I am surprised a judge got involved.
Identity politics is all about politics and little about academia. Its aim is to impose political ideas on young minds.
It sure as heck isn't about "frank discussion" in which different opinions are permitted. Everyone knows the pre-ordained outcome of such "debates". The people who teach that field are not in it because they are open-minded.
My view is a different one. Any subject which talks about "the nation's" racial history is already guilty of selection bias. The US is not unique. Nor is the behaviour of people of any particular skin colour. So there is no subject to discuss which isn't international and multi-racial in focus. So you start there. The subject is the many flaws in human nature. Discuss.
Nor is anyone responsible for the perceived sins of their ancestors, nor should they be made to feel guilty about it, because genes don't carry a moral burden.
Nor should anyone be encouraged to resent those of a different race or made to feel a victim because of it, because that's destructive of community and any country is in want of the things that hold it together and not of those that tear it apart.
Nor should any class of people expect reparations from some other class, because there is no sensible way to repair all of the damage that exists in all of human history: otherwise, when will the Egyptians make a pay-out to the Israelites; or the Greeks to the helots; or the Venetians to the Slavs; or the West Africans to the Genoese?
It is a basic fact of life that we are born with advantages and disadvantages as a result of inheritance, which it is no government's responsibility to undo, regardless of how that inheritance was built, so long as it was done lawfully at the time. It is our great collective purpose to improve the law, not to repair the past.
And it is, of course, a woeful form of history that attempts to impose the moral standards of today on people who lived in earlier times. Just as we hope to be forgiven by future generations for the horrendous things we do unwittingly ourselves.
We all know the truth. The aim of such frank discussions is to generate a particular outcome. A politics of guilt and resentment.
So I understand why Florida's politicians, representing the people of the state, should wish to constrain such teaching, which is divisive and thoughtless on the very subject it teaches. And it is certainly the prerogative of politicians and not of judges to make such decisions, in my view.
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