The Florida Board of Education has unanimously approved new standards for
how black history will be taught in the state in public schools.
And the updates are, well, disturbing, to say the least.
So I'm gonna start off with the most disturbing element of this new curriculum.
The new standards require instruction for
middle school students to include, get a load of this, how slaves develop
skills which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit.
A document listing the standards and
posted in the Florida Department of Education website said, and
we double-checked that ourselves, and that's what it says.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah.
So that is unreal, man.
And there's another part of this that's unreal.
But I wanna give you context first.
Remember when the conservatives started this and DeSantis and others did,
where they said, look,
we just don't want critical race theory being taught in the schools.
Now, there are parts of critical race theory that I totally agree with, and
there are parts of it where I go, well, I'm not so sure about that.
Some of those positions are debatable.
Good news, that's why they're not taught in any schools across the country,
high school or lower.
They're taught in graduate level courses cuz there's controversial
material in there, and it takes thought to wade through those issues, okay?
But now we're not at critical race theory anymore.
Now, we're just whitewashing history.
>> Speaker 1: Yeah, look, I totally agree with you.
And, look, I took a step back and I was like, look, obviously they're
not teaching graduate level critical race theory in grade school.
There's no way that's happening.
But let me understand their argument, because maybe they're trying
to argue that there are traces of that curriculum in public schools, right?
And if they genuinely believe that, how do you answer for
the fact that they're trying to now input this revisionist history
about how there were some positive elements of slavery?
If you really think about it, like, this gives the whole game away.
You get what I'm saying?
>> Speaker 2: Exactly right, Anna.
So I wanna read graphics two and three,
because I think they're even more devastating.
So CNN explains when high school students learn about events
such as the 1920 Ocoee massacre.
The new rules require that instruction include, quote,
acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.
Now, already, that's disastrous, okay?
Why are you putting in those two things in the same sentence?
Why are you complaining them?
But wait till you see the context.
The context is much worse.
I thought when I read that, they were saying, okay, now look,
there was the Tulsa massacre and all these massacres and the lynchings, et cetera.
But don't forget, black people sometimes commit crimes, that already is terrible.
Why are you mentioning that?
So do White people, so do Asians.
Why are you randomly mentioning that within the context of civil rights?
But no, it's way worse.
So here's the explanation.
Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and
by African Americans, but is not limited to the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot,
1919 Washington, DC Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre.
And that happened in Florida, that's why they mentioned it earlier.
1921 Tulsa Massacre, and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.
So when you see that and then I read the longer explanation of it, too,
just to be absolutely sure.
They're saying that these acts of violence happen to African Americans and by
African Americans in reference to things like the Tulsa massacre and Rosewood.
And these massacres of African Americans, the one that happened in Florida.
>> Speaker 1: Can I talk about that one?
>> Speaker 1: Yeah.
>> Speaker 1: So that particular case had to do with a black man by the name of
Moses Norman, and he was a landowner in the community.
This is in Florida, of course, and he decides, I'm gonna go vote.
I'm gonna cast my ballot.
He gets turned away by white poll workers.
And then all of a sudden, he's eventually followed home by a mob of 250 people,
white people who killed dozens of African Americans.
They set fire to their houses, just absolutely destroyed the community,
drove the black community out of their own community.
Just because this black landowner wanted to cast a ballot and vote in the election.
>> Speaker 2: So now, given that context and by the way, 60 people were murdered.
And they not only burned down their homes, but this is also interesting they went out
of their way to burn down their schools, okay?
And that was all for voting.
Now, in that context, they mention it as violence done to African Americans and
by African Americans.
Why are you playing the victim, blaming the victims in a scenario like this?
Are you insane?
It's almost like they're saying, well, you know, they had it coming.
Now, this is disgusting, man.
This isn't anywhere near critical race theory.
This is just Republicans saying, we don't really like black folks,
and we vomited out wherever we are.
So, I mean, look, you tell me, Republicans, you love Desantis.
You gave him a 20 point win in Florida.
What the hell is this crap?
>> Speaker 1: Well, look, there's something really interesting happening.
And by interesting, I mean abhorrent, and
it has to do with this revisionism I'm seeing on look, obviously,
in this case with the right, but also with some on the fringes of the left.
And it's to rewrite history and
make it appear as though the gains that were accomplished and
won during the civil rights movement were done so by the implementation of violence.
And I think that that is inaccurate, to say the least.
When we think about the leader of the civil rights movement,
who do we think about?
Martin Luther King Jr. Speech after speech, book after book,
he makes his philosophy abundantly clear.
And I wanna give you just a short snippet of one of his speeches, but
please watch the whole thing.
Look it up online.
It's readily available.
Here's what his philosophy actually was.
>> Speaker 3: We will never have peace in the world until men
everywhere recognize that ends are not cut
off from means, because the means represent
the ideal in the making and the end in process.
And ultimately, you can't reach good ends through
evil means because the means represent the seed,
and the end represents the tree.
>> Speaker 2: So where's the violence by African Americans in this context?
So here's Martin Luther King, the greatest civil rights leader,
saying a thousand times over, not only do we believe in nonviolence as an end,
but as a means, we are always nonviolent.
Yet Gratuitously, the right wingers put it in there as if African Americans had these
massacres coming.
And then some on the left now maniacally have started to say, no,
Martin Luther King was for violence.
Why are you helping right-wing framing when it's not anywhere near true, right?
So, no, please get an education.
Learn what Martin Luther King was about, and
for the people of Florida now, well, when you go tell them to get an education,
this is what their public schools are teaching them now.
And this is really a war against teachers.
This is a war against history.
It's a war against truth.
It's absolutely orwellian,
and it's made extra orwellian by the people who claim that they're for freedom.
>> Speaker 1: Look, we can go on including talking about the individuals who
are trying to pretend as though this isn't an attempt to whitewash history.
It absolutely is.
I just wanna give you a few more details about this.
So they lay out new benchmark clarifications to the existing black
history curriculum that critics say ends up watering down the history.
So the changes include teaching elementary school children to recognize Rosa Parks
and Thomas Jefferson as individuals who represent the United States.
The Florida education association criticized the approach,
saying it excludes a deeper teaching of their histories and
struggles in favor of easy identification and memorization.
They also made sure to include how aggrieved the virtuous
white people were in the 1800s.
Instruction includes how whites who supported reconstruction policies for
freed blacks after the Civil War.
White southerners being called scalawags and
white northerners being called carpetbaggers, were targeted.
So that's directly from the Florida state academic standards for 2023.
>> Speaker 2: So, look, I think the Rosa Parks criticism is legitimate.
They should give you the context of why Rosa Parks was a hero, not
just generically name her, but at least they mentioned her as an American hero.
And I don't want anybody to get the wrong impression that they're not teaching
slavery or civil rights at all.
They are,
they're just doing this reframing of it as slightly black people's fault.
So to me, the Rosa Parks thing is a legitimate complaint but
doesn't necessarily show their hand.
But when they say, black people got all these benefits from being slaves, and
by the way,
the violence that was done against them was also kind of done by them.
As Anna said, you're showing your hand.
>> Yep.
>> Speaker 2: Now we know exactly what you actually think.