Advocates say new Florida standards require slavery to be taught as 'beneficial'

www.wmfe.org Advocates say new Florida standards require slavery to be taught as 'beneficial'

The Florida Board of Education approved a new set of standards for teaching African American history in the state.

News @lemmy.world

www.wmfe.org /education/2023-07-19/advocates-say-new-florida-standards-require-slavery-to-be-taught-as-beneficial

215 36

You're viewing a single thread.

16 comments

The Florida Department of Education says the new standards don’t teach that slavery was beneficial.
However, one of the benchmarks (SS.68.AA.2.3) states students will be taught, “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Anyone able to think of a good argument for explicitly requiring this? I'm having trouble thinking of why you'd call this out in the standards unless, you know, you are a fan of slavery...
- Obvious attempt to move the Overton Window on the topic of slavery
  
  They want it back.
- Sounds like one of those things they can defend as "technically the truth" which will slowly have the context around it eroded until it looks entirely positive.
  
  Yeah all the bullshit they've been up to is just trying to slowly chip away at the truth on this subject. Death by 1000 cuts and all that. It's why they're so batshit crazy about "CRT".
  
  "Slaves were given free food, housing, and job skills! They were basically treated like family."
- I read through the first 20 pages or so. It's a weird document. It looks like it was drafted not so much to push the GOP narrative openly, but to PERMIT a school to run a pretty racist curriculum and get away with it. Most of what we might expect in a reasonable set of K-12 standards is there, but there are some odd choices to have made, and some really creepy prioritization and re-contextualization. Here are a few:
  Multiple references to slavery in other cultures and especially the slave trade in Africa and Barbary pirates kidnapping Europeans. Some strong "whataboutism" vibes there.
  A lot of discussion about indentured servitude. More than would be necessary I think.
  Talking about how the Continental Congress was so much more anti-slavery than King George III.
  Invoking George Washington as an example of an anti-slavery voice.
  Making sure to mention Nat Turner and John Brown in the same breath as Frederick Douglass. Sure it's "compare", but we couldn't even get a "contrast" tucked in there? And again, there's probably schools where the first two will be treated with a lot more empathy than others.
  The line in the news story about developing skills; not technically a lie, but Jesus fuckin' Christ that's a lot of missing context to blow by in search of a tiny thread they can view as a silver lining.
  Making sure to call out acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans when bringing up early 20th century race riots like Rosewood and Tulsa.
  Invoking Clarence Thomas as a "pioneer" and including Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele in the list of "political figures who shaped the modern Civil Rights efforts."
  I'm quite sure I'm missing some. This is a creepy-ass document, but it includes enough decent history to make it a Trojan Horse more than a battering ram. It's not (on its own, at least) going to preclude teachers from teaching something better, but it IS going to allow Coach Bumblefuck in the exurbs to MAGA his way through the African American studies unit, or allow Principal Stonewall Jackson Beauregard in Pensacola to fire the new history teacher who doesn't point out that a lot of slaves were treated just fine and learned new skills and became free when God willed it.
  
  There's a Slavery exhibit at the Atlanta History Museum that they built for the 96 Atlanta Olympics. It's filled with this crap, the "a lot of the slaves ended up in poverty, were they really worse off?" bullshit. It makes me sick.
- Boy you said it. I cannot fathom how anyone who pays even a little bit of attention and is a decent human can stomach any of this abhorrent behavior from elected officials.
  So our forbears did some awful shit. Fucking deal with it, don't try to pretend it didn't happen.

16 comments