MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones wrote that the bill is about “prioritizing white hypersensitivity over truthful teachings” and notes that “lessons about America’s racist and sexist past are acceptable only if they don’t offend white people.”

“To me, these new demands for fealty to fragile whiteness sound like a re-up of the Black Codes, laws instituted during and after the Civil War to reinforce white supremacy. In some states, the codes permitted capital punishment against Black people for minor crimes like petty theft, allowed whippings for vagrancy and swearing and banned Black land ownership. Florida’s particularly harsh codes allowed white people to beat Black workers for ‘disrespect,’ as historian Jerrell H. Shofner wrote in his 1976 essay on the state’s racist laws. Historian Joe M. Richardson wrote that white Floridians passed the codes out of fear that their racist world was crumbling around them,” Jones wrote.

“It seems DeSantis and Florida’s GOP-led legislature are operating with a similar fear. They see the facade of white supremacy — weak as it is — crumbling under the weight of high school lesson plans and workplace trainings. And bills like SB 148 are sad attempts to piece that facade back together,” Jones added.

“That’s why — if the white parents complaining about Black authors weren’t enough — it’s clear that the Florida bill is designed to coddle white people, even though it doesn’t mention them specifically,” he wrote.

Florida follows six other states that have taken measures to ban critical race theory, according to the World Population Review.

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