An Entire Florida School District Has Banned a Kids’ Book on Segregation

A Florida school district has banned a book about segregation after one parent complained, part of a disturbing trend of state schools blocking discussions of racial justice.

The Wakulla County school district decided in October to remove the graphic novel Little Rock Nine from its libraries after reviewing a complaint from a parent. The school that initially banned the book did not give more details on why the parent complained but said it had decided that even though the book is historically accurate, its subject matter is “difficult for elementary students to comprehend.”

Florida schools begin teaching about segregation in fourth grade, but the book—which is written at a third-grade level—has been deemed “above the understanding” of all elementary students.

Instead, it will only be allowed in middle and high school libraries because “some students in middle or high school might be at a third grade reading level and could gather knowledge from the material,” the school principal and librarian said.

This book ban is the latest instance to come to light of Florida restricting what can be taught or even read in schools, usually on topics involving race, gender, and sexuality. In March, an elementary school in Pinellas County banned the movie Ruby Bridges after one parent complained that she didn’t like how it depicted race relations in 1960s America. Earlier this year, Pinellas County school officials also banned high school students from reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison—again after just one parent complained.

Florida is increasingly restricting what can be taught in schools at all levels. Governor Ron DeSantis has declared war on “wokeism” and has promised to defund diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on college campuses. He has backed the Stop Woke Act, which restricts teaching about race in colleges, and announced plans to mandate Western civilization courses. His administration was also in close contact with the College Board as it gutted the A.P. African American Studies course.

But the book bans go a step further, as they aren’t even about changing the school curriculum but preventing students from reading the books at all. In public schools, one school district has banned 23 different books from school libraries. Teachers in other school districts have also been told to hide their classroom book collections until all the books have been vetted and approved. But the vetting process is opaque, and there is no policy clarifying how long a complaint review process should take. As a result, books and films are withheld from students for months on end.

“Why is it permissible to teach white scholars Black folks were enslaved but not permissible to teach them about African American contributions to America and the world and the struggles they encountered and continue to experience as citizens of the United States of America?” former St. Petersburg police chief Goliath Davis asked in an op-ed for The Weekly Challenger after Ruby Bridges was banned. “Black history, Native-American history and Hispanic history, though not always glamorous, are American history and cannot be denied.”

On Monday night, residents of New York City gathered in downtown Manhattan for a vigil and protest in honor of Jordan Neely, a homeless man choked to death by 24-year-old Daniel Penny on the city’s subway.

And of course, in a story already rife with injustice, the police had to make sure that their failings were front and center. Longtime photojournalist Stephanie Keith was among 11 people arrested at the protest.

At a press conference that night, New York Police Department Chiefs Jeffrey Maddrey and John Chell said those taken into custody had violated laws by using a loud microphone, blocking the street, or even because some apparently had “assaulted themselves.”

The police chiefs have not yet clarified what “assaulted themselves” exactly means.

Video shows Chell himself barking at his officers to “lock her up,” after Keith simply stepped into the sidewalk to take a photo.

In Keith’s case, Chell said at the conference, the photographer faces charges of disorderly conduct and interfering with three arrests. The New York Daily News reports that Keith was released and given a summons later in the night.

Keith’s own words, and video open for all of us to see, undermine the police’s account of what happened.

“I was trying to photograph what I thought was an arrest, but I never even got a chance to see since they grabbed me as soon as I tried to photograph,” she told the Daily News. “I said, ‘I’m press,’ and they said, ‘You’re not, you’re arrested.’”

It’s almost too perfect. Penny has yet to be charged for killing Neely—an incident documented clearly on video. The police instead questioned the murderer and released him back onto the streets with little ado. Meanwhile, also on video, one of the most powerful police officers in New York City ferociously commanded his subordinates to lock up a journalist who was simply documenting his officers responding with more force to protesters than to a murderer.

Indolent thinkers often call any number of things “Orwellian,” but if anything warrants the oft-used designation, it’s the lack of arrest of someone caught on film committing murder and the active arrest—also caught on film—of a photojournalist trying to record the police state violently repressing people who were protesting that injustice.

An FBI public safety video highlights just how bad gun violence in America is: The government is telling people it’s their responsibility to survive a mass shooting instead of implementing gun control laws.

The video, titled “Run. Hide. Fight,” shows people at a bar when a patron gets angry and opens fire, and includes tips on how to protect yourself. The video was released two years ago, but it resurfaced on Twitter over the weekend following multiple tragedies in Texas, including a shooting at a crowded mall.

It’s messed up that mass shootings are so common in the United States that the FBI is teaching us how to survive them with a video and a catchy tagline, like the old “Stop, drop, and roll” fire safety lessons. Schools have also been having mass shooting drills for years.

