The legislation is part of Governor Ron DeSantis’ “Stop WOKE Act”, which seeks to prevent “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees”. The law might affect not only education in Florida, but also companies that decide to hold bias or sexual harassment trainings for their employees under pressure from woke culture and the MeToo movement.
The Florida state Senate has passed the Individual Freedom Bill, which prohibits lessons on gender identity and racial topics in cases where they may cause “guilt”. The bill was passed with 24 Senators voting in favour and 15 opposing. The legislation will now land on Governor Ron DeSantis’ desk and will go into effect once he signs it.
What Has Changed?
The bill will make several changes to statutory language in Florida, removing the words “gender” and “ethnicity” replacing them with “sex” and “colour”. The legislation also will broaden the official understanding of the term “discrimination” – it will be applied to those cases when a person is deliberately made “uncomfortable” over historic actions committed by their race, gender, or nationality.
The Individual Freedom Bill includes changes to other aspects of education. Now, Florida schools must teach its students about the history of slavery and racial segregation in their country in an “age-appropriate manner”. Teachers are also banned from trying to “indoctrinate” their students to take a “particular point of view”.
Businesses Can Be Affected Too
The new legislation fits with Ron DeSantis’ mission to stop “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees” (which was shortened into an acronym “WOKE” in his “Stop WOKE Act”). And like the name suggests, it will affect not just schools and other educational institutions, but businesses as well.
Many US companies have adopted a practice of organising various trainings for their employees in recent years – from sexual harassment (exclusively for males) to racial discrimination (for white Americans) and other bias trainings. Now, workers who are usually mandated to attend these sessions, may sue their employers if they find the training disturbing – for example, because it preaches critical race theory.
The latter suggests that the US suffers from systemic and institutional racism. Despite remaining marginal for years in academic circles, it was suddenly included in school programmes in several states following the BLM protests of 2020 – to the great displeasure of numerous parents, who consider the claim of systemic racism among the white population outrageous.
The Individual Freedom Bill was opposed by Florida Democrats, who insisted that it was legislation “in search of a problem that we don’t have”. Senator Audrey Gibson recalled that teaching critical race theory has been banned by the state’s Department of Education for some time now.
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