by A terminally awakened writer for the Washington Post Demands Major League Baseball ban teams from holding spring training in Florida over Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “distorting” racism and his “assault on diversity.”
Kevin B. Blackistone, a frequent guest on ESPN and ESPN Radio, is nominally a sportswriter for the post. I say nominally because he primarily uses sports to discuss race and racism. Just in the last few months he’s attacked Tony Dungy for being a conservative Christian, praised LeBron James – because of course he would – attacked the NFL for not having enough black coaches, slammed critics of Brittney Griner and such on and on as it goes. So he only writes about sports so he can rail against evil white supremacy and our irrevocably and systemically racist country. And unsurprisingly, he’s back at it, whining about Florida’s new Jim Crow era.
In his March 5 piece entitled Baseball can no longer ignore Ron DeSantis’ culture warsBlackistone is fueling division again, laying out a long string of false accusations about Ron DeSantis and the political revolution he’s leading in the Sunshine State, and suggesting that MLB tell the 15 teams that have spring training there to move away in protest .
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis waves to the crowd after speaking about his new book ‘The Courage to Be Free’ at Air Force One Pavilion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library March 5, 2023 in Simi Valley, California . (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Blackistone’s central thesis is that Florida, with its climate of racism and Jim Crow 2.0, is somehow the same today as it was in the 1920s, when MLB first began moving spring training from Florida to Arizona.
“There was a time when America’s pastime tired Florida’s hostile approach to inclusion, which is being restored in some ways by its current governor, Ron DeSantis,” Blackistone snarls at the outset.
Since Kevin is at the top with a lie, it’s not surprising that almost every word he’s written from there is being piled one on top of the other in a growing mountain of lies.
Blackistone notes that in recent months, DeSantis has labeled African American studies (his quotes) as “indoctrination” and has suggested that Florida should cut state funding for any school that bases classwork on diversity, justice and inclusion or critical race theory.
The post screedist then delivers this whopper: “The latter is the academic analysis of race and racism in society.”
Yes. He called BLM propaganda “scientific” in Critical Race Theory.
Fernando Tatis Jr., #23 of the San Diego Padres, plays a ball into right field during a Spring Training game against the Los Angeles Dodgers March 6, 2023 in Glendale, Arizona. Matt Thomas/San Diego Padres/Getty Images)
Then Blackistone went for the jugular, saying that CRT was “deliberately defaced by DeSantis, an Ivy Leaguer, and others of his reactionary ilk into a boogeyman for white citizens who think they’re losing this land that didn’t belong to them in the first place.” .”
CRT is neither “scientific” nor educational. Instead, it is anti-white propaganda that turns blacks against America—not just whites, but the country’s entire history, laws, and ethos. It teaches blacks that they are stuck, that they are constant victims, and that they need special handouts because they are unable to catch up with Asians and whites. The result of this type of indoctrination leads quite directly to the situation recently observed at an elementary school in Springfield, Ohio, where older black children were seen beating small white children and forcing them to kneel and show allegiance to the BLM to swear. This type of violence will only increase as CRT inculcates more students.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced plans to reform public universities by banning “critical race theory” and investing millions of dollars in Sarasota’s New College. He made his remarks on Tuesday, January 31, 2023, at State College of Florida’s Bradenton campus. (James A. Jones Jr./The Bradenton Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Blackistone next lied about schools closing libraries in Florida because of DeSantis’ education policies.
“Some public schools in the state of DeSantis have directed teachers to remove or box up classroom libraries in response to a statewide dictate that textbooks be age-appropriate and ‘adapted to the needs of students,'” Blackistone erroneously wrote.
The left has widely claimed that Florida schools have emptied their bookshelves because Florida’s new guidelines require sexually inappropriate books to be removed from school libraries. However, the truth is that no school in Florida has abolished its library and nothing like that will happen.
Next, Blackistone indulged in another left-wing media pet lie, attacking the state education law with the defamatory and false label of the “don’t say gay” law – a law that, oddly enough, does not have the word “gay” anywhere in it.
“And about a year ago,” Blackistone wrote, “DeSantis signed what critics dubbed the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ legislation, which bans public schools from all teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity unless they are labeled as ‘age.’ considered appropriate or developmentally appropriate.” But a league that began celebrating Pride Month a few years ago has deep roots in Florida at this time of year.”
LGBTQ employees protesting CEO Bob Chapek’s handling of the staffing controversy over Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law, also known as Parental Rights in Education, exit Walt Disney Animation on Tuesday, March 22nd 2022, in Burbank, CA. (Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
As a matter of fact. The Education Act has nothing to do with whether someone is gay or not. Instead, sexually inappropriate content is actually restricted in the classroom for students under the age of 10. Incidentally, this also includes heterosexual sex.
Ultimately, Blackistone calls for the teams to unite to face Florida, saying that “together or through the MLB front office, they could voice their displeasure with DeSantis’ leadership with their references to the troubled days of yore.” After all, so many of the issues that DeSantis has been making noise about are the same issues that baseball has been making noise about in recent years. diversity. Recording. Elucidation of the game’s (and country’s) unsavory racial past, which now deserves at least a small exhibit at the Hall of Fame-affiliated museum in Cooperstown, NY.”
Blackistone concludes by repeating Jackie Robinson’s lament that baseball didn’t do enough to stem the tide of Jim Crow in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s.
Just as he began with a lie, Blackistone ends with writing: “If history repeats itself in Florida, Robinson’s feeling should repeat itself.”
Florida in no way “repeats” Jim Crow’s hatred. But Blackistone is doing his best to use that hate to fuel division today.
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