Florida governor owes an apology for blaming COVID-19 spike on ‘Hispanic’ workers | Opinion
The nation’s reckoning with racism is lost on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who deftly navigates the world of politically savvy white Republican Cuban-Americans but is tone deaf to the needs of the state’s diverse Latino community.
DeSantis also suffers from a debilitating, Trumpian-like sensitivity to criticism.
It blinds him to failures, particularly when it comes to his response to the coronavirus, which has been high on public relations for the governor, but low on transparency, delivery of resources, and what counts, stemming COVID-19 infection.
And so character, political alliances, and circumstances converged in this small but no less important chapter of the pandemic’s path through Florida.
Blaming Hispanic workers
When what experts warned would happen with a hasty and confusing reopening of the state economy happened — an alarming daily spike in the numbers of infections — DeSantis resorted to blaming one of Florida’s most humble and vulnerable populations.
At a press conference in Tallahassee, the governor said that “overwhelmingly Hispanic” day laborers and agriculture workers were the leading source of Florida’s surge in coronavirus cases.
The needless reference to ethnicity is vintage DeSantis dog-whistle politics, the kind of message that for supporters confirms prejudice while pretending to be factual.
Farm workers and construction workers have been testing positive because they live and work in cramped conditions, DeSantis said, providing little evidence other than to say migrant camps, a watermelon farm, and tomato producers in Immokalee had seen cases.
“Some of these guys go to work in a school bus, and they are all just packed there like sardines, going across Palm Beach County or some of these other places, and there’s all these opportunities to have transmission,” he said.
Blaming victims for their condition is never a praiseworthy strategy.
But in the case of essential workers — who put food on our tables and make an average of $10.65 an hour for grueling work under the hot Florida sun — takes on an added dimensions.
DeSantis remarks shameful
If high rates of infection are indeed happening, it’s mostly his fault.
The Farmworker Association of Florida begged DeSantis for help in keeping these essential workers safe from coronavirus contamination back in April.
The group asked for expanded access to COVID-19 testing in rural areas, for masks and other protective equipment for farm workers, and for help in securing alternative housing options to crowded quarters.
“We sent this letter to the governor more than two months ago and now he is realizing that foreign workers are more suitable to get infected,” Executive Director Antonio Tovar told the News Service of Florida. “That is very shameful because he was advised, he was told when we sent the letter.”
The governor ignored the pleas, Tovar said.
And he also ignored the issue when Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the only Democrat in the Cabinet, voiced similar concerns back when seasonal migrant workers were still in Florida in full swing. The harvest season winds down in May and those workers move on to other states, now thanks to DeSantis’ neglect, coronavirus status unknown.
The governor is deflecting responsibility — and “scapegoating Hispanics,” said Ricky Junquera, a Cuban-American millennial who is running for a seat in the Florida House, during a Monday press conference, where Hispanic Democrats asked DeSantis for an apology.
And most importantly, they asked again for work safety precautions for people who play a vital role in Florida’s economy.
But DeSantis has moved on.
Downplaying the surge in Florida
He’s too busy downplaying the surge to 103,506 coronavirus cases in Florida, explaining it off as increased testing and younger people who are asymptomatic and in less danger of requiring hospitalization testing positive.
He claims young people have “limited clinical significance” and other dismissive things like “it’s just the way the disease works.”
The fact that young people can easily transmit the deadly virus to others whose health is compromised is a mere detail. The fact that hospitals are self-reporting to the county new coronavirus admissions is something he’d rather overlook by not releasing statewide hospitalization data to the public.
DeSantis most likely will never issue an apology to the Hispanic community.
To do so, would imply he truly cares.
This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
