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

So if I kidnap you and force you to fix my roof for free while you are in chains and I whip you to motivate you, but hey you learned how to fix roofs. So something positive came of it! God bless America!

 

I wonder why Florida doesn't mandate that the history of concentration camps doesn't include information about how people in the camps learned valuable skills? Or why Florida doesn't require teaching that rape victims may have developed survival skills from their experiences? Why did they pick this specific group to require teaching this about? Do you think the purpose of the changes matter at all, or as long as everything taught is "true", regardless of how selective it is, it's ok?

 

Wait are we talking about teaching history or writing hypotheticals on an NBA message board? Because the history is that all slave states except one literally passed laws making it illegal to teach slaves how to read or write. Now that would be a very broad point worth teaching in a high school curriculum about the Atlantic Slave Trade. As opposed to say, “yeah, but some guys towards the very end of the 300+ year institution might have picked up a skill that hopefully one day earned them something after a massive war was fought for years that ended the institution.”

 

But teaching that might make someone feel bad about themselves. Not cool.

 

Thanks for posting this, it's a great story.

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/burton-walter-moses

Isn't teaching about these types of personal stories you rightly describe as "well worth watching" exactly what that curriculum suggests, and what some here are so up in arms about?

This man, Walter Moses Burton (what an impressive man to achieve all of that out of the circumstances he had been in), took on the family name of the family that used to own him, he basically became like a family member - and he remained close and kind to them for the rest of his life.

Isn't that a wonderful story? That doesn't negate the fact at all that slavery was horrible.

It feels like the angry leftist mob doesn't like these stories...they really want it to only be allowed for everything to be black and white, where the whites are always evil, and the blacks were always only victims, whose stories of developing agency are not allowed to be told.

P.S.: Walter Moses Burton was a Republican, not a Democrat. A white Democrat was trying to hold him down. Just like white Democrats don't want his story or stories like his to be taught today in Florida.

 

They can teach all that too, if they want. No, I don't have a problem with teaching facts, as long as the facts are true. As long as they teach the slavery was bad and it was bad because of the brutality and stripping the freedom and humanity away from other people, I don't care if they also teach that the slaves learned useful skills or developed modern barbecue or sang spirituals or any other factually accurate information that would help children learn that the people being brutalized were fully realized human beings with all the same capacity as the people subjugating them. It doesn't detract from the horrors of the Holocaust if you learn that some of the Jews learned skilled labor in factories for the Nazi war machine. It doesn't detract from the horrors of the Native American genocide to learn that Sacagawea helped Lewis and Clark on their expedition or that some natives intermarried with settlers.

I don't know how much the Florida social studies curriculum talks about rape and rape victims, but sure if there are stories of rape victims overcoming and learning valuable skill, you can teach that too. Really, any facts can be part of education. I wouldn't be outraged about any factually accurate information being taught, especially in the context of a larger lesson on the same topic that makes clear that bad thing is bad.

 

what skills did concentration camp inmates learn?

 

here's a fun math problem for those fixated on Florida's new middle school curriculum:

- The "offending" section is one of 191 "units" that must be taught.
- Florida law mandates 180 days of instruction per school year
- It's been a while since I was in middle school, but let's stipulate history is taught every other day (this seems generous)
- let's further stipulate that the "slavery curriculum" takes a full school year (again, generous, given how much other material needs to be covered in a basic American history curriculum.
- let's also assume that in any given school day when history is taught, it takes an hour of that day's instruction

Assume the above is true:

"describe as a measure of time, the exposure a student might experience to the idea that some slaves learned skills that benefited them, during or after slavery."

for extra credit:

"further describe, as a percentage, the context of this exposure as part of the overall American history course of study."

 

None, that was a dumbass example, but it was @Major, so that's not surprising at all.

 

The brings up the second contested issue in the OP

“Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.”
​

I vaguely remember Nat Turner's Rebellion being taught in schools which chilled the South in fear of armed conflicts and race riots. Southern states promptly banned teaching slaves how to read or write afterwards.

When you keep a class dumb and specialized, even if that craft is "beneficial", they're easily exploited through information asymmetry, which especially happened with sharecroppers right after Emancipation. They were "free" with beneficially taught farming skills, but without other marketable skills and solid understanding of finance, trade, or even literacy, they remained poor and exploited by their former masters, some with arguably worse conditions.

John Hemmings was mentioned earlier in this thread. Nowadays, he'd be considered more white than black with his 1/4th black ancestry. He was given land upon Jefferson's death (maybe because Tommy's family had rapist slave guilt or maybe because Tommy really considered them family?) and even ownership of some slaves on condition they'd be freed around 25.

There was definitely an unspoken caste system at the time that wasn't taught when I was growing up. Those in power who create that caste system can easily claim caste members at the middle-lower ranges were taught "beneficial skills" (truth!!), while "others" didn't do their fullest to rise up out of laziness and lack of agency (unreported facts!!!).

We've all heard of Plessy v. Ferguson and the infamous "separate but equal" ruling. But did anyone know what Homer Plessy looked like? It's definitely not this guy. There is no picture of Plessy. P._B._S._Pinchback, the guy Google images surfaces was at most a 1/4 Black while Plessy himself was an 1/8th octoroon. Activist groups deliberately used his ancestry to prove a point, only to let the Supreme Court codify the 1 Drop Rule practiced in Southern states across the nation.

There's no mention of any of that context or grisly nuance such as slave rape babies sired by their masters who were more favored than field workers by learning extra beneficial craft...maybe even literacy!

Instead you get a picture like this, a factoid in history to move on.

 

Some of them might have learned various persuasion skills, how to train the mind to endure hardships. They also did chores, made their beds, and things at the camp. They might have learned sewing, cleaning techniques that wouldn't have ever been part of their lives if not for their time at the concentration camps. Some even learned bartering.

Why wouldn't this be mandated? They did these activities and many might have never learned these skills had they been allowed to live free and pursue their own chosen lifelong pursuits.

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-camps/ss-concentration-camp-system/daily-routines/

Bottom line is that it is offensive to mandate it for enslaved people or people who served in a concentration camp.

 

What?

 

do you have documented examples that concentration camp inmates "learned how to make their beds" and this was a valuable skill to them later in life, assuming they weren't otherwise murdered?

 

I posted the link to it.

 

You are digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole there, buddy.

 

Some people served time in the camps and were released when Allied troops came through at the end of the war.

 

No buddy, I'm not. Did you even read my post?

 

With your same braindead analogy majority of folks in the concentration camps actually performed hard labor and helped with German defense. They helped repair infantry vehicles and even helped repair heavy equipment.

Folks in the concentration camps literally learned more life skills than slaves ever did as Germans industrial production was hurting throughout the war.

Good God you folks don't think at all.

 

Literally how the hell are you german? majority of the jews in the eastern camps were literally used to help repair infantry equipment used in the German invasion of Russia.

 

Oh my.