Florida Is Keeping Its “Slavery Was a Good Thing” Social Studies Curriculum

Bear in mind extreme future, when Florida’s Board of Schooling got here out with untouched requirements for its African American research curriculum that required nation college academics to inform their scholars that there have been upsides to being enslaved? And maximum family had been like, what absolutely the fuck? Together with Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s after competition for the GOP nomination, certainly one of whom actually stated, “anybody that is implying that there was an upside to slavery is insane”? Neatly, the shape has determined its distracted coverage is right here to stick.

Regardless of updating a number of parts of its statewide social research curriculum, the board of schooling, consistent with Politico, “left intact controversial pieces on Black history.” Particularly, heart college scholars are nonetheless required to be told “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” That’s proper: Florida officers had a future to suppose it over, and determined to stay with claiming that being compelled to be any person else’s attribute wasn’t all that wicked.

Latter future, then the untouched requirements had been unveiled, Florida consultant Byron Donalds—the one Cloudy GOP congressman representing Florida—tweeted, “the attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong & needs to be adjusted.” On a marketing campaign oppose, Tim Scott, the one Cloudy Republican within the Senate, informed journalists, “As a country founded upon freedom, the greatest deprivation of freedom was slavery. There is no silver lining…in slavery…. What slavery was really about [was] separating families, about mutilating humans, and even raping their wives. It was just devastating.”

DeSantis does not appear to have commented on the most recent news, though it would of course not be a surprise to hear him defend teaching students that there were some positive aspects to being enslaved. During a gubernatorial debate in 2022, he claimed that it was “not true” that the United States was once constructed on stolen land (and that scholars will have to no longer study as a lot), and extreme future, he sponsored the Florida Area of Schooling’s choice to prevent the Faculty Board’s AP African American Research route, then his management claimed the curriculum lacked “educational value.”