Yahoo Movies Miami Black Affairs board vows to fight DeSantis. One member: ‘Our governor is racist’
On the first day of Black History Month, Gov. Ron DeSantis was the focus when Miami-Dade County’s Black Affairs Advisory Board convened in downtown Miami Wednesday.
“Our governor is racist,” said Stephen Hunter Johnson, a Miami lawyer and one of two dozen volunteer board members. “He is using Black America, and Black Floridians, as a political football.”
The board has no formal power in Miami-Dade government but serves as the county’s unofficial sounding board for issues and challenges facing Black residents. Items discussed at Wednesday’s meeting included the use of specialized police units in Miami-Dade similar to the one responsible for the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, and what position the board should take on bail reform.
With more than a dozen members attending, the February meeting offered a cross section of the mood of Black leaders from Miami-Dade to a pair of controversies sparked by DeSantis as he prepares for a possible presidential run in 2024.
The meeting began with a discussion on the DeSantis administration’s blocking of an optional African American Studies high-school course over inclusion of readings on the Black Lives Matter political movement and on the topic of “Black Queer Theory.”
Also on the Miami-Dade board’s docket: the governor’s proposal to halt state funding of diversity, equity and inclusion programming at state universities.
“If you want to start playing with taking our history away from us, then give us back our tax dollars,” said Phyllis Sloan-Simpkins, a retired Miami-Dade firefighter. “Because our tax dollars are supposed to help educate our children.”
Florida law requires instruction on Black history. DeSantis blocked the statewide introduction of an Advanced Placement course, claiming parts of the curriculum promoted leftist ideology.
“Who would say that an important part of Black history is queer theory?” DeSantis said last week at a stop at a charter school in Jacksonville. “That is somebody pushing an agenda on our kids.”
A spokesperson for the governor’s office was not immediately available for comment on the Miami-Dade board. On Wednesday, the College Board, which oversees the AP program, released a new syllabus that appeared to drop the readings criticized by the DeSantis administration.
The Miami-Dade board’s chair, Pierre Rutledge, shared the news on the College Board’s concession as the meeting started on the 18th floor of the Stephen Clark Center, the seat of county government in downtown Miami.
More than an hour later, the board voted unanimously to have a staff member write a letter voicing opposition to the DeSantis policies and reveal the statement at a Friday press conference.
“We are the voice of the Black community in Miami-Dade County,” said Rutledge, an administrator at Miami-Dade’s school system. “If you sit there and be quiet, silence sometimes can be seen as consent.”
The sparsely attended meeting drew one comment from an audience member. Marcus Bright, an author who helped organize an equity campaign in college basketball, said it may be time for a Black boycott of Florida college football.
“There’s no way they can continue to value what’s on the football field, and not value what’s on campus,” Bright said. “Should we look at advising our Black student athletes, particularly here in Miami-Dade County, which produces some of the best football players, perennially, in America, to not go to Florida State and not go to the University of Florida?“
