Florida Republican's racist redistricting maps

The Monday Musings

Perspective, or the ability to "see" what’s right before your eyes, is crucial in both literal and figurative senses when analyzing Gov. Ron Desantis and the Republican dominated Florida Legislature's recent attacks on Black voting rights!

As to the literal, when I was 16-years-old, I used to sit in the back of the classroom so that I could talk freely with my friends, particularly on days when our teachers were directing us to take down notes that they had written on the chalkboard.

Over time, I began to notice that the chalk lessons were growing more difficult to see, even when I was squinting hard to bring them into greater focus. One evening, while sitting in our living room at home watching the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, my Dad looked over at me and noticed that I was squinting while viewing the television. In his brusque way, he asked, "Boy, how long have you been squinting like that to see?" I guessed that by that point, I had been struggling for at least two or three months, but I wasn't fully sure. 

The very next morning, as we sat eating Rice Chex and reading the newspaper before school/work, my father looked across the table and noticed that I was not struggling at all to read, so he asked my mother to set an appointment with Dr. Isaac Moore, his old FAMU classmate (and their eye doctor), so that I could get checked out.

Several weeks later, after Dr. Moore determined that I was, in fact, nearsighted, my mom took me to pick up my very first set of glasses. While it took my eyes a few minutes to adjust, what happened next cuts to the heart of today's message—as we walked outside of Dr. Moore's Alpha Eye Center on a picturesque spring day, I could not help but notice the resplendent colors of the blooming flowers, the green trees, and the sunny blue skies above my head. Those corrective lenses, indeed, sharpened my sense of sight and gave me a much greater appreciation for everything that surrounded me!

Well, whether wearing my glasses or not, my nearly 50-year-old eyes can spot a racist when I see one, and I have no hesitation in opining that Florida Gov. Ron Desantis, truly, is governing like a racist!

Gov. Ron Desantis

While I know that Desantis has a few really talented Black folks who are serving within his government, including several who are my personal friends, those appointments do not mitigate the truth that since Florida’s governor acts in a manner that is detrimental to the majority of Black folks, that fealty to a few doesn't win approval from the many!

Lest we forget that racist Sen. Storm Thurmond (R-S.C.) fathered a biracial Black daughter, but advocated policies that mostly hurt the masses of Blacks throughout his public life! Or, conversely, how President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) routinely used racial slurs in and out of the Oval Office, but signed legislation that ended nearly 100 years of Jim Crow segregation! Thus, the issue is not what one says (or even a few appointments), but what one does for the masses while in office!

LBJ was fond of using the “N-word” in private, but in public, signed legislation, like the Voting Rights Act, that ended Jim Crow segregation.

Last week, the Florida legislature approved Gov. Ron Desantis's plan to eliminate two Black congressional districts; one held by Tallahassee based Rep. Al Lawson (D), and the other by Orlando based Rep. Val Demings (D). Desantis and his defenders will argue that the move is race neutral, but they can spare me their sophistry as my vision is 20/20 when it comes to modern Republican racist policies. 

Two good Kappas: My mentor, Rep. Al Lawson (D-Fl), with me at a Tallahassee Urban League gala circa 2018.

For those who would prefer that we forget history, I remind that when LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, he did so because the states of the Old Confederacy, including Florida, had a pernicious penchant of preventing Blacks from exercising their rights to vote per the 15th and 19th Amendments of the Constitution.

U.S. Rep. Val Demings (D-Fl) was my very first podcast guest back in 2020 on the TCR Dialogues; while Demings is running against Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio for his seat, her current seat could be wiped from the electoral map if Gov. Desantis has his way.

With one stroke of the pen, LBJ eradicated the poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and other chicanery that had been used to prevent Blacks from voting and by so doing, ushered in an era when the old Democrats/Dixiecrats moved en masse to the Republican Party to reject LBJ decision to "sell out" the white supremacist political structure in the South. 

In the decades since, the Dixiecrats modern Republican descendants have done everything that they can to thwart Black and Brown voting rights, whether it's the elimination of voting rights for convicted felons, refusals to extend early voting hours and weekend "Souls to the Polls" events that are favored by heavily Democratic Black voters, multiple identification requirements, and attempts to eliminate majority Black districts every decade after the Census. 

I am confident, quite confident actually, that Gov. Desantis's congressional map (above) will be tossed out in federal court due to its blatant violations of precedent stemming from the very Voting Rights Act mentioned in today's blog. But it is crucial as one whose vision is far from blurry when it comes to recognizing real racism when I see it, that I call Florida’s governor out and remind that his antics are eerily similar to his racist Dixecrat gubernatorial forebears from not so long ago!

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