Florida Tweaks New Social Studies Standards But Keeps The Part About Slaves Benefiting From Slavery
Students and others rally to protest Florida education policies outside Orlando City Hall on April 21, 2023, in Orlando, Florida. | Source: Anadolu / Getty
In today’s episode of Welp, Florida Is Still Florida, on Wednesday, the Florida Board of “Education” approved several changes to its new standard for teaching history and social studies in schools, which it approved last year, but the board didn’t change any of the aspects of the new standard that were the most controversial—and by “controversial,” I mean egregiously racist.
As we previously reported, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Placating White Fragility (we all know that’s a more fitting name) approved teaching impressionable young minds that enslaved people benefitted from slavery and Black victims of racist massacres also committed violence against white people. Specifically, the new standards require students to be taught that slavery wasn’t all bad because “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” They also include teaching that during America’s historic race massacres, such as the 1920 Ocoee massacre, the Tulsa race massacre and the Rosewood race massacre, “acts of violence (were) perpetrated against and by African Americans.”
Well, according to Politico, all of that self-serving white nationalist nonsense is still on the books in Florida, and advocacy groups like the Florida Education Association teachers union—the people who are actually responsible for educating Florida students—are rightfully unhappy about it.
“It still refers to slavery as having a potential benefit,” Andrew Spar, president of the FEA, said during the state board meeting in Miami. “And that is a concern, as well as making sure that our students have a complete and honest history around both the African American experience and all experiences in our country.”
Here’s what I wrote previously about those “experiences” and how Florida officials are doing the most to ensure they’re taught about through a very Caucasian and fragile lens:
Are DeSantis and his Klan-ish board of White Nationalism 101 professors under the impression that Black people couldn’t have “developed skills which, in some instances, applied to their personal benefit” while being free citizens? Do they think abducted Africans needed the crack of a whip on their backs in order to learn how to tend a cotton field or construct the buildings white people excluded them from? DeSantis wants to ban the very term “white privilege” into woke oblivion, but do y’all understand how white and privileged one would have to be in order to view the institution of slavery this way?
But Florida’s new standards for making Black history palatable for white consumption doesn’t stop there. The standards also take a Trump-like “very fine people on both sides” approach to teaching about race massacres in which mobs of white people attacked and brutally murdered Black people for fighting for equality and/or for simply existing.
Mind you, members of the Florida Board of Wiping Caucasian Hindparts With Black History (again, definitely more fitting) who were tasked with reviewing the state’s AP studies course voiced concerns that the curriculum didn’t offer any “opposing viewpoints” or “other perspectives” of slavery. They were concerned that the course “may only present one side of this issue” and “may lead to a viewpoint of an ‘oppressor vs. oppressed’ based solely on race or ethnicity,” which, of course, accurately describes exactly what the transatlantic slave trade was.
As for the new standards for teaching Black history, it’s worth reminding you all that the board put unqualified Black conservative “educators” with no real expertise in Black History in charge of it, and those non-experts, at least initially, got most of their “history” completely wrong.
Anyway, there are a few changes that the board did make that some are also not happy about.
From Politico:
In one change, the state is requiring students to learn about the influences of ancient Jewish traditions on the founding of the United States as a constitutional republic.
While the tweak adds only one word — the study of “Jewish” civilizations alongside Greek and Roman history already entrenched in the lesson plan — it is giving pause to some religious freedom groups.
One organization, the Florida Freedom to Read Foundation, claims the addition could lead to schools teaching about the Ten Commandments, and that standard is “mandating that teachers expound on the Founding Fathers’ Christian faith and how that might have played into their framing of the Constitution.”
Now, one might consider it to be a stretch that any tweak to the standards might lead to the Ten Commandments and the Christian faith being taught in public schools, but it’s really not all that far-fetched considering the fact that House Republicans in Louisiana just approved requiring that the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom in the state from kindergarten through college. (For good measure, it’s also worth mentioning that, this year, both Louisiana and Florida successfully dismantled predominately Black voting districts for no other reason than to dilute Black voting power.)
Yeah—DeSantis and the Florida Board of Miseducation have made it beyond clear that the point isn’t to teach history and social studies accurately, it’s to teach it in a way that preserves the collective white American delusion. That’s it and that’s all.
SEE ALSO:
Florida Wants To Teach ‘Opposing Viewpoints’ And ‘Other Perspectives’ Of Slavery
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