Reverse CRT: Florida Upstages Texas In History Class Teaching About Slavery

Not you, silly.

 

The GOP circular firing squad all through campaign is going to be amusing to watch.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/23/christie-desantis-florida-slavery-curriculum-00107741

“Governor DeSantis started this fire with the bill that he signed and now he doesn’t want to take responsibility for whatever is done in the aftermath of it, and from listening and watching his comments he’s obviously uncomfortable,” Christie said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

DeSantis, who advocated the 2022 “Stop Woke Act” and other policies that led to curriculum changes in the state’s schools, addressed the backlash in response to a question from CNN last week, saying: “I didn’t do it. I wasn’t involved in it. … I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life.”

“‘I didn’t do it’ and ‘I’m not involved in it’ are not the words of leadership,” Christie told CBS’ Margaret Brennan on Sunday.

 

There was never a claim made that the skills were provided by the slave masters for the benefit of the slaves. You are arguing against a straw man.

Who was trying to qualify slavery?

Technically, it would also include slaves that were freed before the Civil War. That aside, did you think Florida was trying to argue slavery is good? Do you think if children learn some slaves became blacksmiths, that they will suddenly think slavery wasn't so bad after all? Learning other facts in addition to the horrors of bondage doesn't change that slavery is bad.

 

Do you think that there actually are any "supporters of slavery" in the US today (outside of tiny groups of crazies)?

 

No, it was white people who freed slaves, because the white people realized it was wrong, because they believed in liberty and saw that while the rest of the world was ok with slavery, white Christians who founded America were good people. Despite the blacks being lazy violent savages, who they helped by giving them honest work and teaching them skills for their benefit, the white people freed them. There's no reason for them to be ashamed of history or having slaves. It's just how the world was. in fact, it was the white people who did the right thing.


That's what @basso and others want to believe.

 

I don't know if I would call these groups trying to whitewash the effects and intent of slavery supporters, but they also can't qualify as detractors of slavery.

 

Why would it be required to learn about any skills learned? Is that a significant aspect of the historical slavery practice? What an odd thing for anyone to focus on mandate being part of the curriculum.

When teaching about the American Revolution, is it mandated that students learn about the benefits gained from living within one of the most successful world powers at the time? Yet those benefits far outweigh the non-existent benefits of having been enslaved.

There is obviously a reason why the policy in Florida focuses on slavery and not any other aspect of history to pull this.

 

question: did some slaves learn trades while undergoing the horrors of slavery?

 

would you say that about reading and writing skills? seems to me that slaves who could read and write would be considered "a significant aspect of the historical slavery practice"

 

Question: Is that a significant and important part of the telling the history of American slavery?

Question: Did some colonists during the colonial period, benefit from being subjects of the British Empire?

 

To give a more full humanity to the enslaved? Instead of just learning about those who worked in the fields, show that there are a wide variety of individuals that did all sorts of things. How about just because it is true? I would be fine with not including it, I don't think it is critical to the understanding of the topic, I just don't understand the outrage.

I wouldn't take issue with a state teaching about what benefits the colonists received being part of the British Empire. Compare former British colonies to the former colonies of other colonial powers and it is not hard to see that the former British colonies seem to be better off.

Pull what?

 

is a single mention out of 191 examples significant?

as you may be aware, not only did many colonists benefit from British rule, there were a greater number of loyalists than there were revolutionaries, at least initially.

 

It was illegal for slaves to learn to read and write. Almost that learned literacy did so against the laws at the time. In fact it was often even illegal to teach formerly enslaved folks that were freed to learn to read and write.

They were expressly forbidden from learning reading or writing. Further more, when taken from Africa they seperated from all others that spoke the same dialects so that they wouldn't have the ability to even communicate without extreme difficulty. So with that and being not allowed to learn reading and writing in English, they used whatever common linguistic patterns they knew and the spoken English they could learn.

 

that doesn't really seem to answer the question though. Your point was "Why would it be required to learn about any skills learned? Is that a significant aspect of the historical slavery practice? What an odd thing for anyone to focus on mandate being part of the curriculum." Isn't the experience of learning to read and write important to teach to today's students?

 

Except teaching that some folks learned something isn't a more complete picture of slavery anymore than teaching tortured prisoners of war learned important aspects of perspective about the value of what is important in life or that they learned skills of surviving they wouldn't have had otherwise.

Is it important that world history teach the survival skills learned by women and homosexuals enduring rulership under the Taliban? Does that give a more complete true picture?

 

They didn't learn to read and write because of slavery. A tiny minority learned it in spite of slavery. Teaching that some enslaved people learned to read and write which they wouldn't have had they kept their freedom isn't a more complete picture or relevant to the history of slavery in this nation.

 

I do not think this generalization is wholly accurate: just look at the wiki entry for anti-literacy laws and you'll see that 5 to 10% of slaves were literate, and in some cases "slaveholders ignored the laws. They looked the other way when their children played school and taught their slave playmates how to read and write. Some slaveholders saw the economic benefit in having literate slaves who could undertake business transactions and keep accounts."

anyway. just seems like an odd topic to want to exclude

 

It's more accurate to mandate it's inclusion. A more accurate representation would be that a very small minority of enslaved people were able to overcome laws in place making it illegal for anyone to teach them and for them to learn to read and write.

 

Any person who performs an activity can pick up skills from doing that activity. Any skill can have personal benefits if the person is allowed to use them for personal gain. This should go without saying.

Enslaved people had no personal rights to benefit from any skills they might have picked up while being enslaved or as a result of their enslavement. There is also no need to point this out, but here we are.

As with almost everything, there may be exceptions. However, to even suggest some enslaved people may have personally benefited ignores not just the brutal history of American slavery, but is an insult to African Americans.

I thought it would not be hard to fix this portion - simply remove "personal benefits". But then, given the larger context of whitewashed narrative of American history in Florida's updated curriculum standard, it is hard for the state to make even this change.

 

Last week we went to Houston to visit relatives, and a pair of them live in Richmond just outside of the city in one of the suburbs there, and have for 20 years. A member of the couple is my significant other's sister, retired after teaching 7th grade history at a Catholic school for most of her tenure. She took us to the Fort Bend County History Museum for a tour. There was a good exhibit about the "Jaybird–Woodpecker War 1888-1889" in Fort Bend County, which led to White Democratic domination of county politics until a 1953 Supreme Court ruling, Terry v. Adams, brought about the beginning of the end.

Doing a little looking in their website, I came across this very good video, a little over 13 minutes, by a museum staff member, Allison Harrell. She does a great job of telling the story of a former slave, Walter Moses Burton, who became the first Black sheriff of the county and then served 4 terms as a state senator before retiring. Interestingly enough, he was taught to read and write by the man who owned him as a slave. It's well worth watching.