Many of us are familiar with the term “Not all skin folk are kinfolk.” We recognize that not all people of the same racial or ethnic makeup are working or in the business of making life better for Black people. The Surgeon General of Florida Dr. Joseph Ladapo has once again proven himself to be one of those people!
As surgeon general for the third largest state in the country, Dr. Ladapo is tasked with advising the state government on health and science based recommendations that should advance the quality of life for Floridians. I don’t claim to be a doctor, but I believe we can all agree that some things are pretty standard and common practice. Drinking water is good for you. Eating vegetables is beneficial. Exercise of any kind is helpful. Yet it seems that Dr. Ladapo seems to deem some things as “controversial.”
Let’s go back to 2020. Although some would rather forget, all of us were relegated to being in our homes for an extended period of time because there happened to be a global health pandemic that killed thousands of our friends and neighbors. It was Dr. Ladapo at the urging of Ron DeSantis that not only balked at scientific and public health recommendations to close certain spaces and create safer guidelines, but went as far as to reclassify COVID deaths as the flu in order to downplay the severity of the crisis.
More recently, although I thought we could all agree that brushing our teeth with fluoride enriched toothpaste was a good thing, Dr. Ladapo again at the urging of Ron DeSantis, determined that fluoride in drinking water (which had been common practice for the last 50 years) was now “dangerous” although dentists across the country had determined that that practice had led to cavity reduction in children across the country.
Which brings us to Dr. Ladapo’s most recent “discovery.” After decades of children entering school having received their immunization shot for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) Dr. Ladapo (at this point I trust Dr. Pepper more than him) has determined that we need to end this mandate and go at life as if it’s the 1940’s again. After years of seeing minimal occurrences of these once deadly diseases the Surgeon General of Florida wants our state to be the first state in the country to end the immunization requirement that has again been common practice for the last 50 years.
As I’ve written about extensively, Ron DeSantis has repeatedly proven himself incapable of doing anything in support of the uplifting of Black people, but it is folks like Dr. Joseph Ladapo that poses a threat to our community, because they hide behind their degrees and skin color while simultaneously putting our communities at risk claiming some moral high ground in defense of those that have repeatedly proven themselves untrustworthy. To Dr. Ladapo I leave you with this James Baldwin quote “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”
Dwight M. Bullard is a former Florida state senator and the senior political advisor of Florida Rising.