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Boston Globe Column: Ron DeSantis Is 'White Supremacy's Helicopter Parent'

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A column in the Boston Globe has declared Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) “white supremacy’s helicopter parent” because of legislation that would prevent corporations and schools from imposing Critical Race Theory on employees and students.

As Breitbart News reported last month, DeSantis proposed the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act (Stop W.O.K.E Act) to ensure the enforcement of prohibitions on the use of Critical Race Theory that the state has already adopted.

Colunnist Renée Graham, an associate editor of the Globe, called DeSantis’s policy “white supremacist” because, she claims (without evidence), he wants to ban teaching about “the Middle Passage, Trail of Tears, Chinese Exclusion Act, and Jim Crow.” Graham also claims, falsely: “Critical race theory is not taught in elementary or secondary schools. It is not anti-white. It does not teach white people to hate themselves or their country.”

Critical Race Theory, first explored in depth in a public policy context at Breitbart News in 2012, “holds that the United States is racist by design, because its Constitution and all of its other institutions emerged in a context where slavery was legal.”

It has since seeped into educational curricula, corporate boardrooms, and training manuals of state, federal, and local government agencies. It is not always identified by its name, but its concepts have been disseminated by left-wing activists.

The current text of the bill includes a passage that has falsely been reported as protecting white people from “guilt.” In fact, it protects members of all races from being made to feel guilt of “psychological distress” solely on the basis of their race:

Subjecting any individual, as a condition of employment, membership, certification, licensing, credentialing, or passing an examination, to training, instruction, or any other required activity that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual to believe any of the following concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin under this section:

1. Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally superior to members of another race, color, sex, or national origin.

2. An individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

3. An individual’s moral character or status as either privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.

4. Members of one race, color, sex, or national origin cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, sex, or national origin.

5. An individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears responsibility for, or should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of, actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex, or national origin.

6. An individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment to achieve diversity, equity, or inclusion.

7. An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin.

8. Such virtues as merit, excellence, hard work, fairness, neutrality, objectivity, and racial colorblindness are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race, color, sex, or national origin to oppress members of another race, color, sex, or national origin.

The bill also requires “The history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the contributions of African Americans to society. Instructional materials shall include the contributions of African Americans to American society.” It also requires the teaching of “the civil rights movement to the present,” contrary to Graham’s claims.

Through the bill, Graham says, DeSantis “hovers as white supremacy’s defender,” and she accuses the governor of trying to be “yet another Republican employing racial division, marginalization, and white panic as a pathway to the White House.”

Graham concludes by embracing Critical Race Theory’s central argument: “Racism is America’s original remix,” she writes.

Read Graham’s full column, “Ron DeSantis — white supremacy’s helicopter parent,” at the Boston Globe, here.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

A Reply to George Leef and John Ellis: Progressive Policies Are Not ‘White Privilege’

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The Placentia-Yorba Linda School Board discusses a proposed resolution to ban teaching critical race theory in schools in Yorba Linda, Calif., November 16, 2021. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

In response to Does ‘White Privilege’ Exist?

In yesterday’s Corner post, George Leef plugs an interesting Washington Examiner piece by John Ellis, a distinguished professor emeritus at UC Santa Cruz. Ellis argues that the “privilege” enjoyed by people of European descent is actually the result of technological and economic advances — what Deirdre McCloskey called “The Great Enrichment”:

This series of changes had to begin somewhere, and that was mainly among Western Europeans and their North American cousins. Individual strands that fed into it came from other times and places, but this was where everything suddenly came together to set in motion the most profound changes in human life ever seen. Because the changes started with Europeans, they obviously enjoyed its benefits first, and their economic and political development surged ahead of that of other peoples. Some of that initial advantage lingers today, both in European societies and in people of European descent, because the improved circumstances of earlier generations inevitably affected succeeding ones.

Leef takes this argument to mean that yes, white privilege does exist — “but not in the way the Left thinks.” Pointing to “an array of policies . . . such as minimum-wage laws, occupational licensing, welfare, and public education,” he indicts progressivism as the true cause of white privilege and racial hierarchy.

