Labor union falsely claims Florida anti-CRT bill would ban teaching on slavery, Holocaust

FIRST ON FOX: A Miami-Dade chapter of the AFSCME, the nation’s largest commerce union for public staff, is falsely claiming a brand new invoice handed by the Florida legislature prohibits the educating of slavery and the Holocaust in public faculties.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is anticipated to signal into regulation the “Cease WOKE Act” after its framework handed the state Senate final week. The invoice takes goal at Essential Race Idea (CRT) and prohibits workplaces and faculties from offering coaching or instruction claiming that “members of one race, coloration, intercourse, or nationwide origin are morally superior to members of one other race, coloration, intercourse, or nationwide origins” or that individuals are “inherently racist” or “privileged” primarily based on these qualities.

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The invoice additionally makes it unlawful to topic college students or staff to coaching or instruction claiming {that a} “particular person, by advantage of his or her race, coloration, intercourse, or nationwide origin, bears private accountability for and should really feel guilt, anguish, or different types of psychological misery due to actions, through which the particular person performed no half, dedicated up to now by different members of the identical race, coloration, nationwide origin, or intercourse.”

A mailer despatched by AFSCME Native 199 to residents of Miami-Dade County claims that the invoice “will forestall our youngsters from studying a very powerful elements of American historical past.”

“They’re attempting to erase historical past,” the mailer reads. “The Florida legislature is fast-tracking laws that might restrict educating of American historical past in Florida school rooms. Those that don’t study historical past are doomed to repeat it. We can not let Tallahassee forestall our college students from studying concerning the Holocaust, Black enslavement, human rights abuses in Cuba, and different tragedies.”

“It is a large second and historical past will bear in mind those that selected particular person freedoms over authorities attain,” chapter president CeeCee Brown is quoted as saying on the mailer.

DeSantis, nevertheless, signed a invoice in June 2020 that required public faculties to certify that they train concerning the Holocaust and the “systematic, deliberate annihilation of European Jews and different teams by Nazi Germany” in addition to present classes on anti-Semitism historical past and prevention.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks concerning the firefighting effort and obtainable help for Bay County throughout a press convention in Panama Metropolis, Florida, on March 6, 2022.
(Michael Snyder-USA TODAY NETWORK)

In June 2021, DeSantis signed into regulation a invoice requiring that top faculty lessons on U.S. authorities embrace a “comparative dialogue of political ideologies, corresponding to communism and totalitarianism,” like that discovered underneath the Castro regime in Cuba.

Florida regulation additionally requires the instruction of “the historical past of African Individuals, together with the historical past of African peoples earlier than the political conflicts that led to the event of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement expertise, abolition, and the historical past and contributions of African Individuals of the African diaspora to society.”

The already current legal guidelines requiring classes on the Holocaust and slavery are reiterated within the invoice handed by the Florida legislature final week.

AFSCME Native 199 and its president didn’t reply to Fox Information Digital’s inquiries on why they’re claiming these topics can be banned.

Opponents of Essential Race Idea attend a packed Loudoun County College board assembly till the assembly erupted into chaos and two individuals have been detained, in Ashburn, Virginia, June 22, 2021.
(REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Picture)

“The Left resorts to outright lies to push their divisive agenda on essential race idea, as a result of they know the info should not on their aspect,” DeSantis’ workplace mentioned in an announcement supplied to Fox Information Digital. “No matter social gathering or background, Floridians imagine that people must be judged by their character – not their pores and skin coloration, gender, or different innate traits. 

“Florida banned CRT in Ok-12 faculties final 12 months, as a result of race essentialism has no place in our school rooms,” it continues. “Forward of this 12 months’s legislative session, Governor DeSantis proposed the Cease WOKE Act to strengthen protections for Ok-12 college students – in addition to college college students and staff of ‘woke’ companies. No person ought to ever be compelled to interact with discriminatory content material to get a level, maintain a job, or advance in his or her profession.”