Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suffered a significant blow after a federal appeals court blocked the Stop WOKE Act. In January, DeSantis said, “We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.” The Stop WOKE Act would restrict specific race-based conversations and analyses in colleges.
CBS News reports:
Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a temporary injunction against the so-called “Stop Woke” act in a ruling that called the legislation “positively dystopian.”
The law prohibits teaching or business practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist and should feel guilt for past actions committed by others. It also bars the notion that a person’s status as privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by their race or gender, or that discrimination is acceptable to achieve diversity.
“Our professors are critical to a healthy democracy, and the State of Florida’s decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all,” Walker wrote. “If our ‘priests of democracy’ are not allowed to shed light on challenging ideas, then democracy will die in darkness.”
The ruling is at least a temporary setback to the powerful Republican governor’s agenda to combat what he describes as the “woke ideology” of liberals and critical race theory, a way of thinking about America’s history through the lens of racism. DeSantis won a landslide reelection to a second term this month after a campaign that focused heavily on cultural issues.
Instead of focusing on inflation and jobs, Republicans are busy with their culture wars. Republicans don’t like the term ‘woke’ because it’s derived from the Black community. That’s the real reason they’re focused on canceling it.
