Four Black Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday joined the growing chorus of critics opposing “racist tropes” in Florida’s new K-12 history curriculum, which includes teaching middle school students “the resurrection of one of the greatest lies America has ever told itself, that slavery benefited the enslaved.”
“Your decision to rewrite history to ingrain white supremacy into the minds of children is a colossal step backward and an insult to Black people, descendants of slaves, and the intellect of the American people,” three Florida Democrats — Reps. Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, and Frederica Wilson — and Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) wrote to the state’s Department of Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. and Board of Education Chairman Ben Gibson.
The first-of-its-kind standards approved Wednesday by the Florida board “are not the truth of American history but riddled with falsehoods that minimize the unique racial terror experienced by Black people in America throughout time,” the lawmakers argued.
“These standards are out of touch with reality and will leave future generations of Floridians out of touch and disadvantaged in the world outside of Florida,” they warned. “Even worse, it plants the sinister thought that enslavement and continued harm toward Black people today is also acceptable and beneficial.”
Action I just took on the new bigoted teaching standards in Florida that want kids to learn that Black people received “benefits” from being enslaved. 👇🏾 https://t.co/k8teEb67zO
— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) July 21, 2023
Florida’s mandated instruction that enslaved people developed “skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” has garnered national attention but “is not the only dangerous falsehood,” the quartet highlighted. They pointed out that the curriculum for middle school students “also requires downplaying and tempering the horror of American slavery by requiring it is coupled with teaching, ‘how slavery was utilized in Asian, European, and African cultures,’ ‘the similarities and differences between serfdom and slavery,’ and ‘comparative treatment of indentured servants of European and African extraction.'”
Additionally, for high schoolers, the standards “list massacres of Black people in America as, ‘examples of acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans,’ falsely assigning shared responsibility to Black victims,” the lawmakers noted.
“We demand the Florida Board of Education immediately reverse its decision,” they concluded. “Not repealing these new standards would dig up the corpse of the worst version of our nation and force our children to live in it.”
Frost, Cherfilus-McCormick, Wilson, and Horsford aren’t the only critics of the Florida curriculum in Congress. U.S. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a Black former teacher and principal, tweeted Friday that “this is an outright attempt to rewrite history and ignore America’s past of racial exploitation and violence and the trauma from the impact of slavery on Black Americans.”
The attempt to push a revisionist history in Florida, suggesting enslaved people 'benefited' from their bondage, is not only deeply insulting but dangerous.
— Rep. Jonathan Jackson (@rep_jackson) July 21, 2023
We must be true to our history, even when it's painful. Thank you, @VP Harris, for standing up for the truth. https://t.co/NvEMevzTHs
Congressman Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) — a son of civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson — thanked Vice President Kamala Harris “for standing up for the truth” by blasting the Florida standards and declared that “we must be true to our history, even when it’s painful.”
The national alarm over Florida’s curriculum comes after the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — now a GOP 2024 presidential candidate — earned widespread criticism earlier this year for rejecting an Advanced Placement course about African American studies for high school students.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.