NAACP Issues Travel Advisory for Florida

Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals, warns NAACP in travel advisory

Claiming that Governor Ron DeSantis has made it clear that “African Americans are not welcome in the State of Florida,” the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), issued a travel advisory over the weekend, warning against travel to the state of Florida.

“Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the advisory says.

“Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”

Accusing Florida of having “criminalized protests, restricted the ability of educators to teach African-American history, and engaged in a blatant war against diversity and inclusion,” the NAACP denounced what it framed as a “seeming quest to silence African American voices.”

In addition to facing the “open hostility,” the travel advisory warns those who do venture into Florida that their children will be deprived of “accurate African-American history, which includes a history of enslavement, segregation, racial injustice and systemic racism,” due to Governor DeSantis’ “aggressive attempts to erase Black history and restrict diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Florida schools.”

The President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Derrick Johnson, accused DeSantis of turning against the American democratic ideals by removing an Advanced Placement African American Studies course from the public-school curriculum and urged black Americans and their “allies” to “stand up and fight” against the governor’s policies in a press release accompanying the advisory.

Florida governor has argued that the Advanced Placement class in question was full of factual inaccuracies, amounting to “indoctrination” rather than education. He encouraged the College Board, the company behind the AP system, to submit a revised curriculum with “lawful, historically accurate content.” The governor has countered accusations of racism by pointing out that Florida law already requires the teaching of “all American history, including slavery, civil rights, [and] segregation.”

Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, passed last year, forbids schools from teaching that anyone is inherently racist or responsible for historical atrocities because of their skin color, and DeSantis has urged the state Board of Education to prohibit the teaching of Critical Race Theory.

As of the 2020 census, Florida was 12.4% black, 18.7% Hispanic, and 61.6% white.