A Miami-Dade County, Florida, K-8 school has banned three books and one poem from its elementary school. Here is the Miami Herald’s report:
“In March, Daily Salinas, a parent of two students at Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, challenged The ABCs of Black History, Cuban Kids, Countries in the News Cuba, the poem The Hills We Climb, which was recited by poet Amanda Gorman at the inauguration of President Joe Biden, and Love to Langston for what she said included references of critical race theory, “indirect hate messages,” gender ideology and indoctrination, according to records obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project and shared with the Miami Herald.
The paper goes on to say:
"In an interview with the Herald on Monday, Salinas said she “is not for eliminating or censoring any books.” Instead, she wants materials to be appropriate and for students “to know the truth” about Cuba, she said in Spanish.
Words fail. Salinas is a champion of doublethink. How does she rationalize her belief in intellectual freedom with her need for the school to get rid of books she does not like? Further, if her passion is that schools teach Cuban history according to her opinion, what the hell do The ABCs of Black History and Amanda Gorman’s Biden Inaugural poem The Hills We Climb have to do with it?
Despite Salinas being the only parent to complain, the school obliged her by banning four of her five suggestions. A school review committee determined one book, Countries in the News Cuba, was “balanced and age-appropriate in its wording and presentation” and therefore spared it the ax.
The ABCs of Black History, which the review board did admit was appropriate for ages five and up, was not. It was joined in banishment by Cuban Kids, Love to Langston, and The Hills We Climb.
I do not know Salinas. So I will give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she is well-intentioned. So let us ask, how does one person’s opinion set policy for a school? Thank Ron DeSantis and his autarchic cabal of censorious censors.
The school authorities should probably get some blame. They did not offer any reason for their purge. But it has to be tough being a teacher/school administrator in a state where the authorities are Nazi-like in expressing racial purity in their book-burning passion.
I do not know any of the books. But Gorman’s poem was heard by the 33.8 million Americans who watched Biden's inauguration. Here is the text in full. Because the school failed to cite any offensive passages, and the school district said it had no clue about anything, I have to guess what the offending words were. Maybe this passage:
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
Too uppity?
Maybe this one:
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.
Is Gorman’s reference to the fact that the past was not golden, too much for sensitive conservative souls? Was her promise that she will not be interrupted by intimidation, too evocative of BLM?
The next passage sounds like Make America Great Again — except that reconciliation sounds like diverse people coming together — and diversity is an expletive to some.
We will rise from the golden hills of the West.
We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
Then Gorman lets the cat out of the bag and actually says ‘diverse.’ And that is a no-no.
And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
I do not usually swear (much), But when I read this story, my first thought was, “Florida is even more fucking insane than advertised." Sadly, I suspect that is how fascism has often been greeted in its early days.
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