The sanitized version of Roald Dahl’s books removed a reference to black tractors, apparently because it was deemed racially offensive. That’s problematic, but wiping relevant racial information out of factual material is much worse. An educational pamphlet produced by Studies Weekly was revised to omit any reference to racial issues in a capsule discussion of Rosa Parks.

The revised text says: “Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat. She did not. She did what she believed was right.” There’s no mention of why she was told to move. A child reading that today might think she had sat in a seat reserved for handicapped passengers.

Supposedly Studies Weekly removed the racial references from the earlier version because Florida law “prohibits instruction that would compel students to feel responsibility, guilt or anguish for what other members of their race did in the past, among other limits.” That makes no sense. Teaching that some white people did bad things in the past induces guilt only if you assume the very premise the law forbids assuming: that people should bear the guilt for what their ancestors did.

On the same page, the text for Fred Korematsu is even worse. The article doesn’t say whether it was toned down from an earlier version, but the same logic might have applied. It says, “Fred Korematsu grew up in California. He wanted to be treated with respect. Some people treated him differently. He worked hard for everyone to be treated with respect.”

Well, yes. “some people treated him differently.” Specifically, the U.S. government sent him to a concentration camp for being Japanese-American.

The good news is that the Florida Department of Education rejected Studies Weekly’s interpretation of the law. In fact, it said that any publisher that “avoids the topic of race when teaching the Civil Rights movement, slavery, segregation, etc. would not be adhering to Florida law.” It rejected the Studies Weekly submission on unrelated grounds.

The Internet rumor mill is probably already saying that Florida law forced Studies Weekly to omit racial references. That’s not true. This was one more case of a publisher, for reasons of its own, erasing race-related controversies.