I don’t think that’s quite the right interpretation of Ellis’s argument, which makes the more nuanced point that disparities between European and non-European peoples persist because modernity’s technological, economic, and political innovations began in Europe (true) while also maintaining that those disparities have “nothing to do with illegitimate, stolen ‘white privilege.’” (Also true). But Ellis does argue that the Left is an “oppressor” of African Americans. “African Americans do suffer from one serious disadvantage,” he writes. “For them, there is indeed now an oppressor class. No, not whites: Their oppressor class is the radical Left.”

This is an assertion that one hears from time to time in conservative circles. It’s understandable, as far as it goes: One can point to any number of progressive policies and ideas that do, in fact, have a disparate impact on nonwhite communities. But to proceed from that insight to appropriate the Left’s political framework of “oppressor” and “oppressed” is to go too far.

I took issue with a similar argument made by Mario Loyola in NR back in November. Loyola, echoing Leef and Ellis, wrote that “there is systemic racism in America, but it has little to do with police procedures or practice. What drives disproportionate encounters with police is the same as what drives urban blight, low educational attainment, and low labor-force participation. It is the systemic racism of social-welfare and minimum-wage laws that have grossly disparate impacts on social mobility for blacks and Hispanics.”

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In response, I pointed out that, while “badly designed welfare programs from the Great Society, burdensome job-killing regulatory policies, and a failing public-school system propped up by overpowerful teachers’ unions all are powerful examples of how progressive policies hurt nonwhite Americans . . . that does not mean that such policies are examples of systemic racism, and to argue this is to actually accept the racialized outcome-oriented framework offered by Ibram X. Kendi and other critical race theorists.” I continued:

Bad policies are bad policies, and most — perhaps all — bad policies are worse for some groups than they are for others. But the disparate impact of bad policies does not make them guilty of “systemic racism,” unless one is a Kendi-ist and believes that all policies with disparate impacts are systemically racist. And in that case, Kendi is right about all of the policies that he decries as racist, too. We don’t get to pick and choose here: Either disparate racial impact proves systemic racism, or it doesn’t. Loyola may be attempting to hoist the Left on its own petard, but his argument is actually acquiescing to an incredibly poisonous broader left-wing framework.

The same is true of the argument advanced by Leef and Ellis. The latter writes that “in disparaging modernity as whiteness, radicals promote their own destructive political agenda, not the interests of African Americans.” That’s undeniably true. But is a policy that disproportionately harms the interests of a particular group evidence of oppression? 

Not necessarily. It could just be bad policy. Disparate impact alone is not the basis for allegations of “white privilege.” And using that framework to criticize progressive policy implicitly cedes important ground to the critical-race theorists.

There are more than enough damning arguments against progressive policy as it is. Conservatives need not embrace the Left’s broader obsession with categorizing everything in terms of racial oppression to make their point.

Does ‘White Privilege’ Exist?

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Supporters of Critical Race Theory and transgender students meet outside the Loudoun County School Board headquarters before a school board meeting, in Ashburn, Va., June 22, 2021.
(Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Desperate for excuses to tear down our traditions — free enterprise, limited government, private property, and so on — the Left calls America irredeemably racist due to “white privilege.” Is there any truth in that?

In this Washington Examiner piece, Professor John Ellis says yes — but not in the way the Left thinks.

Ellis observes that liberalism (real liberalism, meaning the liberation of human energy from the control of domineering institutions) began in northwest Europe and spread to other parts of the globe. But Europeans got a head start in economic growth (what Deirdre McCloskey calls “The Great Enrichment”). Some countries have caught up rapidly, such as Japan.

Why do some groups in the U.S. lag behind? Ellis explains, “African Americans do suffer from one serious disadvantage. For them, there is indeed now an oppressor class. No, not whites: Their oppressor class is the radical Left. Radicals tell them to see these far-reaching changes not as the development of modernity that benefits everyone, but as white supremacy, which they should reject. Logical reasoning is white hegemony at work. The very idea of ‘getting the right answer’ is white oppression. To read the thinkers and writers who were deeply involved in the development of modernity would be to bow to white dominance. That is how radical leftists obstruct black progress.”

He’s right. An array of policies are to blame, such as minimum-wage laws, occupational licensing, welfare, and public education. They all benefit other key leftist groups, while keeping large numbers of blacks poor, angry, and dependent. It’s a despicable political game.

Yes, It’s CRT, and the Education Blob Won’t Stop Using It

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(maroke/iStock/Getty Images)

When parents and others who care about the integrity of our schools speak up against teaching the false and divisive notions of critical race theory, the education blob responds with evasions and denials. They say that CRT is only taught in law schools (as if it was appropriate there), but not K-12.

