Most African Americans did not vote for Ron DeSantis or his margin of victory in the 2018 election would have been at least a tad more than 0.4 percent. But since he was elected governor presumably of all the people, they have probably been waiting for some indication that he is aware that there are 3.5 million of them – 17 percent of the population.

The wait is over. The governor channeled Martin Luther King Jr. at a gathering on Dec. 15 in Wildwood: “You think about what MLK stood for. He said he didn’t want people judged on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character.”

Yes, King did, but not for the reason DeSantis had in mind. The governor was promoting a law similar to what his Texas counterpart has done with women’s rights: empowering anyone to sue abortion providers and collect attorney’s fees if they win, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court.

DeSantis wants to give that same right to any parent to sue schools teaching critical race theory (CRT). His Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act (Stop the Woke Act), if passed, would follow a state ban against teaching CRT in public schools, which does not happen.

But while DeSantis is building political capital among the Republican Party base, Miami Herald reporter C. Isaiah Smalls II’s story on Sunday about Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore’s martyrdom on Dec. 25, 1951, served as a reminder that, like much of the United States, racism and its effects have persisted, sometimes violently. A bomb planted at their home killed the Moores because Harry Moore advocated equal rights for African Americans. As Smalls noted in his report, it was “the first assassination of a U.S. Civil Rights leader – roughly 11 years before Medgar Evers, 13 before Malcolm X and 16 before Martin Luther King Jr.” The killers were never caught.

Instead of stoking racism, DeSantis could have better spent his time advocating, as another civil rights giant, Nelson Mandela, did in South Africa, the truth about American history and seek to forge reconciliation. He could have made it a point to honor the Moores as the 70th anniversary of their assassination – Christmas Day – approached.

UP FOR RE-ELECTION

But he has no qualms about stoking racial angst among European Americans, especially those who do not want to be reminded that the South, in 1860, kept four million human beings in slavery. In fact, in 1845, when Florida was about to become the 27th state in the Union, its population included 35,000 European Americans – and 33,950 slaves.

It bears repeating also that between 1877 and 1950, more than 4,000 African Americans were lynched, 331 of them in Florida, making the state number one per capita, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) reported, according to New Times. Six Florida counties were among 25 in the South with the highest instances of lynching: Orange, 34; Marion, 30; Alachua, 19; Polk, 19; Columbia, 17; and Taylor, 17.

Floridians must learn about this history so they can understand why the state, and the nation, has to be coping with seemingly intractable problems. That is what CRT – critical race theory – was designed to do. It was developed least 50 years ago to find answers as to why racial progress has not followed passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the AP noted, adding, “It centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people in society.”

DeSantis, a 43-year-old native of Jacksonville and a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, should want to be enlightened about the history of the state which he has governed since 2019. Instead, this is what he said about CRT in his Wildwood speech: "Nobody wants this crap, OK? This is an elite-driven phenomenon being driven by bureaucratic elites, elites in universities and elites in corporate America and they’re trying to shove it down the throats of the American people. You’re not doing that in the state of Florida.”

DeSantis is up for re-election next year and may seek the presidency in 2024 if former President Donald Trump does not run. He seems to believe that he has to whip up the base with inflammatory and patently false rhetoric.

BLACKS FOR RON

But, also as in the case of Trump, it is working for him. He leads in 12 of 14 polls for the 2022 gubernatorial election, according to FiveThirtyEight, which analyses polling data, James Call reported in The Tallahassee Democrat in November. A Saint Leo University poll put his approval rating at 56 percent, compared to just over 49 percent in 2018. His campaign has already raised $60 million, or 20 times more than any Democratic challenger.

Democratic State Sen. Shevrin Jones of Miami Gardens, responding to DeSantis’ remarks on CRT, accused him and other critics of “trying to whitewash history while making a statement that children are being taught to hate their skin color … I call B.S. on that. I would never go to my Jewish brothers and sisters and tell them the Holocaust never happened, I would never go the indigenous community to say their land being taken away from them never happened, I would never go try to distort someone’s history all for a political field goal.”

Jones is, however, trying to make a moral appeal to people who insist on continuing to promote the myth that the United States is a “white” country founded and developed by European Americans. Too many Americans are allowing them to get away with it. And, by the way, probably 75,000 African Americans voted for DeSantis. Go figure.