Florida Democrat Introduces Bill To Prevent Teaching That Black People 'Benefited From Slavery'
Florida Democrat Introduces Bill To Prevent Teaching That Black People 'Benefited From Slavery'
Earlier this year, Florida sparked national controversy when it revised its public educational standards to include content that whitewashed the history of slavery. These changes to the state’s public school curriculum were one of many seemingly anti-Black policy changes in the Sunshine State over t...
It's depressing that something like that is needed in the first place.
Yeah it is. I've actually heard people make this argument too. How stupid do you have to be to believe that?
Having read the standards, possibly the worst part about them is that it's not written such that you have to teach that racist bs, but it's obviously written to give cover to those who do. So it's not so much that it's supporting a bullshit way of looking at slavery as an institution in the past. It's really supporting the horrible people who continue to think that way today, and enabling them to pass it on to a new generation.
I could make a half hearted Devil's advocate argument about it, but ultimately it's a major detriment to the people living under slavery. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=evi_i7R0SFQ& just listen to the words of this letter and tell me that it was a benefit.
Our government is broken.
We shouldn't need to pass a bill to prevent lies and irrational theories from being taught. Honestly, I can't think of a reason why government should be telling teachers what they should be discussing at all (just like telling mothers how to deal with their health) - other than ensuring that children be given the best opportunities in the real world.
new standards published by the Florida State Board of Education earlier this year, which included language on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
How the hell does a school board even exist that could adopt this? This should never have passed in the first place. There's too many bandaids in government resolving things that shouldn't have ever been passed by idiots in the first place.
How the hell can anyone (DeSantis) continue being a government leader while claiming that slavery is beneficial?
This is what happens when people have little choice in elections but to vote for the candidates they dislike the least. We don't get to vote for people we like, for people we believe to represent our values. We're screwed by a two party system that's funded by corporations and legislated by lobbyists. Ranked. Choice. Voting.
I had a sociology professor who taught us about Harriett Jacobs as a counter to racist claims like this (because apparently students now have to have evidence to back up why slavery was bad. That's where we are.)
Harriet Jacobs lived in a crawl space for seven years after escaping her enslavers until she could make it to the north. I wish I could find the video we watched, but it basically said it was so small she couldn't even stand up. That would be considered torture in other circumstances. And imagine living in a crawl space with no heat in the winter or AC in the summer, in the South? But it was still preferable to being property.
How the hell does a school board even exist that could adopt this?
Florida is a retirement state full of old white people. They are the last vestiges of racism in its old form. Of course those old assholes are pushing back against the idea that it was their families that caused racial inequality in America.
It's like when descendants of Nazis try to say that their own grandpappy didn't do any of the killing, he just had the swastika on his uniform he wasn't that bad.
We shouldn’t need to pass a bill to prevent lies and irrational theories from being taught. Honestly, I can’t think of a reason why government should be telling teachers what they should be discussing at all (just like telling mothers how to deal with their health) - other than ensuring that children be given the best opportunities in the real world.
We have a public school system, and you very much want that public school system regulated. You cannot ensure that students have opportunities without regulating education.
What you don't want is fucking lunatics in your legislature, saying things like "slavery good."
This is what happens when people have little choice in elections but to vote for the candidates they dislike the least.
Their candidates ran on exactly this. This was their campaign promise. Their voters got exactly what they wanted.
Government isn't broken. People are.
How the hell does a school board even exist that could adopt this? This should never have passed in the first place.
Because Republicans aren't like Democrats when it comes to strategy (that is to say, awful). This is happening at school boards across the country. It's a concerted effort to pack these boards with Christian nationalist lunatics. And they've been quite successful so far, there hasn't been much push back until recently, but by now they already have a lot of control.
Yes it is. You guys are due to overthrow it.
Even with a lobotomy i wouldnt come up with such braindead takes as "black people benefited from slavery". As sane as saying homeless people benefit from fentanyl addiction or that african people benefit from hunger.
It's white man's burden BS slipping back in, where people (like Robert E. Lee) would say "We don't want to enslave these people, it's just our duty to civilize them."
I assume it's some kind of mechanism for maintaining their cognitive dissonance.
There's a clip where white supremacist Richard B. Spencer (who has family ties to plantation history) argues the point against UK Guardian writer Gary Younge.
