On Tuesday, Florida’s Senate Education Committee approved SB 148, which was sponsored by state Sen. Manny Diaz Jr.

“An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, does not bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex. An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race,” the bill states, according to Vanity Fair.

The bill also targets critical race theory, although it doesn’t mention the ideological movement directly, CBS News reports.

According to Vanity Fair, state Sen. Shevrin Jones said the bill “was directed to make whites not feel bad about what happened years ago. At no point did anyone say white people should be held responsible for what happened, but what I would ask my white counterparts is, are you an enabler of what happened, or are you going to say we must talk about history?”

DeSantis said that CRT is “crap,” and pledged to pass legislation giving permission for parents and employees to sue if they are subjected to listening to the theory, according to Vanity Fair. 

MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones wrote that the bill is about “prioritizing white hypersensitivity over truthful teachings” and notes that “lessons about America’s racist and sexist past are acceptable only if they don’t offend white people.”

“To me, these new demands for fealty to fragile whiteness sound like a re-up of the Black Codes, laws instituted during and after the Civil War to reinforce white supremacy. In some states, the codes permitted capital punishment against Black people for minor crimes like petty theft, allowed whippings for vagrancy and swearing and banned Black land ownership. Florida’s particularly harsh codes allowed white people to beat Black workers for ‘disrespect,’ as historian Jerrell H. Shofner wrote in his 1976 essay on the state’s racist laws. Historian Joe M. Richardson wrote that white Floridians passed the codes out of fear that their racist world was crumbling around them,” Jones wrote.

“It seems DeSantis and Florida’s GOP-led legislature are operating with a similar fear. They see the facade of white supremacy — weak as it is — crumbling under the weight of high school lesson plans and workplace trainings. And bills like SB 148 are sad attempts to piece that facade back together,” Jones added.

“That’s why — if the white parents complaining about Black authors weren’t enough — it’s clear that the Florida bill is designed to coddle white people, even though it doesn’t mention them specifically,” he wrote.

Florida follows six other states that have taken measures to ban critical race theory, according to the World Population Review.