“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg launched into a rant Tuesday after the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) blocked a proposed African American history course that contained elements of queer theory and critical race theory (CRT).
Goldberg made the comments during a panel discussion of a potential 2024 Republican primary matchup between former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Co-host Sara Haines remarked that Republican candidates like DeSantis “give Trump people an off-ramp” from supporting the former president but that many of them seem unwilling to take it.
“Here’s the thing to keep in mind,” Goldberg responded. “Ron DeSantis is now running a state where he decides what can be taught in schools or not. So the off-ramp is like — I’m not sure it’s an off-ramp … You’ve got a lot of racism going on and a little bit of insanity.”
Goldberg appeared to be referring to the FDOE’s decision to reject a high school advanced placement (AP) course on African American history. The course includes units on intersectionality, queer studies and feminism, and a reading from author Eduardo Bonilla Silva, which describes how “Whites talk, think, and account for the existence of racial inequality.”
Griffin said DeSantis is not the candidate to defeat Trump in the upcoming primaries and called on Republicans to shift their attention towards New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin. (RELATED: Joy Reid Says DeSantis Barred CRT-Related Class To ‘Appease’ Those Who Look Like Him)
“But Glenn Youngkin is also telling people that you can’t talk about African American history and transgender people,” co-host Sunny Hostin interjected.
“But he would never go as far as DeSantis did with this AP African American history,” Griffin said. “He was conflating it with CRT which is something I think you can have a conversation [about].”
“I wish somebody would show me a book,” Goldberg said. “Show me the school book that everybody is talking about that is teaching CRT … That book that you think your kids have been learning from is a book about what has happened in our country, and the more you try to avoid things that have already happened, we are going to be facing it again.”
Unit 4 of the prohibited course includes a section titled “African American Studies: Movements and Methods,” which includes a lesson on “Black Queer Studies” that teaches “the concept of the queer of color critique, grounded in Black feminism and intersectionality, as a Black studies lens that shifts sexuality studies toward racial analysis,” according to a syllabus obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF).
The Florida DOE ruled that the course “lacks educational value” or “historical accuracy,” but offered the College Board an opportunity to propose another course that teaches historically accurate content, DeSantis’ press secretary, Bryan Griffin, told the DCNF. Griffin said the course pushes a “political agenda” onto students, which violates the state ban on CRT.
CRT teaches that America is fundamentally racist and encourages students to view institutions and social interactions in terms of race.
In addition to banning CRT, DeSantis passed legislation requiring students to learn about the Ocoee Massacre, which resulted in the murder of an unknown number of African Americans after a black man attempted to vote, according to the Orange County Regional History Center.
Florida law requires students to learn “the history of African Americans,” including the slave trade, the abolitionist movement and “the history and contributions” of African Americans throughout U.S. history.