Freedom To Think? Not In Florida

 

Some may think I spend too much time these days writing about the Benighted United States of America. Perhaps I do, but its seemingly inexorable slide into ignorance and autocracy is surely something that needs to be monitored and fought against. The latter, of course is not my battle directly, but any movement that works to restrict access to information that all democratic countries need to make wise choices should face universal condemnation.

While many states qualify for such censure, Florida seems to be the leading poster-state in this regard. Governor Ron DeSantis, using his "anti-woke' rhetoric to garner votes from the ignorant and stupid, seems to be leading the charge against good citizenship in general, and education in particular by ensuring that people are kept in the dark about that country's dark, racist past and present.

 I have been doing considerable study in the past few months of Black American history. A National Geographic documentary, Rise Again: Tulsa and The Red Summer, informed me of things I had no idea of. While many have heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I would imagine many (and I was one of them) have no idea of the number of massacres that preceded Tulsa. The full documentary is now available on YouTube, and I place it at the end of this post.

The above, and anything else that would result in an informed populace is now anathema in Florida. The redoubtable TizzyEnt explains:

For those who believe in being well-informed, here is the Tulsa video which I hope you get a chance to view at some point.

As well, allow me to make one more recommendation. Reconstruction: The Accident of Race and Color is a book that taught me things I had no idea of regarding the history of race in the U.S., including the fact that in the antebellum South, there were places such as Charleston and New Orleans that had mixed-race communities with thriving, prosperous and essentially integrated communities. It was, in fact, the Reconstruction Era that robbed them of those conditions and rights that they had long enjoyed.

It is this kind of knowledge that DeSantis and his ilk are working very hard to suppress.