The Eleventh Court of Appeals has dealt a setback to Tallahassee’s cotton field and crinolines brigade with its 2-1 decision on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “anti-Woke” clampdown on college and university speech. The antebellum South is long gone, of course, but that hasn’t stopped the governor, the Legislature, and a host of gray-uniform wannabees from trying to forcibly march us backward.
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The ruling from the conservative appellate court is 52 pages of Whomp. Fifty-two pages of judicial pinking shears savaging the “This Governor Didn’t Think Floridians are Smart Enough to Make up Their Own Mind about Race, Color and Much of Anything Else” Act. The “Guess This One Didn’t Get Him to the White House, Either” Act.
And inevitably, the “Florida Man on Fox News Explaining How the 11th Circuit Secretly Vandalizes Reflecting Pools and Other Acts” Act.
This piece of Florida’s War on Woke clamped down on speaking the wrong words in college and university classrooms, particularly about race and color, lest impressionable ears catch wind of an opinion not their own. Students feel better if they think the right kind of thoughts, Tallahassee’s reasoning went; the right kind of thoughts being akin to a state-approved Crayola box. Take out the crayons. Look in the empty box. Put one white Crayon back in.
“Oh, puhleeze,” wrote the 11th Circuit. Well, actually, the opinion, penned by Trump judicial appointee Britt Grant, said “Students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth.”
I get it. We all want a simpler time. I remember when everyone knew that no one knew quite where Goofy came down on the DNA helix, and everyone was OK with that. Pluto was the dog, Daffy was the duck, and Goofy was just Goofy. No one was losing sleep or running for school board over it. Also, the Mouse is black. And white.
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Try getting that into a DeSanitized college course.
If the government pays for your salary, DeSantis & Friends unsuccessfully argued, it controls every word you say as part of your job. Every. Word. That could indeed include any criticism of “a particular gubernatorial administration,” the astonished judges wrote.
It’s the world of the apex fat cat, where everything is a transaction and all transactions are reducible to who has the biggest fistful of coercive cash. Squint hard and the reasoning almost makes sense. After all, you get fired if you mouth off to your boss. Fifth graders lose allowance money if they argue with their parents. But jobs and pocket change aren’t constitutional rights.
“Smack-talk is!” the 11th Circuit did not write. Instead, they wrote, “Hearing an idea you disagree with is not discrimination, it is an opportunity to come up with a better idea, or maybe even change your mind.”
This lawsuit was filed in 2022. Four years, in which a student could have entered a Florida university and walked out with a B.A. in American history without ever talking about the hard bits, which is why his Florida degree only got him as far as a bartending gig. (And in any case, his mother tried to tell him there are no jobs for history majors, but did he listen? No, which is why she reminds him every now and then.)
All for a four-letter word in a jump-scare world. To be woke is to simply open your eyes and look around. Browse a little. Grab a coffee. Mull the ontological implications of Goofy. Take in what you like. Leave the rest. You don’t even have to keep your eyes open if you don’t want to.
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But then, how will you know what you’re missing?
Pat Beall is a Sun Sentinel columnist and editorial writer.