Ron DeSantis’s censorship of any books that might make white students–particularly the male ones–feel bad about racism in the United States forced Duval County, Florida to remove a biography of the man for whom Major League Baseball’s humanitarian award is named.
NBC News reports “Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates” was removed by school officials because passages in the book detail the racism the Black Puerto Rican baseball player experienced as he rose to stardom in the sport, and they felt it was inappropriate subject matter for the K-3rd grade target audience. Another book, on the life of Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor, was also part of the 176 books reported from an outside watchdog group that have been removed from Duval school libraries. The county had retained 52 media specialists to review 1.5 million books, magazines, videos and other things that are housed at school facilities to determine their appropriateness under DeSantis’s law banning the teaching of things like slavery, racism, women’s rights and the fact that LGBTQ people exist.
An outspoken advocate for social issues relating to race and poverty, the 38-year-old Clemente died in a plane crash as he helped ship supplied to earthquake victims in Nicaragua in 1972. The future Hall of Famer’s career ended with him having exactly 3,000 hits, 12 Gold Gloves, an MVP award and two World Series championships.