NY Times Column: Ron DeSantis’s Race Problem

A new opinion piece in the New York Times lays out in scathing fashion how Ron DeSantis has “ targeted Black people, Black Power, and Black history” and Florida and “has actually tried to strip Black Floridians of their power and voice.”

The column documents DeSantis’ standard operating procedure when confronted on issues of race, writing: “Instead of addressing the issue directly, he — or his office — claims to be oblivious. That’s the DeSantis M.O.” 

The piece goes on to recount a number of ways DeSantis has targeted Black communities in Florida, including enacting his own redistricting plan that removed a congressional district that includes Black-majority communities. 

The New York Times: Opinion: Ron DeSantis’s Race Problem

• In July, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appointed Jeffery Moore, a former tax law specialist with the Florida Department of Revenue, to be a county commissioner in Gadsden, the blackest county in the state.
• On Friday, Moore resigned after a picture emerged that appeared to show him dressed in Ku Klux Klan regalia.
• This is not the first, shall I say, “awkward” racial issue DeSantis had encountered. But throughout, he has had much the same response: Instead of addressing the issue directly, he — or his office — claims to be oblivious. That’s the DeSantis M.O.
• In a 2018 gubernatorial debate, the moderator asked DeSantis why he had spoken at several conferences hosted by David Horowitz, a conservative writer who the Southern Poverty Law Center says is a “driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-Black movements.”
• There, too, DeSantis claimed obliviousness, responding, “How the hell am I supposed to know every single statement someone makes?”
• The problem, of course, is that DeSantis’s unfortunate associations keep stacking up.
• In 2018, he appointed Michael Ertel, then a county elections supervisor, to be his secretary of state. The following year, Ertel resigned after a picture emerged of him in blackface wearing a T-shirt that read “Katrina Victim.”
• DeSantis responded to the controversy by saying: “It’s unfortunate. I think he’s done a lot of good work.” He continued, “I don’t want to get mired into kind of side controversies, and so I felt it was best to just accept the resignation and move on.” Not a word of condemnation for the act or sympathy for the victims of the storm. Also, not a word of his own personal regret for appointing him.
• This is a man who championed and signed Florida’s ridiculous “Stop WOKE Act,” restricting how race can be discussed in the state’s schools and workplaces. You can’t live in the dark on race and then try to drag your whole state into the darkness with you.
• But there is a way in which race policy reaches far beyond being merely racist-adjacent. DeSantis, for instance, has actually tried to strip Black Floridians of their power and voice.
• In 2010, Florida voters, by a strong majority, approved a constitutional amendment rejecting gerrymandering. The amendment made clear that “districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice.”
• DeSantis may pretend to be oblivious to the racial acts and statements of the people he associates with and appoints, but eliminating Black power and representation was a conscious act.