Benefited From Slavery? Florida Black History Guidelines Under Fire
VP Harris vs. Gov. DeSantis Spar Over History Curriculum
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🗞 A DEBATE IN FLORIDA OVER SLAVERY ‘BENEFITS’
via CNN
A new set of guidelines for how Black history should be taught in Florida public schools has prompted immediate — and fierce — uproar from critics who say it’s sugarcoating American history.
CONTROVERSIAL CURRICULUM
Florida’s Board of Education last week finalized a 216-page curriculum, which includes guidance to teach middle schoolers and junior high students about how slavery helped some African Americans develop skills which benefited them.
The new social studies standards apply to 6th-8th graders. Here are the most controversial elements:
How slaves reaped the benefits from the skills they acquired during slavery. The controversial new guidelines direct teachers to instruct: “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Members of the state working group say the new language is meant to show that slaves were not merely victims, but learned specialized skills that helped sometimes win their freedom and lead to jobs after slavery.
Some lessons will place partial blame on Black people for violence during the nation’s most devastating race massacres. For example, when students learn about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre (when dozens of African Americans were killed when they went to vote) they’ll be taught about the "acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans."
Other notorious massacres that fall under these new guidelines include the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, DC Race Riot, 1921 Tulsa Massacre, and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.
Florida state officials defend the updated curriculum, noting that the guidelines address the many horrors of slavery, and still touch on the “darkest” parts of U.S. history. “It’s the good, the bad, and the ugly in American history,” Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr said last week.
The guidelines are the latest changes in the aftermath of Florida’s Stop Woke Act, which passed in 2022 and was touted by Gov. Ron DeSantis, and required that lessons on race be taught in an “objective” way that does not “indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”
CUE THE BACKLASH
Critics say the new guidelines rewrite and omit key facts about slavery.
“Our children deserve nothing less than truth, justice, and the equity our ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for.”
Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, condemning the curriculum.
The Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers union, called the new standards "a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994."
The outrage reached the Vice President Kamala Harris, who immediately traveled to Jacksonville on Friday to attack the new guidelines in Florida. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it,” she said in remarks directed at Gov. DeSantis.
DeSantis is also taking heat from a couple Republican rivals on the campaign trail. Will Hurd, a former congressman from Texas, who is the son of a Black father and a White mother tweeted: “Slavery wasn’t a jobs program that taught beneficial skills. It was literally dehumanizing and subjugated people as property because they lacked any rights or freedoms.”
DESANTIS’ RESPONSE: IT WASN'T ME
DeSantis appeared to deflect blame when pressed on the controversy. “I didn’t do it. I wasn’t involved in it… I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life.”
“‘I didn’t do it’ and ‘I’m not involved in it’ are not the words of leadership,” 2024 GOP Candidate Chris Christie replied Sunday.
DeSantis was asked repeatedly about it over the weekend, and reiterated that “these are the most robust standards in African American history, probably anywhere in the country.” He also accused VP Harris of being a “demagogue.”
This is the latest in an ongoing fight in Florida over how Black history should be taught in schools. In January, Florida’s Board of Education rejected a new AP course on African American history for high school student, that it claimed “pushed a political agenda” with topics like Black Lives Matter and reparations.
✔︎Mo News Reality Check: DeSantis has used his fight against "wokeness" as a major tenet of his presidential campaign. He’s touted a number of measures enacted on his watch that have inspired other states to follow suit — like when Florida became the first to allow parents to challenge books in school libraries that they deemed inappropriate.
What we’re watching: This latest controversy puts DeSantis on the defensive just as he is trying to reset his stagnating campaign, and he is now facing incoming from the Biden White House and Republican rivals like Trump.
DeSantis is one of the few people Biden and Trump agree about, but for different reasons. Trump sees DeSantis as his biggest threat to the GOP nomination, and Biden would prefer to face Trump in a general election.
⏳ SPEED READ
An unidentified flying object photographed in New Mexico in 1957 - BETTMANN via Vanity Fair
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🗓 ON THIS DAY: JULY 24
Franck Fife/Agence France-Presse, 2003, via the New York Times
1974: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Richard Nixon had to provide transcripts of Watergate tapes to the special prosecutor. Nixon would resign 16 days later.
1998: The World War II drama Saving Private Ryan, starring Tom Hanks, was released. It earns five Academy Awards, including best director for Steven Spielberg.
2001: NSYNC releases their fourth and final album, ‘Celebrity,” featuring “Pop” and “Girlfriend.”
2005: American cyclist Lance Armstrong became the first rider to win the Tour de France seven times. Several years later, he was stripped of all his titles after an investigation revealed that he was doping while he compiled his victories.
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