Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday vowed to take action against left-wing efforts to advance critical race theory — a divisive method of teaching focusing on race — explaining it is actually “offensive” to ask taxpayers to fund “teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other.”
Speaking to reporters in Pensacola on Friday, where he signed “tax holidays” into law, DeSantis expressed his vehement opposition to critical race theory and vowed that it will not be embraced in the Sunshine State.
“The Florida Board of Education is meeting and they are addressing this. And I told them they need to address this, and we’ve got to do it,” DeSantis said.
“I mean, first of all, it’s offensive — here we are celebrating tax savings — it’s offensive to the taxpayer that they would be asked to fund critical race theory,” DeSantis said, “that they would be asked to fund teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other,” he continued, prompting applause.
The Republican governor also highlighted the fundamental flaws in critical race theory, explaining it is based on “false history.”
“It’s also based on false history when they try to look back and denigrate the Founding Fathers, denigrate the American Revolution, doing all these different things that even very liberal historians say is not supported by the facts,” he explained, stating the Constitution needs to be brought back into classrooms.
“We need to make sure civics is a priority, but it needs to be taught accurately. It needs to be taught in a fact-based way. Not an ideological-based way, and if we have to play whack-a-mole all over this state, stopping this critical race theory, we will do it,” he said, triggering another round of applause.
“We’ll be taking action,” he promised. “Don’t you worry.”
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Florida is not the only state taking action against critical race theory. This week, Utah’s House and Senate Republicans passed resolutions against the advancement of critical race theory in schools.
Recently, Catholic League President Bill Donohue described critical race theory as “a textbook example of promoting racism in the name of fighting it.”