The worst part is that, somehow, this is seen as the solution to mass shootings: putting the onus on victims to survive instead of implementing protections at a national level.

And that disturbing reality looks unlikely to change anytime soon. In his first public address since his state was rocked by multiple tragedies in one weekend, Texas Greg Abbott didn’t mention the attacks. He spent the whole speech on Monday demonizing migrants instead.

The day before, he straight up said there would be no increase in gun regulation. Instead, he said he wants to focus on improving public mental health—something he clearly hasn’t addressed before, considering Texas ranks fortieth in the country for total spending on mental illness.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed last year at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Another eight people were viciously shot at a mall last weekend. That does not include any of the other 200-some mass shootings across the country just this year—many of them in Texas. And in the context of all this, Texas Republicans are barely allowing even moderate gun reforms explicitly supported by the families of the victims in Uvalde to pass—and now they are trying to actively weaken gun laws even more.

Texas’s Community Safety House Committee has advanced House Bill 2960, which rolls back existing law directing the postage of “No Firearms Allowed” notices on properties, and consequently would relax prosecution of those found violating such notices. The committee passed the bill 7–3, and the bill has been placed on the general calendar to be voted on by the entire state House.

To be clear, this is the same committee that did not advance a bill to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle from 18 to 21 until concerned mothers and families of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting flooded the Capitol Monday, demanding that lawmakers push it forward. Even so, five Republicans voted against advancing it; the bill moved forward at a vote of 8–5.

What cannot be understated is the sheer culpability of these conservatives. The shootings at Uvalde and the Allen mall are just drops in Texas’s bloody bucket. In 2018, a 17-year-old student killed 10 people and injured 13 more at Santa Fe High School. In 2019, two mass shootings took place in rapid succession—one by a white supremacist at an El Paso Walmart, killing 23 people and injuring another 23; another killed seven people and injured 22, including a state trooper and two police officers, in Midland and Odessa.

These and incidents involving hundreds of other victims have revealed, over and over again, how sneeringly unconcerned this party is with, perhaps, stopping the bodies from piling up. It’s almost appalling, given how both Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Tennessee Governor Bill Lee both lost individuals they knew personally in recent mass shootings in their state; for some reason, power structures and dollar signs still somehow enrapture Republican politicians to the point they fail to imagine that a stray bullet may just hit close to their home too.

Meanwhile, people in communities like Uvalde have been brought to fend for themselves as statewide Republicans don’t even pretend to advocate for them or the spirits of the loved ones they’ve lost until the national spotlight is on them, as it was on Monday. Even then, Republicans could not unanimously advance a bill that simply decrees that teenagers ought not be able to buy AR-15s.

In the meantime, Republicans are jumping on board to repeal even the most minute and niche gun safety policies, like the simple act of posting “No Firearms Allowed” signs.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott made his first public address Monday since his state was struck by double tragedies—and he spent the entire time demonizing migrants.

A gunman opened fire at a mall north of Dallas on Saturday, killing at least eight people and wounding seven others before authorities shot him to death. The shooter is reported to have held extremist and white nationalist beliefs. The next day, an SUV driver slammed into a crowd outside a migrant shelter in the border city of Brownsville, killing eight people and injuring at least 10 others.

During a press conference at the Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Abbott announced he was deploying a new border control unit to El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley, ahead of when Title 42 ends later this week. Title 42 is a federal immigration policy employed by the Trump administration at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic to expel migrants without having to consider them for asylum. The Biden administration has kept the policy going.

“The cartels are working in collaboration with President [Joe] Biden and the federal government to facilitate that illegal cross-border,” Abbott said. “We are being overrun by our own federal government. Texas is being undermined by our own federal government in our efforts to secure our border.”

Normal stuff for a governor to say as his state still reels from dual tragedies.

Abbot went on to propose penalties such as potential felony offenses for anyone who crosses the border without papers.

His remarks come a week after another time Abbott demonized migrants. On April 28, a man in Texas shot dead five of his neighbors, including a 9-year-old boy, after one of them asked him to stop firing shots in his yard so the family’s baby could sleep. Abbott claimed in a press release that the shooter was “in the country illegally and killed five illegal immigrants.”

The governor came under fire for his statement, which is still up on his website, with critics accusing him of using the tragedy to fearmonger instead of enacting meaningful change.

“There is no limit to the depravity of Greg Abbott and his Texas Republican cronies,” Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. “To use a mass shooting, in which five innocent souls were slaughtered execution-style … to fearmonger and lie about migrants and the victims’ immigration status.… This type of sick behavior is truly beyond the pale.”

After the most recent tragedies, Abbott similarly has resisted calls for change. He told Fox News Sunday that rather than pass more gun control laws, he would focus instead on mental health issues, a favorite Republican scapegoat for gun violence.