‘Permission to Segregate? The Florida Permission Slip Situation Is Bullshit!’

“This Is Nothing More Than a Racist, Horrible Throwback
to the Segregationist Pre-Brown v. Board of Education Era.”

 

By Daryl Davis

Now almost 66 years of age, I am recalling my elementary grade school years when all I had to do to go to the restroom was raise my hand and when called upon, tell my teacher my dilemma. Permission was granted. In my junior high school years, sex education was being introduced. Many parents were up in arms. They were not teaching the birds and bees to their kids at home and damn sure didn’t want teachers teaching it to them at school. If they don’t learn it at home and are restricted from learning it in school, kids became very resourceful and began learning it on the street. Parents were becoming grandparents long before their time.

While I did not contribute to the issue of babies having babies, of all the schools in affluent Montgomery County, Maryland, mine had the highest pregnancy rate. Permission slips were sent home requesting parental signatures to allow their child to take Sex Ed. Today, Sex Ed is part of the regular curriculum in many schools. As a result, kids are better educated about venereal disease (VD), sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), contraception, abortion, family planning, and abstinence. As a result, kids now make better informed decisions. In high school, because of fights, skipping school, and other illicit activities, we were required to have signed permission slips to be in the hallway during class whether we were going to the bathroom or to the library.

While I considered some requests for permission over those years to be utterly ridiculous, they were not discriminatory nor harmful nor derogatory. This was the evolution of permission slips during my K-12 years.

Today in 2024, I find myself appalled at the devolution of the permission slip. A schoolteacher at the K-8 Coral Way Center in the Miami-Dade Florida School District sent home a permission slip requesting a parental/legal guardian signature giving consent for the student to “Participate & listen to a book written by an African American.” This racist, horrible throwback to the segregationist pre-Brown v. Board of Education era took place this past February during Black History Month. Neither the book title, the topic, nor the author were named.

Are you kidding me??? Since when are the contributions of Black Americans not to be qualified as an equal part of American History? Would this same teacher have required parental permission for students to participate & listen to a book written by a White American author, perhaps Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Allen Poe, William Faulkner, or Walt Whitman? Because the teacher neither named the author nor the topic, but intentionally named an entire group of people by specifying, “African American author,” it is logical to assume this would include Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Jr., Toni Morrison, Alex Haley, Maya Angelou, and virtually every American author who just happens to be Black.

Ben Gibson, the Florida State Board of Education Chair responded that there may have been some confusion over the interpretation of the law and clarity was required.

Under Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, Rule 6A-10.085, requires parental/legal guardian permission for: “Field Trips, Extra Curricular Activities, and Other Supplemental Programs and Activities.” Did this teacher perhaps confuse slaves working the cotton and tobacco fields with “Field Trips,” or did he/she think that reading about the contributions of George Washington Carver and Dr. Charles Drew were “Extra Curricular Activities?” Common sense would dictate if a teacher were confused he or she should seek clarity from their supervisor. By disseminating this permission slip, this teacher clearly demonstrates he or she did not think they needed clarity.

Without presenting any evidence of intentional deception, Florida Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr., called this situation a “hoax.” If we bother to stretch our short term memory back to June 1964, three Civil Rights Workers vanished in Mississippi. Many of the locals as well as J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI called their disappearance a “hoax.” The three men James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, were later found to have been brutally murdered by the Ku Klux Klan with the assistance of local law enforcement including the sheriff and his deputy. Ever since the end of WWII in which six million Jews were exterminated, there has been a movement that continues today calling the Holocaust a “hoax.”

Perhaps Mr. Gibson and Mr. Diaz should be doing a better job of vetting the teachers they hire to teach the children in the Florida public school system instead of trying to shift the focus to lack of clarity and a made up hoax. This begs the question, what other things has this teacher done or may be capable of doing in the future in the name of lack of clarity or a hoax? We don’t know the gender or color of this teacher, and it doesn’t matter. No teacher regardless of their color or gender, should ever send out such a repulsive and racially triggering permission slip.

Thank goodness for the student’s father for bringing this to the public’s attention by exposing this permission slip. To this day, the name of the teacher at the center of this controversy has not been disclosed nor has there been any response to, defense of, or apology for his or her action.

Those in power to take action and make appropriate changes to how and why teachers send home permission slips appear to have swept this under the rug and moved on with their curriculums leaving parents little trust of what teachers find necessary to teach, or perhaps in this case, not teach their children.

Daryl Davis has obtained unprecedented access to members of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist movement for more than three decades, making him one of the most unique race relations experts and activists in the country. Davis, who is also an accomplished musician, obtained his Bachelor of Music Degree from Howard University and performs and tours regularly with his group, the Daryl Davis Band. He has worked with music legends Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley’s Jordanaires and Percy Sledge, to name a few. He has received acclaim for his book, Klan-Destined Relationships, and his work in race relations from CNN, National Public Radio, The Washington Post and other news organizations. He was the subject of the 2016 documentary “Accidental Courtesy,” which received international acclaim and multiple film awards.