Roberto Clemente Banned in Florida

[G1911]

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

Strawman. Those are bumper stickers, not guidelines that can be used by teachers and administrators to make good faith decisions about what to teach. Curriculum guidance needs to be detailed enough that a random sample of educators would come to essentially the same decisions. This law doesn't do that. Quite the opposite, as we are seeing play out in real time. How should a bill affecting curriculum should be constructed. I would say that it isn't a list of what is disallowed, but rather an outline of what is allowed. For the topic of racial discrimination what are the subtopics that can be covered and what evidence introduced to illuminate those topics? Can current events be covered? Etc..

They are very literally the legal guidelines. I am still struggling to find the clause you think is too vague.

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

I am not sure who you are responding to here, because it isn't me. I never said books were banned. I said that, faced with ambiguity, educators are erring heavily on the side of caution and pulling anything that could even result in some fired up parent wasting their morning complaining about CRT infiltrating the schools because a book points out Dixie Walker's role in the integration of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Your post is quoted right before the comment. I will quote again: "And it is that lack of specificity that is causing local schools to over-react and pull things off the shelves that rational people can agree should be there". I don't know what this is in reference too, because the books in this thread were not pulled off the shelves or banned. Again, nobody can cite any evidence these books have. What Jackie Robinson book has been pulled from the shelves? The one claimed in this thread turned out to be easily debunked fake news.

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

Textually, no. And I am certainly not advocating for an abridgement of the people's First Amendment rights, if that is what you are setting me up for here. What I am concerned about is that this bill makes all curriculum subject to the heckler's veto. At some point, you have to stop privileging ignorance. And a properly constructed and detailed curriculum is a good first step.

It does not allow hecklers or gunny ass parents to veto any curriculum whatsoever. I'm confident you are well aware of this now that you have read it.

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

One man's recitation of facts is another man's advocacy. Take my voter ID example.It is a demonstrable fact that Voter ID laws disenfranchise minority voters because those voters disproportionately do not have the required ID. That is just a statement of fact. And look at how that spun off into it's own argument. Now imagine how that plays out when it involves real educators and real parents, not just a bunch of baseball card collectors wasting time on a discussion board.

The law specifically protects a recitation of facts, or even of opinions. Advocacy is very different, and I am sure one can find an edge case, but this is taking it to ab absurdist level where we pretend the two things mean the same. They do not.

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

This is exactly the type of absurdity I am talking about. Bull Connor was a racist. Racism is prejudice against a person because of their race. Bull Connor was white. Bull Connor was a white supremacist. Are educational outcomes actually improved by dancing around the obvious?

What dancing? It's fine to say Bull Connor was white. It's fine to say Bull Connor was a racist. It's fine to say Bull Connor was a white supremacist. None of what you said is impacted by this bill. You just can't say, again, "Bull Connor was a white supremacist because he was white", or any other person of any race. It only bans advocating racism, that a person is X, Y, Z because of their skin color.

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

And, to restate myself, the advocates should be less concerned about what it says and more concerned about how what it doesn't say can be used to strategically create chaos. Which is already happening.

I think what a bill actually, in real actual fact, does is far more important than the often factually wrong and absurdist ideological statements made around it by any faction.

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

And, in my opinion, the right would be much better served when they realize that stunts like this bill aren't meant to solve a problem, but rather keep Ron DeSantis' name in the news and burnish his credentials as a culture warrior in advance of the 2024 GOP Presidential primary.

Don't disagree. It's a stunt. It seems to be working for him as he's getting the exact reaction intended, where the media does its thing and openly lies about the bill, which he then gets to spin to his base as more confirmation of their existing beliefs.

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

If teaching about racism was solely about teaching that it is wrong to be prejudiced against someone because of their race, it would be a 30 second conversation. The history of racism in the US, though, is about racism coupled with control of the levers of power that enables someone to act on that prejudice under the color of law. And that is not a solved problem. To be sure, it is certainly better than it was in the 1860s and also the 1960s. But, it isn't solved. We still have to create a more perfect union. But, is it any less advocacy to teach the comfortable fiction that we have truly achieved a color-blind society?

This has nothing to do with the actual bill. It does not at all mandate anyone to teach that we have achieved a color-blind society; it says you can't advocate racism in 8 specific ways it delineates, against any race. It then requires instruction in the history and achievement of multiple minority groups. I have said nothing that could possibly be construed as believing or promoting the belief that the US is color-blind.

Originally Posted by carlsonjok

In sum, I think we are each talking about a different topic. While you are talking about what is within the four walls of the bill, I am talking about what happens out in the wild as a result of the bill. You are asking "Does this sound reasonable?" and I am asking "how can someone abuse this bill in service to some other agenda?" I am not sure how we reconcile that.

Yes, I am talking about the actual bill and not peoples fantasies. The law is the actual text, not what people feel or what people claim or what people think their political enemies might claim. Reality of the law > political narratives of that law that are not in the law in actual fact. I cannot fathom why anyone would put culture war points over actual fact. I do not understand why people have adopted such a tribalist mentality that they must attack or make false claims about anything anyone outside of their political tribe has passed, even before reading it, and will put their 'side' over reason. A person should use reason, not conspiracy theories of abuse they or op-ed writers of similar political leaning have imagined in their head and have nothing to do with the law and are not actually enabled by it. People always have the choice to use the great gift of reason, of stepping back and looking at actual fact instead of political narratives. These are minority views that I have.