Here is a piece proving the contrary: “Twenty-one days to brainwash your child.”

Writer Conn Carroll concludes: “Yes, this is actually being taught in schools. So don’t let anyone tell you that critical race theory isn’t in classrooms or that it is only being used as a way to debate certain topics. That’s just plain false. Activists are using critical race theory in classrooms not just to teach your child to judge everyone by the color of their skin, but also to do so without thinking — to do so by habit. If that isn’t brainwashing, we don’t know what is.”

Hat tip: Manny Klausner

AP distorts Florida anti-CRT bill to imply DeSantis wants to 'shield whites' from 'discomfort'

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A spokeswoman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) slammed the Associated Press after a report misleadingly claimed an anti-critical race theory bill is intended to “shield whites from ‘discomfort.'”

Leading with the headline, “Florida could shield whites from ‘discomfort’ of racist past,” AP writer Brendan Farrington claimed that a bill supported by DeSantis “would prohibit public schools and private businesses from making white people feel ‘discomfort’ when they teach students or train employees about discrimination.”

But the only excerpt of the bill quoted in the AP article makes no mention of people of any color. It states, “An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race.”

The bill, S.B. 148, is titled “Individual Freedom” and was introduced by Republican Sen. Manny Diaz, a Hispanic lawmaker. Diaz told the AP that his bill is intended to make sure that no group of people is singled out on the basis of their skin color and blamed for the sins of the past.

“No individual is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously, solely by the virtue of his or her race or sex,” Diaz said. “No race is inherently superior to another race.”


Diaz was referring to tenets of critical race theory, a worldview that claims most laws and systems in America were historically rooted in the racist oppression of black people and other marginalized groups. Formulated by legal scholars in the 1970s as a response to perceptions that the civil rights movement did not sufficiently advance equality, CRT holds that racism is systemic in America’s institutions and that white people who support those institutions are complicit in perpetuating the oppression of blacks and other minorities.

Conservatives reject this worldview, arguing that it substitutes race conflict for traditional Marxist class conflict to define white people as an oppressor class and everyone else as a victim class to justify programs for wealth redistribution. Republican politicians and conservative activists have proposed laws to ban critical race theory concepts from being taught in schools, while preserving the teaching of U.S. history.

Diaz’s bill prohibits the teaching of collective guilt for members of any race. While that appears to be a response to critical race theory’s claims about white people perpetuating racism, the text of the bill protects all people from being told they are collectively guilty of sins because of the color of their skin. It is not a bill to protect “white people” from feeling discomfort by talking about racism or the historic discrimination against non-whites in America.

In fact, the bill explicitly requires that schools teach “the history of African Americans, including the history of African peoples before the political conflicts that led to the development of slavery, the passage to America, the enslavement experience, abolition, and the contributions of African Americans to society.”

But left-wing pundits seized on the AP report to attack Florida Republicans. MSNBC host Joy Reid falsely claimed Florida was “literally legislating white people’s psychic comfort.”

“To reiterate: it’s about to be ILLEGAL IN FLORIDA TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE SAD. Fix it Jesus!” she lied.


Responding to the AP’s distortion of the Florida bill, DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw blasted the report, calling the outlet “American Pravda” and accusing the AP of “implying that [DeSantis] is a white supremacist.”


She also claimed that Farrington lied by writing that DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment after Democratic state lawmaker Sen. Shevrin Jones, who is black, told the AP DeSantis has adopted “racist rhetoric on critical race theory” and claimed the bill was a solution to a “problem that doesn’t exist.” Jones also said the governor’s policies are racist.

DeSantis communications director Taryn Fenske shared a screenshot of Farrington’s request for comment, in which the reporter told the governor’s office that he asked Jones if Jones thinks DeSantis “is racist” and then asked for a comment. The email had no greeting, no deadline to respond, and didn’t even include a professional signature.

Fenske’s response was, “I just want to clarify — that you, without any context, asked a sitting State Senator if the Governor of Florida is a racist, while on the clock, being paid by the Associated Press?”

Her response was not quoted in Farrington’s article.

The article was later updated to say, “The governor’s spokeswoman reiterated comments DeSantis made at a news conference last month in which he referred to the late civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.”