Protests and
pushback in Florida with a new potential legal battle over race education.
>> I can't believe that this is 2023 and
America is talking about censoring education.
>> Civil rights Attorney Ben Crump announcing his plan to sue
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and the state,
after DeSantis blocked a pilot AP African American studies course in Florida.
>> No to censorship.
>> Yes to community.
>> Now, the New York Times had a fascinating way of framing this
story involving Florida Governor Ron DeSantis censoring college
education curriculum [LAUGH] in the state of Florida,
which led to the stripping of advanced placement African American studies.
I'm gonna give you the details on what he's doing in just a moment, but
I just could not get past this framing.
DeSantis Takes On the Education Establishment, and Builds His Brand.
>> Thank you, New York Times.
The paper of record, record breaking speed towards fascism [LAUGH].
>> More often than not, there will be a provocative and
incredibly dumb headline, but the piece itself isn't as bad.
But no, this piece was pretty bad.
Let's go to the first paragraph real quick, and
then I wanna hear your thoughts.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, as he positions himself for a run for
president next year, has become an increasingly vocal culture warrior,
vowing to take on liberal orthodoxy and its champions, whether they are at Disney,
on Martha's Vineyard or in the state's public libraries.
Now, I just love that they mentioned a wealthy enclave,
a massive corporation to aid in a bet Ron DeSantis in posturing as some
sort of economic populist, when in reality he is anything bad.
>> Yeah, they don't really fundamentally care about Disney, they're victimizing
some of the least powerful groups and individuals in our society.
Yeah, like he's a culture warrior, taken on a random second grade teacher,
taking on trans high schoolers, that monolith, big transgender, he's taking on.
And it's about damn time, I think it's nice of the New York Times to
provide a second job to someone like Ron DeSantis,
allowing him to write articles about himself.
I think that's an interesting choice.
[CROSSTALK] I mean he might as well have, right?
>> He's taking on the educational, that's like if someone were to plant a bomb and
twitter headquarters, they're taking on big tech,
>> Right.
>> I guess, kind of that's not really what they're doing though.
And like he's challenging liberal orthodoxy,
like reading factual history about black poets,
that liberal orthodoxy.
I don't know if this is them trying to appeal to conservatives as they constantly
do, believing that if they go way beyond the bounds of what the right would say is
fair, that they'll get some conservatives to watch it.
I don't know if it's that, or if they are genuinely so terrified of Donald Trump
getting elected again, that they're going to do whatever they can to have
Ron DeSantis beat him, including lying about who he is and what he represents.
But I don't like it either way, and I can't imagine that any of the people
actually reading the New York Times are fans of that.
>> I mean, I don't know, but because the New York Times has awful framing in their
headlines on a regular basis, and this one was just so in credibly jarring,
considering the censorious nature of what Ron DeSantis and
conservative politicians in Florida are doing.
Yes, when it comes to grade schools, they're banning books,
they're terrorizing teachers, they're threatening them with prosecution if they
deem that a book within their classroom has pornographic material in it, but
of course, there are standards for what is deemed pornography, is pretty hilarious.
I mean, we've given you examples in the past where it's clearly not
pornographic material, but they just wanna ban books.
Like it's just so there was [CROSSTALK] >> An acknowledgement of other gender
identities and acknowledgement of other sexualities.
>> Exactly >> We're not talking about graphic
depictions of anal sex.
>> [CROSSTALK] No, we're talking about a book where two of the main characters
happen to be gay, that kind of stuff.
Yeah, that's not pornographic material, you freaks.
But anyway, but he didn't stop there.
And what's so disgusting is that the College board in the state of Florida has
decided to concede to what Ron DeSantis is trying to do on a college level, okay?
So first, let's start with the advanced placement classes that high
school students take, and oftentimes, those classes count for college credits.
Okay, that's why the college board has control over them and
control over the curriculum.
