anti-racism training that does more than teach you how not to be racist. it is where, you know, you get the white fragility experts coming in and saying that you if are a white person, you know, you are fragile if you don t understand that you are bigoted and racist or whatever it is. but there are all of those there s also that basket. those last two are very controversial. from what i understand in this first basket, that s where this professor was. he was just teaching civil rights and explaining what s happened in this country over the past 400 years. yeah, that he very true. just like you, i went to florida public schools. you know, there s not a lot of time to really teach the history in the state about civil rights and about race, but florida does have an awful history when it comes to race. one of the reasons florida became a territory is the united states wanted to expand and
winning formula for youngkin in virginia? actually, ron desantis was one of the first governors in the nation though brought this up before youngkin had won even his primary in virginia. this has been sort of part of desantis s political dna here. the broader movement you are seeing in conservative circles and you are seeing from parents was concerns over lockdowns, concerns over masking and then concerns over curriculum and they ve all sort of combined together. need to point out desantis s spokeswoman points out, look, the governor had nothing to do with this decision in osceola county. the government supports teaching history, she says. what they re against is teaching that, you know, whites are bad and essentially enshrining anti-white racism into curriculum and into work training. now, again, school boards and businesses deny that they re doing that but that s the debate and i think it is only fair to mention what their point of view is. the reality is this professor who had his
seeing in partisan politics in part, as the republican legislature, as republican governor ron desantis have crusaded more against critical race theory which they re conflating with anti-racism training which is more controversial for a lot of people. it has produced various backlashes and kind of grassroots uprisings and caught in the middle of this are a lot of school districts. school districts are worried, school administrators are worried and school teachers are worried, look, if i say something that s interpreted or misinterpreted as being critical race theory, which is really a college level, high-level theory taught at the university, i could get in trouble. at least that s kind of the point of the legislation. what you saw here was a professor named j. michael butler at flagler college was supposed to give a speech, a lecture, an instruction to school teachers in osceola county, in the orlando area, about what he called the long civil rights movement. saying, look, civil right
the republican majority on the florida senate education committee advanced a measure last week that attempts to bar the influence of critical race theory in schools and businesses across the state. florida governor ron desantis goes further, supporting a proposal that would allow parents to sue school districts that teach racism-related materials. meanwhile, a florida school district cancelled a professor s civil rights history seminar for teachers, citing in part concerns over critical race theory even though his lecture had nothing to do with the topic. for more on this let s bring in senior national political reporter for nbc news, mark caputo. his latest piece delves into what is exactly going on. also joining us the host of