Homeless people should clearly all be given cocaine so that they are less hungry. I mean c'mon!
And more productive!
The actual curriculum was good. Ignorant people easily manipulated by lies about made up bigotry were just tricked to sic their bigotry on Florida
Good. Put out a plain bill that bans something they claim won't happen, and get them on record.
DeSantis is going to invariably weigh in on this and make things even worse for himself
"get them on record" nobody cares about that shit anymore when they have an 'R' next to their name. Pointing out the hypocrisy has been a waste of time for a long time. They don't care.
correct. getting them on record doesn't do shit -- but making sure they are legally liable if they do try that bullshit might help.
Even so, there's a line of racism that is still too far. Musk shows that well. It's still worth getting them on record for appalling things in case that's the straw that breaks the camel's back.
We have Trump on record admitting that he committed tons of crimes.
He’s still allowed to lead this country.
Luckily Desantis is no Trump. I will die before I'm able to wrap my head around what his followers see in him, but for whatever reason he pretty much really can do whatever he wants with zero repercussions. Desantis just doesn't have that.
Again, I will never understand it.
The great thing about this is that any argument against this which isn't explicitly focused on confronting the racial aspect, is an argument against the Don't Say Gay law.
Good. Black people did not.
And while we're at it, neither did Native Americans. And we enslaved them far longer than we enslaved black people:
This practice continued throughout the colonial era aided and encouraged by Native American tribes themselves up through 1750 and, after the American War of Independence (1775-1783), natives were pushed into the interior as African slavery became more lucrative. Even so, the enslavement of Native Americans continued even after slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. Americans got around illegal enslavement of natives by calling it by other names and justified it in the interests of "civilizing the savages". The practice continued up through 1900, dramatically impacting Native American cultures, languages, and development.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1742/native-american-enslavement-in-colonial-america/
Guess how much of that they teach in U.S. schools?
Judge: "Mr. Jones, you can't own slaves. It's literally in the Constitution.
Jones: Your Honor, I'm just civilizing the savages. They need our guidance as they make their way into modernity."
Judge: "Oh, that's permissible. The Constitution doesn't say anything about the benevolent guidance of savages for our benefit. Carry on."
Saying that black people benefited from slavery is like saying a kidnapping is beneficial when people are rescued from it.
This is cognitive dissonance if I've ever seen it.
Better analogy is that carpet baggers benefitted the south.
Breaking news: Teaching children blatantly, shamelessly false information is bad. More on this unexpected development at 11!
Hopefully more on this Tuesday November 5th 2024
Everyone is talking past each other on this issue.
Some people who don't know anything are arguing that enslaved people literally benefited from slavery, but that's not what started this discussion.
Mm, yes, and what would happen if they tried to take these "transferable" skills and make money elsewhere?
Fucken rubes, how did we end up here?
This was exactly my view when this whole "black people learned valuable skills from slavery" thing came up.
Let's say it was true. Jim is a slave and he's learned a few valuable skills due to being a slave. How can Jim use those skills? It's not like he can just tell his master "I've decided to quit and open my own business." He's literally a slave. His entire being is owned by his master.
The only way he might be able to put those skills to good use would be to flee slavery. Even then, though, he'd first need to avoid capture or being killed. He'd have needed to make his way north to Canada. Former slaves couldn't just stop in a Northern "free" state because the South got a law passed to allow them to go into Northern states and drag escaped slaves (and sometimes free black people) back to the South.
The best case scenario for this "slave that learned valuable skills" is that they might be able to use those skills only after a perilous escape and journey during which they risked dying in a multitude of ways. There is no way that "but they learned useful skills" makes slavery any less horrific.
because the South got a law passed to allow them to go into Northern states and drag escaped slaves (and sometimes free black people) back to the South.
remember this when they try to cast the civil war as being about "states' rights". They wanted the federal government to stomp on the rights of free states. They put in their constitution that no confederate state had the right to be a free state. They tried to use force and violence to annex free states. They didn't give a fuck about states' rights. Anytime a conservative is talking about freedom he's talking about two freedoms in particular:
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his freedom to do what he wants
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his freedom to use violence to force you to do what he wants
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I refuse to have this argument in real life. This is the kind of shit politicians should be threatening fights over.