While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is no stranger to receiving insults, the high-profile Republican recently got something even more shocking: an apology.
According to Fox News, the apology was offered last Friday by members of the Miami-Dade Black Affairs Advisory Board after DeSantis was accused of being a racist during a meeting earlier in the week.
“There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘we’re sorry'”
“We take it to heart when someone uses the term racist,” Fox News quoted Miami-Dade Black Affairs Advisory Board chairman Pierre Rutledge as saying.
“Words matter. And so as chair, I must start by saying we want to pull that back,” Rutledge continued. “There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘we’re sorry.’ That’s not what we intended to say or be depicted by anyone. And that’s not the feeling of this board.”
The Miami Herald reported that the allegation of racism was leveled last Wednesday by Miami lawyer Stephen Hunter Johnson.
Johnson was reacting to a decision by the state College Board to reject an African-American history Advanced Placement course. The course was later approved after being stripped of controversial elements while a section on “Black Conservatism” was inserted.
Course contained section on “Queer Studies”
Johnson told the Herald that he continues to stand by his comments, saying, “The Black community has been far too polite for far too long in the face of overt racism. And it is our obligation to call it out when we see it and are confronted with it.”
American Enterprise Institute research fellow Max Eden pointed out in an op-ed piece for Newsweek that in addition to teaching ideas associated with critical race theory, the course also covered sexual topics as well.
Eden pointed to a leaked copy of the curriculum which included sections on “Black Queer Studies” as well as “The Black Feminist Movement and Womanism.”
“The history of African-Americans, in other words, becomes the history and endorsement of far-left academic ideology,” he wrote.
DeSantis says course was about “pushing an agenda”
“Nowhere is it suggested that there are profound critiques of these niche academic-activist interpretations,” the writer stressed.
“If a state were to offer AP African-American Studies in its current form, it would effectively be endorsing the position that these political-ideological academic hobbyhorses are essential to ‘Blackness,'” Eden complained.
Fox News noted that DeSantis took issue with the inclusion of those subjects as well, saying, “This course on Black history, what’s one of the lessons about? Queer theory.”
“Now, who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory? That is somebody pushing an agenda,” the governor asserted.