CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – The NAACP issued a breathtaking slander of Florida earlier this month. They issued a travel advisory to blacks and gays that it isn’t safe for the to vacation or visit there. The claim is that the state is openly hostile to those minorities.
This is the kind of stuff that comes out of the southbound end of a northbound mule.
And it disgraces the NAACP’s very practical travel advisories from decades ago. In the Jim Crowe south, a black traveler would have no way of knowing if they were passing through a town where they couldn’t get a meal, or use a restroom, or find a place to sleep at night. There were – well into the 1960s – so called “sunset towns,” were it wasn’t safe for minorities to be after dark.
But the new travel advisory is nothing like that. It’s the NAACP’s political swipe at Governor Ron DeSantis. They have policy differences with him, and the travel advisory is a way of publicizing that. The governor says state universities should do away with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion offices. That doesn’t mean a vacation to Ft. Lauderdale is unsafe. The incorrectly referenced “don’t say gay” law isn’t keeping a single LGBTQ vacationer away from Disney’s Pride Days next month.
Some of Governor DeSantis’ allies have noted that many NAACP execs have taken Florida vacations, most notable NAACP Vice Chair Karen Boykin-Towns, who tweeted photos of her Florida vacation last spring. Where is the NAACP’s travel warning against Chicago, where liberal city leaders are ineffective at stopping breathtaking levels of black-on-black gang violence every weekend?
There are 3.3-milllion blacks living in Ron DeSantis’ Florida, making up about one-third of the state’s population. One thing that the ultra-liberal NAACP can’t stand is that DeSantis easily won reelection in an ethnically pluralistic state. Statistics reveal the lie: 50-percent of black families own their own homes in Florida. They are not putting down roots in a state where they are unsafe.
Chris Conley
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