Even dictionaries are now too woke for Florida school kids
The state's sweeping book ban takes another turn for the absurd
Katie Blankenship, a lawyer with the free-expression organization PEN America, has a few choice words for Florida’s latest efforts to keep harmless books — including dictionaries — away from the state’s schoolchildren.
“Atrocious, horrible,” she told me by phone on Thursday, describing the latest in an already mind-boggling situation in which Florida school districts — attempting to comply with a confusing, vague and far too broad law — are removing from their shelves a raft of books including Anne Frank’s “Diary of a Young Girl” and Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” among hundreds of others.
Escambia County, in the state’s northwest corner, took all of this a step further by pulling five dictionaries, eight encyclopedias, and the Guinness Book of World Records from their shelves, pending investigation. Biographies of Thurgood Marshall and Oprah Winfrey were pulled as well.
The fear, apparently, is that these books include sexual or other content that will corrode the souls of impressionable young Floridians. And that not banning them will be considered against the law and possibly bring about legal prosecution.
PEN is fighting this in court and got some encouraging news this week when a federal judge ruled that the case could move forward on First Amendment grounds.
“The idea that we need to exclude dictionaries from schools to protect children defies all logic,” wrote Judd Legum on his Popular Information newsletter here on Substack. (His is an especially good one; you may want to check it out.)
I asked Blankenship, who directs Florida operations for PEN, what this is really all about, and she was clear.
“These bans are a weaponized response to a problem that never existed,” she said — all part of the “war on wokeness” that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has declared and that has been carried out with the help of a compliant state legislature, eager to do his bidding.
As for the underlying reasons, she sees a growing distrust — and the sowing of distrust — in public education, and a conservative effort to privatize education in America. “That would be devastating,” Blankenship said.
And going a step deeper, she sees all this wokeness business as a desperate effort to “damp down conversations about racial injustice and economic inequality,” especially those that arose after George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
She’s hopeful, though — not only because of legal progress this week on the book ban case, but because of admirable grassroots organizations that are fighting these ridiculous measures in Florida and elsewhere.
“This is not what most Americans want. This is the voice of an extremist minority.” she told me. But in the meantime, it’s doing harm.
DeSantis proudly says that Florida is “the place where where woke goes to die.”
Right now, it looks like the place where common sense isn’t too healthy either.
Thanks to all subscribers here, you are appreciated. Let me know in the comments whether you agree with Blankenship that good sense will prevail in Florida.
I’ll also share my most recent Guardian column. I wrote about the appalling Elise Stefanik as a fast-rising star in the Republican Party. I contrasted her with Liz Cheney, whose political career has nosedived because of her courageous willingness to confront Donald Trump. Stefanik, on the other hand, seems to be campaigning to be Trump’s running mate. She’s got what it takes: blind loyalty.
And, finally, I commend to you another Substack newsletter, the Present Age by Parker Molloy. Parker, an incisive and no-holds-barred media critic, has been suspended from Twitter along with several other prominent journalists. Elon Musk — who called himself a free-speech champion — is a lot better at the talk than the walk.
Despite all of this — Florida’s book-banning, Musk’s hypocrisy, and Trump’s hold on his corrupted party — I remain moderately (and maybe irrationally) hopeful about America in 2024.
Like PEN’s Blankenship, I appreciate all the good work being done at the grassroots level, and I believe most Americans want to live in a sane, democratic society.
How about you?
On yesterday, Donald Trump assigned blame for Exxon leaving New York to Letitia James. Cursory examination would reveal that James was admitted to the bar in 1989. I watched all three network news programs last night and nary a mention was made of the idiotic accusation made by the deranged ex president. I mention that in the context of your piece, Margaret. We are in the midst of continuing attacks on information as illustrated by the lunacy of Florida’s campaign to program student learning. But those attacks are propped up by a mainstream media obsessed with false equivalence. Does anyone wish to venture a guess at what might have been the media response of Joe Biden had made that kind of mistake? Yet, when a certified lunatic like Trump throws his crap at the wall, it’s dismissed as merely another Trumpism. The banning of books is abhorrent and an affront to anyone truly concerned with education. But the book banners are finding an unwitting sidekick in the media too willing to accept and ignore the dementia of a presidential candidate.
Consistency would demand that they ban the Bible as well. Plenty of sexual content there.