This is the easiest pop quiz you’ll ever take: Name the state where schoolteachers have felt compelled to ban books about Hall of Famers Henry Aaron and Roberto Clemente.
Spoiler alert: It’s DeSantistan.
If you thought Trump was bad, consider Florida Man. Whereas Trump has long talked a good racist game, Ron DeSantis actually follows through. The fate of “Henry Aaron’s Dream” and “Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” – both of which have been removed from school shelves in Florida’s Duval County, one of the nation’s largest school districts – is DeSantis in a nutshell.
The governor’s goal is to protect the tender sensibilities of white kids from the historical reality of racism (a terrific way to connect with the white MAGA base on the eve of the ’24 presidential race), and he’s doing a bang-up job. Granted, he hasn’t signed any laws that specifically order teachers to remove books about Black and Latino baseball stars who triumphed over racism; he has merely signed laws that intimidate teachers into removing such books – to err on the side of caution, lest they be charged with third-degree felonies.
What could possibly be offensive about two illustrated books, written for kids, that extol Aaron and Clemente? A synopsis of the Aaron book says that when the Alabama youngster dreamed of a big-league career, “there wasn’t a single black ballplayer in the major leagues.”
Uh oh. That line could be a problem.
A synopsis of the Clemente book says that, “as a right-fielder for the Pirates he fought tough opponents – and even tougher racism.”
Uh oh. That line could be a problem.
How so? Because last summer DeSantis signed a law decreeing that all books in public classroom libraries must be “approved and selected” by an “educational media specialist” (whatever that is) to ensure that the kids are not exposed to anything “inappropriate or unsuitable.” For instance, the says that a book shall be deemed inappropriate or unsuitable if it depicts anyone as “inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Ah. Now we see the problem. Aaron and Clemente triumphed over Jim Crow racism, which means that somebody in their baseball careers had to be inherently racist.
DeSantis certainly doesn’t want the kids to know that. The teachers in DuVal County (which includes Jacksonville, where a young Aaron played minor league ball in 1953) haven’t yet been told by “media specialists” to remove those baseball books, but hey, better safe than sorry. They’re mindful of the law’s third-degree felony provision. How are they supposed to teach from jail?
The safe option is to just remove anything that might run afoul of The State; at last check, according to PEN America, a group that tracks freedom of information issues, roughly 175 titles have disappeared from DuVal classroom libraries – including books about Rosa Parks (who refused to sit in the back of a bus, which means there had to be racists on board), the Underground Railroad (which means there had to be racists hunting slaves), and the Japanese internment camps of World War II.
Jonah Winter, who wrote the Clemente book, recently said, “I would have hoped that, in the 21st century, there would be nothing controversial about Robert Clemente,” the first Latino elected to the Hall of Fame. “These are very strange times that we live in. (Book bans) hurt children in the school districts where this is happening.”
What a pity that those Florida white kids aren’t being introduced to the Puerto Rico native’s inspirational life. What they’re not learning is that, during his Florida spring training stints in the late ’50s and early ’60s, he couldn’t stay in the same hotels or eat in the same restaurants as his white teammates. Supportive teammates had to bring food out to Clemente as he stewed on the team bus. Clemente and other Blacks on the roster were also excluded from the team’s annual spring golf tournament at a Florida country club, and he also had to endure ridicule from white sportswriters who mocked his Spanish accent and referred to him in print as (among other things) “a chocolate-colored islander.”
And what a pity that those Florida white kids aren’t being introduced to Aaron, who helped break the racial barrier in Jim Crow Jacksonville; who was publicly ridiculed by his first major league manager as “Stepin Fetchit” (a lazy-Black stereotype); and who endured death threats during his Babe Ruth home run chase. What they’re not learning is how Aaron felt when he was targeted: “It really made me see for the first time a clear picture of what this country is about. My kids had to live like they were in prison because of kidnap threats, and I had to live like a pig in a slaughter camp. I had to duck. I had to go out the back door of the ballparks. I had to have a police escort with me all the time. I was getting threatening letters every single day. All of these things have put a bad taste in my mouth, and it won’t go away. They carved a piece of my heart away.”
Yeah, white kids should be protected from discomfort, lest they learn what it’s like to be truly discomfited.
I’ve flagged the fate of these two books in order to spotlight the issue writ large – that what’s happening in DeSantistan is a foretaste of what he intends for the nation, barring a wakeup call for the electorate. He plans nothing less than a war on free expression and the First Amendment. Suffice it to say that, yet again, George Orwell has penned a warning: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”