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DeKalb, IL — The Florida State Board of Education recently unanimously approved an amendment to become the next state to ban critical race theory from its classrooms.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appointed much of the board, spoke ahead of the meeting, saying critical race theory would teach children "the country is rotten and that our institutions are illegitimate."
“Critical Race Theory teaches kids to hate our country and to hate each other,” De Santis wrote on Twitter. “It is state-sanctioned racism and has no place in Florida schools.”
The amendment states topics must be "factual and objective," and specifically prohibits "the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons."
The amendment also bans material from the 1619 Project, published in 2019 by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist at the New York Times Magazine. It aims to reframe the way slavery and the contributions of Black Americans are presented.
Many Republican lawmakers have been pushing to have the theory banned from school curriculums. Idaho, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee have passed similar legislation in 2021.