By Anthony L. White
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature need to lay off the Sominex and wake up.
DeSantis and the state’s board of education ushered into law new educational standards aimed at rewriting Black History. One of the most controversial of those standards is the middle school benchmark stating that “instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
What the…?
Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris made a special trip to Jacksonville, Florida to express her dismay and concern about the state’s attempt to rewrite Black History. “How is it that anyone could suggest that amidst these atrocities [of slavery], there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Harris said.
Most of us are asking the same question. It’s preposterous to think there was a personal benefit from being human property, birthing children that became your owner’s property, working from sunup to sundown without compensation, and having no individual rights or freedoms.
DeSantis and his legislative minions are clearly in a deep sleep and need to WAKE UP if they believe the government can effectively rewrite Black History or any other history before the scars inflicted by that history have healed. DeSantis’ claims that part of his mission to stop WOKE culture is to protect non-Black students and workers from having to feel emotional or social distress over the horrific ordeal Black Americans endured because of slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow Laws. Someone should tell DeSantis and his legislative sycophants that sanitizing Black History to lessen the inherent guilt of some White students does not miraculously heal the inherent scars of Black students.
DeSantis efforts to rewrite Black history doesn’t stop with Florida’s new teaching guidelines that profess slavery was beneficial to Black slaves. Now, elementary textbooks in Florida are having to edit Black history. Will the DeSantis-era textbooks only be allowed to say Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks was arrested because she refused to move to another seat when told and not mention why or will textbooks be allowed to describe Jim Crow laws, like the one that required African Americans to sit in the back of the bus and to give up their seat if a white person wanted it?
My question to DeSantis is: How do you support factual discussions if a textbook or teacher isn’t allowed to explain why Rosa Parks was arrested.
Does this really benefit our students? Does learning censored facts without any real context make students smarter or better educated? How is teaching historical facts and truths indoctrination? Will giving students washed-down tidbits of history force them to seek answers from sources that are not part of the educational system?
With DeSantis eyes clearly aimed at rewriting history, how long will it take for him and his Florida Senate and House cohorts to take aim at rewriting the book that guides many of our lives – the Bible.
Will Moses have to lead the Israelites out of Egypt to find more opportunities in their own land? Or will Moses continue to lead the Israelites to a land where they are not enslaved and living under the persecution and rule of the Egyptian Pharoah?
Although the Bible is not taught in Florida schools, if there is an actual benefit to rewriting history to better educate our students and prevent students from feeling any emotional distress, Gov. DeSantis do you think rewriting Biblical history would alleviate the emotional distress to individuals struggling with their faith or end the religious wars it spawned?
I’ll wait for your answer.
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