whites than any other race as poor is a demographic mathematical fact of data points. One may not like the report tallies by race & gender, but that’s just math. Math is not discriminatory, it doesn’t know what race or gender you are, it’s just numbers that accumulate. Where it goes wrong is when the demographics are applied. Roberts doesn’t get that by eliminating the categorization is a step towards eliminating discrimination.
Wow! says
You are really clueless & racist. If you are surprised I replied in this manner, reread what you wrote until you see it!
Charles P says
Correct. I always say numbers don’t lie. People may not like the numbers, but that’s people being people.
Bill C says
The interesting thing is the more DeSantis talks, with his head uncontrollably bouncing around like a bobblehead, the more his poll numbers drop. He is his own best rebuttal. Keep talking Ron, keep talking.
Hope says
Hope, indeed!!
Sam says
DeSantis discriminating against people of color sure won’t get him in the White House, thank God for our country for that.
bill says
Reading this article from Roberts who appears to be very intelligent, but does not impress me, She sounds like a racist, eight generation Floridian, not happy with the way Florida is turning out . there are a lot of good people that moved down here from all over into the villages and other so call White well to do playpen areas. It is what it is in Florida. People are moving down every week. I’ve been here 20 years and the increase is unbelievable. it’s a good thing for us that DeSantis running opponent,
back then did not win because we would have a governor possibly a crack head like Hunter Biden. your article sounds like you have a lot of bitterness about people moving into your 8 th generation area or your state get over it you’re not gonna stop progress don’t like it move out like the rest of us did from where we came from.
Charles P says
Well stated.
Sue says
Do you think that once, just once you republican’s could make a reasonable debate without being nasty and exaggerating? DeSantis shutting down the truth and suppressing facts about slavery is not progress. He is desperately trying to earn points by using tRump’s talking points on hatred, racism, lies to attract tRump’s followers. There is nothing good about DeSantis and calling Hunter Biden a crack head only shows how uninformed you are and biased. Florida is popular for one reason, lower taxes. That won’t matter when you consider getting insurance for flooding in nonexistent. Florida is a hot mess and is only getting worse. There are other states that have just as many people moving to them, Florida is not the only state seeing more people moving there. No, Florida is NOT a good place to live, it is a cesspool of racism and backwards thinking. Only people sounding racist is you and DeSantis.
Charles P says
Thank you for telling us how much you hate Florida and what the great majority of its people stand for (without basis other than ingrained hatred of conservatives, of course; you are demonstrating you are capable of no less). And do pray tell, what Shangri-La state do you live in, Sue? Waiting for a response…
Ban the GOP says
Yes republican policy matches quite well to the Nazis game plan in the 20’s and 30’s. If you open your eyes Charles you can see the ingrained hatred is coming from the “conservative republicans”. They are the ones that target groups they dont like and make laws in the middle of the night to discriminate against them.
Republicons deserve the hate they killed our collective futures for profits they sabatoged any program that helps actual people and make laws targeting people that dont vote for them. Now go back to sleep.
Charles P says
Nice propaganda and misinformation speech, Ban; you would bring a tear to Goebbels’ eye. You say “Republicons deserve the hate” but you just use that as an excuse to hate, and also as an excuse to condone any violent actions executed by other hate-filled anarchists (working under, funded by, and support received from the blue Democrat banner) but it’s okay: there’s enough love in Florida to forgive you and those like you because that’s how we are. Now, like I asked Sue, do pray tell, what Shangri-La state do you live in? Waiting for a response…
Skibum says
DeSantis “uses education” to keep black people down? No, he MISUSES education. Not only does he misuse our state’s educational system to keep black people down and to further target and harass gay and trans students, he misuses education to ban books he and his syncopates don’t like, he allows school librarians to be fired simply for opposing the banning of books, and stands idly by while some schools go so far as to completely abolish school libraries altogether, turning them instead into detention rooms for punishment, as if removing literature and books from schools isn’t punishment enough. He misuses education of adults by installing as the FL Surgeon General a fringe, anti-vac wacko to brainwash parents into thinking that vaccines are somehow a clever way for the federal government to alter a person’s DNA and take over their bodies through “globalization”. He misuses the education of FL citizens through far right media, making false claims that Disney is promoting a “homosexual agenda” and the molestation of children! There is absolutely NOTHING useful or educational about what DeSantis has been doing, and will continue to do, until education as we know it here in FL has been completely destroyed and turned into extremist propaganda and mind control for the far right wing nuts who want to not only nazify our state, but the whole country.
