DeSantis’s corporate donors under fire for ‘hypocrisy’ over Black History Month

Companies such as Amazon, Disney and Walmart funded Florida governor who has imposed curbs on teaching about race in schools

Political activists in Florida have condemned the “hypocrisy” of large corporations that use Black History Month to denounce racism while donating hundreds of thousands dollars to the state’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis.

Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Disney and Walmart are among the companies that publicly proclaim their commitment to anti-racist values, especially after the 2020 police murder of George Floyd, an African American man in Minneapolis.

But research by the Center for Political Accountability, a non-profit organisation that tracks corporate political spending, shows that these same businesses donated directly and indirectly to the 2022 re-election campaign of DeSantis, who has imposed limits on how race and racism can be taught in Florida schools.

“These corporations can say that they stand with the Black community but then also fund the governor and his work around dismantling Black history,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, founder of Equal Ground, a progressive group based in Orlando, Florida. “It’s a huge level of hypocrisy.”