- Welcome to "Facing South Florida."
And this week, Ron DeSantis' State Board of Education
passed new standards for how African American history
should be taught in Florida classrooms.
The state of Florida will now require teachers
to explain the benefits of slavery for Blacks
and how slaves learned various skills
while they were slaves
that would be useful for them later in their lives.
Here is some of the public reaction
during a hearing by the Board of Education
in Orlando this week.
- Any kind of standards that indicate
that slavery benefited Black people is such an insult.
My husband is Black, my daughter is Black.
And the thought that slavery benefited them,
how could that be taught?
The fact that the pushback to reconstruction benefited them,
the fact that Jim Crow benefited them,
how can we teach that to students?
How can someone look at a child with a straight face
and say that slavery benefited Black people?
- And please, do not, do not, for the love of God,
tell kids that slavery was beneficial,
because I can guarantee you, it most certainly was not.
- And when covering massacres like Rosewood,
in which a group of whites went on a rampage in 1923,
killing and lynching Black men
and burning the town to the ground,
or the lesser-known Ocoee massacre of 1920
in which a mob of whites killed more than 30 Blacks
on Election Day because one of the Blacks had tried to vote.
Florida teachers will now be required
to discuss the violence,
not only towards Blacks during these events,
but how Blacks were violent, as well.
Here's what folks had to say about that requirement.
- Also, it mentions that the violence,
the Ocoee massacre talks about violence
perpetrated by African Americans.
So to me, this is complete gas lighting.
It's not reality, it's not fact-based.
- The intent behind the legislature's passage
of 2020's House Bill 1213 was to bring awareness
and understanding of the atrocity
that was the Ocoee massacre
to Florida's high school students.
And yet, with respect to standard SS AA 912 3.6,
which is the only standard
which references the Ocoee massacre,
it states that instruction includes acts of violence
perpetrated against and by African Americans.
The new standard suggests that violence by Black residents
in defense of their lives and homes
as they were surrounded by armed mobs and flames
and as they were forced to flee their homes
or be shot or burned, are to be included
as a seemingly equal part of the standard.
This is egregious if you understand what happened
to the Black residents in Ocoee in 1920
and the long-lasting impacts,
including the loss of life and property, trauma,
and the denial of generational wealth to their descendants.
- Now, when it comes to actually understanding the facts
about Black history, especially here in Florida,
there is no one better than Professor Marvin Dunn.
I asked for his reaction to these new standards.
- I was outraged.
I cannot believe that the Board of Education of Florida
is trying to justify the enslavement of people
by making it a mandatory subject in Florida schools
to teach that slaves benefited from being enslaved,
I think that's evil.
To argue that, well, because we made you a blacksmith
while you were enslaved, you learned that skill,
therefore, you should be grateful.
But suppose the person had not been enslaved,
you might have been a king or a doctor.
So what kind of a rationalization is it
that because we taught you something
or you learned yourself some skill that's useful later on,
that you should be grateful?
But that is a very strong feeling in the South
amongst some people, some white people.
"They should be grateful, we civilized them.
"We took them out of Africa, we made them more human.
"We made them Christians.
"And therefore, slavery itself was a good thing for Blacks."
That logic has not died in the South
and it has not died in Florida,
and it now lives in these standards.
- I'll be honest with you, I read through the standards
and I'm just baffled by so much of it.
I know a lot of attention has been paid
to that line that talks about how slavery allowed them
to develop certain skills that they could apply later.
And then of course, the other part of that had some outrage,
deals with the notion that a lot of these massacres
that have taken place- - Oh, yeah.
- Around the country, and then here, Ocoee,
you know, they have to now teach about the violence
to and by African Americans.
- But here's what's interesting, Jim-
- There are these things.
So you're a historian, set the record straight on that.
- Thank you for asking that question about Ocoee.
There was no Black violence against whites in Ocoee.
There were two white men killed in Ocoee,
but they were killed according to the sheriff
by friendly fire from whites who surrounded a house
and started shooting into it.
But the view is that Blacks in Ocoee
participated in the violence.
It's ridiculous.
They make the same argument about about Rosewood,
that it was an equivalent expression of racial violence.
You're trapped in your house with a mob outside,
they shoot and kill your mother dead,
she falls down on the floor in front of you,
and you defend your house and your mother's home.
And Florida now wants to teach
that that's equivalent racial violence on both sides?
It's a devastating standard to impose
on the school children of Florida.
- What do you think the purpose of it is?
- That's a very good question.
I think the purpose is to make the past evils
of slavery not as bad,
to minimize the impact of slavery on Blacks.
And in that way, maybe in a way, deal with white guilt,
whatever there may be of that left,
that's attached to that.
It's an attempt to rationalize enslavement
by arguing that you civilize the slave,
you gave them a benefit by enslaving them.
And in certain part of the South,
that's been a very long story.
- Well, one of the things that's interesting
that hasn't gotten as much attention
is one of the aspects that I noted
in the high school grades.
You know, they talk about, again,
this is an African American history course,
and the examination,
examine the condition of slavery as it existed in Africa,
Asia, the Americas, and Europe prior to 1619.
