When historian Carter G. Woodson wrote, “When you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. … He will find his ‘proper place’ and stay in it,” he was speaking to the necessity of Black education to truly gain knowledge to combat cultural indoctrination and dependence on others.

Today, nowhere is this concept truer than in Florida.

Florida currently leads the so-called “war on woke,” which includes attacks against inclusive curriculum, identity expression and DEI programs. However, its governor and former presidential candidate, Ron DeSantis, admitted that most supporters of his crusade have no idea what it’s truly about, saying: “Not everyone really knows what wokeness is. … A lot of people who rail against wokeness can’t even define it.”

Despite his confession, DeSantis’ battle against public education, which specifically impacts racially diverse and LGBTQ+ students, wages on. Under his strict guidance and bolstered by his close affiliation with anti-student inclusion groups, Florida has enacted education legislation and policies seeking to control K-12 public education through limits on teaching certain aspects of American history, bans on library and textbooks, and regulations on how LGBTQ+ students identify and exist at school.

In recent years, Florida has made national waves with its “Don’t Say Gay” bill, prohibiting classroom discussion of gender and sexual orientation, and its “Stop WOKE” act, limiting the instruction on race.

This type of widely encompassing, vague legislation has put Florida at the forefront of book bans, restrictive teaching guidelines and policies against LGBTQ+ students.

Despite 70% of parents opposing book bans nationwide, according to American Library Association polling, the removal of books from classrooms and libraries is at an all-time high, demonstrating increased censorship of materials on race, history, sexual orientation, gender and religion. Florida is a leader in this trend.

PEN America reported that during the 2022–23 school year, 40% of book bans across the country occurred in Florida. Furthermore, three anti-student inclusion groups —Moms for Liberty, Citizens Defending Freedom and Parents’ Rights in Education— are particularly responsible for the bans across the country, which totaled 3,362. Two of these anti-student inclusion groups have a significant presence in Florida. Moms for Liberty has 32 chapters in the state, while Citizens Defending Freedom has seven. Several other anti-student inclusion groups are affiliated with different national organizations.

Across the country, 30% of bans pertained to subject matter involving characters of color or themes of race and racism; another 30% were related to LGBTQ+ characters or themes. These subjects are front and center in Florida’s crusade to direct what students learn and who is reflected in school curriculum.

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that over a quarter of high school students identify as LGBTQ+, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that 84 anti-LGBTQ+ bills passed into law during the 2023 legislative session; 40% of these included restrictions to student and educator rights. The restrictive policies limit the expression of LGBTQ+ students, including the elimination of affinity groups and safe spaces, the ban of using preferred names and pronouns, and the restriction to using facilities that align with a person’s gender assigned at birth.

With the “Stop WOKE Act,” Florida has suppressed the teaching of the true history of Black, Indigenous and others. The state’s civics standards have come under fire, with some teachers even expressing concern about the strict focus on patriotism, while downplaying such important historical topics as slavery. The African American history standards also gained national attention because of revisionist teachings, including that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” These were introduced just months after the state rejected the College Board’s AP African American course for high school, saying that it lacked opposing viewpoints on such topics as slavery and lacked education value.

Florida’s goal of controlling its public education also reaches to higher education. Gov. DeSantis commandeered New College of Florida in an attempt to recreate it as the Hillsdale College of the South. His bans on DEI programs are also forcing faculty and staff at state colleges and universities to update their professional titles, rewrite syllabi and censor their emails for fear of disciplinary action.

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