Roberto Clemente Banned in Florida

[G1911]

Sometimes it helps to remember that what politicians (for or against a bill) and the media say are not really true. The wonderful thing about legislation is that it is all documentary, there is an actual text of the bill and nothing not in that text is in the bill. It's an issue that can be entirely resolved by looking at the document. What is actually in a law that is passed and what everyone is screeching about are often very, very different.

The text of the bill is only 496 lines, it’s not one of the thousand page confusing ones that is a genuine pain to decipher. The actual law is here: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bil...ext/Filed/HTML. If you are really lazy, 51-78 are a pretty good TL;DR of the thesis.

It does not discriminate between races in any way, it sets a standard for all that is exactly the same. It says that one cannot teach that a race is morally superior to another, that an individual is inherently racist because of their race, that moral character is determined by the color of their skin, that a person deserves to be discriminated against because of the actions of people of the same skin color in the past who have nothing to do with them, that a person should feel guilt, anguish or discomfort because of their race.

It does not, in any way, “force schools and libraries to remove literature about people of color or with LGBTQ themes.” Not only is this a complete lie, the bill specifically states that schools are required to teach:

“167 The history of African Americans, including the history
168 of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to
169 the development of slavery, the passage to America, the
170 enslavement experience, abolition, and the contributions of
171 African Americans to society. Instructional materials shall
172 include the contributions of African Americans to American
173 society.”

This, of course, is the exact opposite of what this article and so many others are saying. “Certified”, “media”, and “specialist” are three words that never appear in the bill anywhere in any context whatsoever.

Obviously, a book celebrating Roberto Clemente is not banned, unless it argues that Clemente was morally superior to others because of his skin color (what we would call racist if it was about a white male). It’s a smart move to do this though, people are by and large not going to read the actual bill or do any research whatsoever, they’ll just follow whatever articles that preach their views to them say without any inquiry. Announcing they’re pulling an unobjectionable book that obviously is not banned by this law is just optics politics. It’s rage bait for their base, regardless of how absurd it is on even cursory inspection.

People should actually read the bill instead of the clickbait articles before they rage. One can certainly for or against the law, but one should actually look at it first. That's a probably a hot take in 2023.