Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has taken aim to stop the divisive and destructive advance of Critical Race Theory in its track, from school classrooms to corporate boardrooms, and to that end this week introduced the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act.
The Stop W.O.K.E. Act is the “first legislation of its kind in the nation, going on the offense against both corporate wokeness and critical race theory in our schools,” according to the governor’s office.
“We won’t allow Florida tax dollars to be spent teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” DeSantis said. “We also have a responsibility to ensure that parents have the means to vindicate their rights when it comes to enforcing state standards.
“Finally,” DeSantis said, “we must protect Florida workers against the hostile work environment that is created when large corporations force their employees to endure CRT-inspired ‘training’ and indoctrination.”
In that vein, the legislation would ban state funding from schools that teach critical race theory and would prohibit corporations from including it in employee training programs.
“I view the wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism,” DeSantis said. “They want to tear at the fabric of our society and our culture.”
If the Stop W.O.K.E. bill is approved, CRT training would be considered an unlawful employment practice, according to the governor’s office, making it clear that “corporations and public sector employers violate the Florida Civil Rights Act when they subject their employees to training that espouses race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating including critical race theory.”
The Stop WOKE Act also would protect teachers and school staff by classifying CRT training as “a discriminatory practice in education,” from kindergarten through college and university levels.
“Now the progressive activists’ CRT agenda is not only in education, but also in corporate boardrooms and employee trainings at some of America’s most powerful corporations,” explained the governor’s office.
“Workers are subjected to trainings pushing the falsehoods that America is a ‘white supremacist’ country, and that white Americans are ‘raised to be racist’ from early childhood,” the statement continued. “These divisive narratives and indoctrination programs create a hostile environment in violation of our laws and principles.”
In a proactive move to quash the radical Left’s standing argument that CRT isn’t being taught in classrooms or forced on employees by woke businesses, the governor’s announcement was accompanied by specific examples from around the country. A few of the more egregious accounts include:
A Philadelphia elementary school forced fifth-graders to celebrate “Black communism” and simulated a Black Power rally to “free Angela Davis” from prison. At this school, 87 percent of students will fail to achieve basic literacy by graduation.
A middle school in Springfield, Missouri, forced teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix,” claiming that white heterosexual Protestant males are inherently oppressors and must atone for their “covert white supremacy.”
Buffalo Public Schools taught students that “all white people” perpetuate systemic racism and forced kindergarteners to watch a video of dead black children warning them about “racist police and state-sanctioned violence” who might kill them at any time.
And it’s just as grisly on the corporate side:
Raytheon, the nation’s second-largest defense contractor, has launched a Critical Race Theory program that encourages white employees to confront their “privilege,” reject the principle of “equality,” and “defund the police.”
Bank of America teaches that the United States is a system of “white supremacy,” encourages employees to become “woke at work,” and teaches that white toddlers “develop racial biases by ages 3-5.”
A Google employee program claims that America is a “system of white supremacy” and that all Americans are “raised to be racist.”
“How is it not a hostile work environment to be attacking people based on their race or telling them that they’re privileged or part of oppressive systems,” DeSantis said, “when all they’re doing is showing up to work and trying to earn a living?”