So, facing pressure from DeSantis,
the College board conceded to his demands and stripped much of the subject
matter pertaining to African American studies from their curriculum.
Because the poor snowflakes in the state of Florida might melt if students
have the option to take a class that has a curriculum that makes them uncomfortable.
An option is really a key word here, okay, this is not mandatory curriculum for
high school students, this is an optional elective,
that's part of the advanced placement program in Florida.
Now, after facing pressure from DeSantis, they decided to strip it out, okay?
So here's what they did, the College board purged the names of many black writers,
and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience,
and black feminism, it ushered out some politically fraught topics like
Black Lives Matter from the formal curriculum and it added something new.
Black conservatism is now offered as an idea for a research project.
>> [INAUDIBLE] Something >> Yeah,
it almost seems like they're propagandizing education in Florida.
I could be wrong.
>> It almost seems like that.
>> Almost. >> It's a group of racist conservatives
who would never take the course, that would never allow their kids if they have
the ability to allow them to stay there.
They're never gonna be in the course, telling another group of people,
you can't learn accurate history.
It's not gonna affect me either way because I'm not gonna take it,
I'm a racist and I'm not interested in, but
you, you can't get accurate history, and >> As
an option again, >> As an option again that they
won't take and now they've done this,
they will completely forget about it because it has no effect on their lives.
They were not interested to begin with, and
they will move on to some other topic where they can ruin things for
kids who just wanna learn about something tangentially related to politics like
Black Lives Matter, one of the biggest social movements of multiple generations.
>> I remember when I was in college, this is when I was in grad school and
you were in grad school for the same reason,
we both took policy as our majors for graduate school.
I remember sitting in those classes, hearing about all the different
political theories and there were some I agreed with, some I disagreed with,
but knowing about all those different theories in political science was part of
the education that allowed for me to think critically about what makes sense.
When it comes to international relations, there are different frameworks,
different theories, in which you can analyze what transpires,
what motivates certain geopolitical efforts.
Imagine someone coming in John, a governor coming in and
saying like, you know what, I don't like the theory of liberalism.
So I want you to just erase it from your curriculum because it offends me.
>> [CROSSTALK] Or
because I've convinced my constituents that it should offend them.
>> Right, exactly.
>> So now, we'll get rid of it, so they will feel better [CROSSTALK]
>> Yeah, because I'm gonna run for
president next year, and so I need to like puff up my chest and
posture as someone who's actually looking out for the people of Florida,
when in reality none of that is happening, none of that.
So let me give you some more details on what's happening.
So the school board, the college board specifically, expunged writers and
scholars which include Kimberly Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia,
which touts her work as foundational in critical race theory, Roderick Ferguson,
a Yale professor who has written about queer social movements and
Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author who has made the case for reparations for slavery.
Gone, too, is bell hooks,
the writer who shaped discussions about race, feminism and class.
Also in its revised 234-page curriculum framework, the content on Africa,
slavery, Reconstruction and the civil rights movement remains largely the same.
But the study of contemporary topics including Black Lives Matter,
incarceration, queer life and the debate over reparations is downgraded.
And let's not make a mistake about this.
Okay, the school board 100% caved, not school,
the college board 100% caved to the demands of Ron DeSantis, why?
Well, they make a lot of money from these advanced placement classes,
and they don't wanna risk that stuff.
[LAUGH] So, let's get to those numbers real quick, Graphic six here,
acceptance for the new curriculum is important to the college board,
a non profit because AP courses are a major source of revenue.
The board took in more than one billion in program service revenue in 2019,
of which more than 490 million came from AP, meaning advanced placement and
instruction according to its tax exempt filing.
Yeah.
>> So you can get your revenue and people won't learn anything,
seems like that would be cool to your mission.
Maybe some of them probably are conservatives and they like this,
they're fans of it or they see maybe just becomes president and
some of these higher up execs in the college board,
maybe get some sort of other position or something like that.
