The ‘Wicked Wisdom’ of Ron DeSantis
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The marchers kept up a brisk pace, through streets lined by old oaks tinseled in Spanish moss that acknowledged even the slightest breeze.
At one point they chanted: “What do you do when Black history is under attack? Stand up, fight back.” At another they chanted: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Ron DeSantis has got to go.” They were in Tallahassee protesting DeSantis’s crusade against everything “woke,” a concept his own general counsel defined as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” Earlier this week Shevrin Jones, the first openly gay man and first L.G.B.T.
Black member of the Florida Senate, told me his theory of why Republicans like DeSantis are abusing and bastardizing the word “woke”: It’s “the new N-word.” DeSantis’s obsession has led him from attacking critical race theory to, now, restricting the teaching of Black history itself.
So the marchers made their way from Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, where one speaker branded DeSantis the “Pharaoh of Florida,” to the State Capitol, where the Rev.
