RACISM

How Racism and Fascism Obscure The Truth in Florida Classrooms

An essay about privilege weaponized as censorship

Woman sitting near plants | Photo by RF._.studio via Pexels

If there’s one thing that Americans can agree on, it’s that we care about the content schools make available to students. While it may sound cliche, children are the future, and the ideas, belief systems, and information they have access to will help to shape the society of tomorrow. However, if you try to build consensus past that point, you’ll like hit a brick wall. And that’s because some people believe that uncomfortable truths should be hidden from plain sight, buried in the backyard. For instance, administrators canceled a civil rights course taught at Eastern Florida State College because one White student felt “uncomfortable” with the content. Oh, the irony and privilege of being white in America, enrolling in a civil rights course, and advocating for its destruction rather than dropping the course should not be ignored.

We should be clear about the connection between fascism and racism because when you look throughout history, you’re unlikely to find one and not the other. For instance, World War II figures like Benito Mussolini, an Italian dictator, and Adolf Hitler, a German dictator, were fascist and racist authoritarians. Mussolini was concerned about the “interracial fraternization”…