Charles P says
Only an opinion and nothing more (like your article), but the publishing of a poor attempt to draw a nexus between Ron DeSantis and George Wallace crosses the bounds of opinion journalism and straight into political ranting. It is demeaning to all of that education and experience that is touted in your bio.
Pierre Tristam says
I found Roberts’s parallel with Wallace understated. But for the overtness of Wallace’s speeches, the intent and the results were a lot more similar, particularly in both men’s use of the “freedom” trope, inverting that word’s meaning to legitimize oppression for all but whites. And like all of Roberts’s opinions, this one is still grounded in well-reported fact.
Charles P says
I’ll disagree in that Wallace’s speeches were to oppress one group of people only. DeSantis’ speeches have been to equalize all people; some folks now feel that taking away a special status previously given because of equality being reached is now “marginalizing” them again.
Pierre Tristam says
I don’t know how that it is a matter of taking away “a special status.” A special status in what regard? How is forbidding certain searching discussions of race in schools and universes a taking away of a special status? How is restricting even adult transgender health care a taking in that regard? How are the numerous voting rights restrictions equalizing, when by definition they restrict a right? How was the flouting of the constitutional amendment restoring felons’ voting rights either taking away a special status (as opposed to restoring a basic right) or an equalization in any way? The principle behind your thought may be laudable, but let’s not hide the reality of bigotry in action behind appeals to principles: it’s the same method of using words like “freedom,” as DeSantis does so frequently, to cloak the imposition of its opposite on chosen, darker targets for indefensible ends. No one would call DeSantis a paragon of equality in any regard.
Laurel says
I am very concerned that with either Trump or DeSantis in power, the brown shirts will be revived. DeSantis has already commenced with having his personal picks running schools. I still don’t think he has the personality to pull it off, but the way the Trump Party is so intoxicated with Trump, no matter what illegal or immoral stunts he pulls, it is possible. Already, two commenters managed to bring Hunter Biden into this discussion, even though unrelated to the article. That shows unreasonable thought processes.
Charles P says
“Already, two commenters managed to bring Hunter Biden into this discussion, even though unrelated to the article. That shows unreasonable thought processes.” And here you are doing the same thing, injecting a faction of the Nazi party (Brown Shirts) into this discussion, even though unrelated to the article. Neither Wallace nor DeSantis support/supported the Nazi platform; Wallace served in the Army Air Corps during WWII and flew in B-29 bomber missions, whereas DeSantis served in the Navy and was assigned with U.S. SEALs in Iraq. If what you did doesn’t show “unreasonable thought process,” then I don’t know what does.
Sherry says
@charles. . . It is relevant that desantis be compared to a fascist because his actions, as Pierre so astutely pointed out, certainly take away freedoms. desantis, and his minions at all levels of Florida state government , have actually gone beyond limiting freedom of education and thought into “indoctrination” according to their personal “white imperialist and Christian” ideologies.
Thank goodness educated ” independent thinking” citizens in most other states understand desantis’ dangerous agenda to destroy our democratic Republic by rolling out an “authoritarian Christian White” government across our nation. If desantis had the snake charming charisma to enrapture the uneducated/unthinking as trump does, he might have just pulled it off.
Meanwhile, the lame attempt of distraction by throwing out the name Hunter Biden is merely the usual asinine posting of FOX talking points and non-sequitur.
DontsayRon says
Ha Racist ron what a joke of human.