Euzhan Palcy’s film, Ruby Bridges, will remain an educational medium in the primary schools that have it in their catalog in Florida. A state where books have already been banned from school libraries.
“Victoire”French director Euzhan Palcy wrote on her twitter account to announce that her film, Ruby Bridges (1998), is maintained in the curriculum of an elementary school in Florida, USA. It had been removed from the North Shore Elementary catalog after a parent complained that the work would teach (link in english), among others, to children “Whites hate blacks”. The Disney film tells the true story of six-year-old Ruby Bridges, who became the first African-American student to enter an elementary school in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1960 following the vote to end segregation school.
Unanimous vote
The ban by the North Shore Elementary, a school located in St. Petersburg (Florida), was lifted Monday, April 3 after the meeting of a committee composed of parents and teachers. This one only lasted about twenty minutes. reports an ABC Action News reporter who also notes that the decision was applauded. “7-0”specified Euzhan Palcy to indicate that the votes”to keep the movie Ruby Bridges in the school curriculum was unanimous. The detractors didn’t even come…”, added the Martinican filmmaker while thanking all those who had supported hernaked.
A few days earlier, Euzhan Palcy had let it be known that “strong media and network coverage” changed the situation in this case. As reminded Guadeloupe the 1st, the events go back to March 2 where Ruby Bridges was shown to around sixty students. As required by the rules, the parents had been warned but two of them did not allow their children to see Ruby Bridges, reports ABC Action News. The parent, who later filed the complaint, is one of them.
“As Nelson Mandela said [le premier président noir de l’Afrique du Sud]people, especially children, don’t hate another person for the color of their skin, they have to’learn’ to hate, Euzhan Palcy remarked on social media a few days before the meeting that decided the fate of his film. An opinion shared by Ruby Bridges who spoke in a report dedicated to him by CBN News a few years ago.
Along the same lines, Euzhan Palcy points out that if children “can learn to hate, they can learn to love – teaching, especially intergenerational teaching, also means learning from past mistakes. Children have a lot of power to overcome the difficulties they have inherited from us. ignoring will not help them make better choices in the future.”
Racism, the eternal American taboo
For the filmmaker, “the greatness of a nation is measured by its ability to assume all the pages of its history”. The governor of Florida does not subscribe to this approach, believes Euzhan Palcy. “Governor DeSantis, likely candidate (presidential) of 2024, is the beachhead of a ferocious attack on the History he/she wishes to erase”, she writes.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, distinguished himself by his very conservative ideas. THE “culture wars” of DeSantis are numerous. The latest episode, recalls AFP, is the abolition in February of the special status of Disney (the largest employer in the state), “ending the benefits the Disney World theme park had enjoyed since the 1960s”. The Ddecision was taken in retaliation against the company “who had denounced a bill restricting the teaching of subjects related to sexual orientation in Florida elementary schools”. Robert Iger, the president of Disney denounced on March 4 an obstacle to freedom of expression.
Under DeSantis, Florida is becoming an increasingly puritanical state: a teacher was recently forced to resign for showing Michelangelo’s “David” naked. Similarly, books have been removed from state schools (link in English) because they dealt, among other things, with homosexuality or racial issues. Tea Wrap recalls that the work from which the film is adapted had also, in its time, been attacked by the conservatives