Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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The aspirational Florida governor waves the word “woke” around like a sword.
Woke this, woke that, wokeness, anti-woke, woke mob.
After his fiery inaugural speech Jan. 3, in which the only other word used as much was Florida’s questionable “freedom,” a considerable number of readers — notably, not only from his but other states, too — asked me to put this question to Gov. Ron DeSantis: What exactly is your definition of “woke,” sir?
“I know it has racial tones because it sounds like Ebonics. I know he uses it to incite his followers in that way. But what is he killing when he says, ‘Florida is where woke goes to die’?” wonders Pete from red-state Indiana.
I set out to find out.
And, although neither of DeSantis’ spokespeople would answer the question — or even confirm that they forwarded it to the governor, as is their job to do — the actions of his administration provided a clue last week.
Without bothering to give any details, DeSantis’ Department of Education rejected an Advanced Placement course on African American studies that prepares students for the essential college-entry exam, the SAT.
The powers-that-be simply decided that, under state law — presumably the legislation Republicans dubbed the “Stop Woke Act” and allegedly protects the rights of white people to remain ignorant of American Black history — the course “lacks educational value.”
And so undefined “anti-wokeness” drives Florida education policy and attempts to tell employers how they can or can’t train their employees on issues of race and diversity. And neither the governor nor his staff feels compelled to explain their actions to citizens.
DeSantis ‘woke’ defined
Recently, however, the governor’s lawyer was forced to define “woke” in federal court by Jean-Jacques Cabou, the attorney for Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, a Democrat suing DeSantis for removing him from office for his “woke” pro-choice opinions.
When he announced Warren’s suspension, DeSantis referred to him as a “woke ideologue” who “masqueraded” as a prosecutor. He didn’t care that voters elected him twice.
Ryan Newman, DeSantis’ general counsel, said that the term means “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”
Indeed, there are inequities. DeSantis’ slate of anti-Black policies and actions reminds us.
For example: DeSantis’ different treatment of white Republican voters who knowingly committed fraud by twice voting for Donald Trump in The Villages and Black ex-felons who thought their rights were restored and were given voter registration cards by officials.
Guess which group was shackled, some men in their underwear, arrested SWAT-style by rifle-carrying officers and paraded in public on body cams?
Newman, once a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, said in court that DeSantis doesn’t believe that there are systemic injustices in the United States.
Hard to believe of a Yale and Harvard graduate.
Then, Newman stretched the truth with his own interpretation of woke: “To me, it means someone who believes that there are systemic injustices in the criminal justice system, and on that basis, they can decline to fully enforce and uphold the law.”
Again, linking Blackness with lawlessness. But at least Newman answered questions.
I had no such luck with DeSantis’ media reps.
“We have neither the time nor the desire to contribute to your opinion columns,” spokesman Bryan Griffin said in an email. “Please consider this response to stand in perpetuity.”
Does the “we” include the governor? I asked.
No answer.
Anti-woke costs Floridians
Anti-woke doesn’t come cheap.
Whether he’s policing Disney World’s diversity policies or persecuting college professors, DeSantis’ “anti-woke” obsession is costing the state government $17 million dollars in legal fees from the 15 lawsuits the new laws have drawn.
In addition to the Warren trial, which, as of this writing, hadn’t been decided, he had lost, at least partially, a challenge to his “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act” restricting how race-related concepts can be taught at universities.
It may, in the long run, also cost him the presidency.
There’s a huge difference between appealing to a white supremacist base in his home state and becoming the more moderate candidate that a post-Jan. 6, post-Trump America seems to prefer.
He’s also foolishly leading the state as if it were constantly in a state of war — and he’s scaring people who invest here.
Susan, a Northeast snowbird, bought a second home in Florida before COVID and planned to retire here with her husband, whose health requires warmer weather. They invested thinking Florida was a purple state.
But DeSantis scares her.
“How comfortable will a couple of proudly ‘woke Yankees’ be in Florida? I take DeSantis’ claim that ‘Florida is where woke goes to die,’ as a threat, and I personally have no interest in even spending winters there,” she writes me. “If it was up to me, I would not even step foot in Florida, given its current political climate.”
As a DeSantis watcher and recipient of his voters’ criticism, I know exactly what the governor’s anti-woke agenda means and his motivation: Stoking the base to constantly generate headlines that elevate his national profile: More Trumpian than Trump, but preppy racist.
Considering that DeSantis has turned his anti-Black agenda into Florida law, he makes the ex-president’s crass “my African American friend” seem mild.
As for definition: If we know that woke, in DeSantis’ mind, refers to Black, then it “comes to die” here means the erasure of Blackness in Florida. And that makes all of us who care about Black history, want to read about it, learn it or teach it “the woke mob.”
The governor isn’t wearing the pointy white hood of African American studies textbooks.
But, given his aggressive racist behavior, does he need to?
Fabiola Santiago is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