They want instruction on how there were similarities
between serfdom and slavery,
you know, in eastern Europe.
They wanna talk about, you know, in Asia,
how there was slavery in Asia.
It's almost as if sort of saying,
"America's slavery wasn't that special, wasn't that unique,
"wasn't that big a deal.
"You know, it was just basically something,
"everybody had slaves."
- American slavery was different.
American slavery was different.
It was the only system of enslavement
that made the people property, chattel property,
instead of human beings.
Every other system of slavery did not do that
to the enslaved.
Only in America were the enslaved reduced to property.
They're trying to make arguments in slavery
that slavery existed everywhere,
so what was so bad about American slavery?
It was particularly evil,
because it dehumanized the people who were enslaved.
- Well, one of the things
that I also thought was interesting is,
for elementary and middle school,
there's essentially no discussion
of the last 150 years of African American life.
Basically, the only thing that you're shown are,
you know, celebrities and athletes.
That's the extent of the, you know,
understanding of African American history
for grade school and middle school students.
- Part of my problem with the way Black history
has been taught over the generations
is to focus on individuals
who contributed to American history,
individual inventors who were Black.
That's all important.
What's not taught is the context of the history,
what was going on with people,
what were they doing to people
as these individuals were standing out.
I think it makes the story of Black people less important
when you point to individuals
who accomplished certain things, and that's important,
but not to tell what was going on.
What was going on in their lives
in Florida during this period?
We don't get that in these new standards.
- One of the things that I also can't help but notice
in reading through the standards myself,
is that there are two areas that they want to cover.
Early civil rights movement,
which they define as 1865 to 1896,
and then the modern civil rights era, 1945 to 1968.
Basically, Black history ends at 1968.
Yes, they will teach that Barack Obama became president,
but, you know, in terms of talking about movements,
'cause they talk about, you know,
the civil rights era and Martin Luther King
and John Lewis and all of that,
which is, you know, a history that they no longer can deny,
you know, but the notion that there is nothing since then,
what about in the 80s?
What about a discussion of the, you know,
of sentencing laws in terms of disparate treatment
for Blacks and whites when it came to crack cocaine
versus powder cocaine,
or into the 90s or the 2000s?
No discussion of police brutality or any of the issues
that led to the rise of Black Lives Matter.
You know, no discussion of that.
It's as if the civil rights era was accomplished in 1968
and that's it after that.
- Because American history gets very dirty after that.
Resistance becomes a part
of what's happening in Black America.
You have groups rising up
and fighting back, the Black Panthers,
eventually, Black Lives Matter.
That part of Black history is ignored in these standards
as if the history of Black resistance itself
is minimized in these standards.
We don't see Black heroes who fought back, who resisted.
Yes, we got King, we got Bethune,
and others who were fairly passive,
obviously, in their approach,
but not those who stood up.
And after the civil rights movement,
that is what Black America moved to,
active resistance of segregation and discrimination.
And those stories are very uncomfortable to have
in a history book according
to the Florida Department of Education.
- One of the things too is examine organizational approaches
to resisting equality in America.
What I love is the choice of language.
That it's not racism, that it's not oppression,
that it's not a systemic effort
by institutions to codify racism in law.
It's organizational approaches
to resisting equality in America,
resisting equality in America.
That's what's happened to Blacks here,
right? - Exactly.
Jim, the word lynching is not even in the standards,
even though a Black person in Florida
during the lynching era had a better chance of being lynched
than a Black person in Mississippi
or than a Black person in Alabama.
But these standards don't even mention
that that kind of violence was perpetrated against Blacks
in this country.
So it's a whitewash of history,
it's a continuation of the DeSantis' use
of the Board of Education as a political tool.
And America needs to take heed
of what's happening in Florida.
The very fact that they're trying to impose a system
of education on our students in Florida
in which they rationalize slavery
as being a benefit to the enslaved, it's outrageous.
- What do you think the long-term effect is
on the quality of education
that our high school students and grade school students
and middle school students will now be receiving In Florida?
- Florida students will be receiving a watered-down
treatment of American history.
Florida students will be disadvantaged
by not knowing as much as other students from other states
about what happened in our country.
I think Florida students will have more difficulty
getting along with other races,
having been educated in Florida
where these kinds of standards have been imposed upon them.
This does not bode well
for the future generation of Floridians, white or Black,
'cause they're going to be miseducated,
misguided, misinformed,
and I think, at a great disadvantage
in the public spaces that they may occupy in the future.
May I make a point about something that struck me in this?
- Sure, please go ahead.
- They are discussing the increase in slaves,
the number of slaves in the country,
and they speak of that in terms of natural increase.
There was nothing natural about it.
Black women were being raped by white men to produce slaves
that the slave master therefore would not have to buy.
So the idea that Blacks increased their numbers
through natural increase is a misstatement
and misrepresents the fact
that whites used Black women to produce products
that they could sell on the slave market.
So I thought that use of natural increase
was an insult to Black history.
- When we come back,
I will speak to the Democratic leader of the Florida House
about the recent revelations from our investigation
into Republican State Representative, Fabian Basabe.
Stay with us.