They're probably thinking what about Department of Education?
I could become briefly the secretary of that before it's dissolved,
wouldn't that be great?
But yeah, no, it's a victory for the right for censorship.
That's what look >> Its 100% censorship, that's it,
that's all it it [CROSSTALK] >> We obviously we talked about this a lot
and will analyze a variety of levels.
But this is racist messaging to appeal to racist voters and
people who believe that they are against censorship and for small government
desperately wanting a massive government that's going to propagandize to kids,
crush independent and critical thought, and wipe out any
book that anyone ever feels uncomfortable about, that's what it's about.
And I'm sure right wing pundits are very happy today for
the censorship that they've got, because that's what they're into.
They spent years building up this intellectual dark web that was supposed to
be against literally all of this, they even in the case of Dave Rubin wrote,
about don't ban this book, you censorious lefties and now he is super quiet for
years.
>> He loves it, he loves it, right?
Look, at this point it's almost boring and
cliché to call the right wing hypocrites, it is who they are, right?
So anytime they claim that their motivation for
doing something is due to wanting to protect free speech or
whatever reason they give you it's BS, they don't care about free speech at all.
Look, the thing that attracted me to the left back in 2007 when I started
working at TYT, was it was the right wing that was constantly going around
trying to censor everything, including comedians by the way,
that was their thing, especially in 2007 and I thought it was gross,
and by the way they never changed, they're the same people.
The only reason why they pretend they wanna protect comedians is because some of
the right wing comedians came out saying things about the transgender community, or
other disenfranchised communities that the right wing love and
they wanna protect that, right?
But whenever it's content or something like a drag show that they don't like,
they wanna shut it down right away, proud boys showed up to a drag show in Utah,
of course, to be incredibly threatening and to shut it down.
By the way, it doesn't matter if it's a drag show that's completely non-sexual,
doesn't matter if it's a drag show that doesn't even have any children
involved whatsoever, they just wanna shut it down.
They are as censorious as you can imagine.
And to give you a final example of that, John, I don't know if you saw this story,
there's a small liberal arts college in Sarasota Florida,
get a load of what Ron DeSantis is doing to it.
>> At the New College of Florida's recent student meeting with new board members.
>> Article three is titled Religious should be, let's go to another person,
I wanna make sure that we get as many people as possible [INAUDIBLE]
>> Tensions are running high,
as a student asked a follow up question,
Governor Ron DeSantis recently replaced six of the board's 13 members in
an apparent bid to transform this intimate 700 person liberal arts college into what
Florida's Commissioner of Education has touted as a Hillsdale of the south.
Referring to a private Christian University with explicit conservative
views, one of the new board members Chris Ruffo told a New York Times columnist,
the board has plans to conduct a top-down restructuring and
design a new core curriculum from scratch, including scrapping diversity, equity, and
inclusion initiatives.
>> You've called the in statement of the new board and what you're looking to do
as a hostile takeover of the college, why is the word hostile, necessary?
>> Sure, I mean, it's a fact.
>> So you're an adult going to college and
your options will be limited in the state of Florida because as an adult,
you're not allowed to choose what you wanna learn about.
>> Yeah, no, look to the extent that they can take over all education, they will, it
doesn't start with Ron DeSantis obviously, Donald Trump and Betsy to Boston all that,
we're doing that, but you may, you can go back to Trump and all that.
It's the fascist takeover of education, that's literally all it is.
Chris Ruffo is an enthusiastic participant in that.
He does not want people to go to college to learn things,
he wants there to be something technically that's higher education, I guess,
technically, cuz it would look weird if we didn't have it, but
that is only around to maintain the status quo.
That's literally, it'll be Christian education,
it'll be hierarchical education, that's all it's going to be,
he's an enthusiastic participant in that, he is already being rewarded.
That position comes with a salary, >> Right.
>> He is making money for
participating in the fascist takeover of American education, that's it.