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Two Black History “Experts” in Florida Display Spectacular Ignorance
They list examples of slaves who benefited from slavery but forgot to fact-check themselves
Two of the “scholars” responsible for devising Florida’s new African American history instruction standards provided a list of historical examples. They listed names of Blacks who acquired skills during slavery that they then used for their future benefit.
My eyes lit up; nothing I love more than a fact-checking exercise.
It turns out all of the examples they gave were false as to the point they were trying to make.
They included names of Blacks who never were slaves. They misidentified what skills some of them had. Those who actually had been slaves did not gain their skills while enslaved. Finally, a bonus prize that sent me into gales of laughter: they included a white woman in their list of Blacks benefitting from slavery. Wow.
When Republican operatives with an agenda masquerade as objective scholars, they don’t just fail but fail spectacularly. It was a full faceplant fail.
A guy from Michigan State and a Republican “documentary consultant”
It really was just two people responsible for the outrageous notions in the Florida Black history teaching standards. Other members of the workgroup do not recall ever actually agreeing to that language about “slavery benefitting” Blacks.
You have to admit, Republicans truly are audacious when it comes to ramming ahead with what they want regardless of what other people might think or their objections.
Here is how this all went down, in the Cliff Notes version of the story.
Florida has had for decades an entity called the African American History Task Force. It was created in 1994 and comprised of Black educators and community leaders from across Florida. It was supposed to provide input on the teaching of Black history.
They were bypassed and kept in the dark about these new standards.
Instead, the DeSantis regime had created a new entity called the African American History Workgroup with 13…
