A couple days ago, I posted that Florida banned a book about Rosa Parks for school libraries (see posting here).
Now, Florida has also banned a Disney movie about Ruby Bridges, the little black girl in the Norman Rockwell painting below (read story here). Why? Because “a parent complained about scenes of white people threatening the Black girl as she entered school.”
There’s a common thread here. Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges stories are about desegregation. Florida is a southern state run by Republicans racists.
Nationwide, Republicans are promoting “parents rights,” a political agenda aimed at overpowering teachers and replacing professionally developed school curricula with rightwing ideological material and suppressing any mention of America’s troubled racial history.
The notion that an upset parent with questionable motives can veto what a class is allowed to learn is absurd on its face. But this isn’t about parents’ rights at all, as you’d find out if a black parent objected to some part of a curriculum. Were the other parents of kids in that class offered a say about this? No. The true nature of the “parents rights” movement is empowering white supremacists and excluding other voices.
The banning of Rosa Parks’ and Ruby Bridges’ stories from Florida classrooms makes that transparently clear. So let’s call the “parents rights” movement by its right name: Racism. Fair-minded people will have nothing to do with it, and won’t vote for politicians who support it.
