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The DeSantis gambit

Ziggurat said:
Quite true.

But the standard said nothing about learning those skills due to slavery.



Sure, it's not terribly profound, and what's more it's not even new or peculiar to Florida. As Trausti pointed out above, basically the same thing is included as part of the College Board's AP African American Studies.
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Nope. Compare what the AP course actually says to what the FL curriculum says:

AP course: "In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once free, American Americans (sic) used these skills to provide for themselves and others."

Note the "once free".

FL Curriculum: "1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."

Do you see any mention of these "personal benefits" being used AFTER slavery in the FL curriculum? Cuz I sure as hell don't. The FL curriculum suggests these 'personal benefits' were also DURING slavery which they were not.

The College Board also disagrees with what you, DeSantis, and the likes of Allen are trying to gaslight us with:

In a statement to Newsweek, the College Board said: "We are aware that some in Florida have reviewed the Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies framework and have suggested that the state's recently approved middle school African American History standards align with our course requirements.

"We resolutely disagree with the notion that enslavement was in any way a beneficial, productive, or useful experience for African Americans. Unequivocally, slavery was an atrocity that cannot be justified by examples of African Americans' agency and resistance during their enslavement."

The statement said Unit 2 of the current framework "includes a discussion about the skills enslaved people brought with them that enslavers exploited as well as other skills developed in America that were valuable to their enslavers. Enslaved Africans and their descendants used those skills to survive, build community, and create culture in resistance to their oppression."
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Ziggurat said:
The only reason to think it's noteworthy at all is the desperate desire to portray DeSantis as a flaming racist, because for some reason just not agreeing on policy doesn't suffice.
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Bull. DeSantis' policy has been one of overt 'anti-wokism' directed at drag queens, transgendered people, and approved the "Stop Woke" law which forbids teaching "that people are privileged or oppressed based on race, gender, or national origin." Yep, there's no discrimination here, folks, so just keep on walking!


This is gaslighting 101:

The intent of the "personal benefit" benchmark, they [Wm. Allen, Frances Presley Rice] wrote, was "to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited" and listed the names of blacksmiths, shoemakers, shipping and industry workers, tailors and teachers.

"Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resilience during a difficult time in American history," they said. But the Tampa Bay Times found that some of the people listed by the working group were not enslaved when they developed these skills or were freed at a young age. For example, Booker T. Washington, who was enslaved until he was 9, worked in mines and as a houseboy before entering school and later becoming a teacher.

In an interview with PolitiFact, Allen argued the examples apply even if they developed skills after slavery. He noted that the title of Washington’s autobiography was "Up From Slavery."

"They benefited from the skills, not the slavery," Allen told PolitiFact.
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Skills they learned AFTER slavery do NOT meet the definition of "how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."
 
AP Psychology

College Board advises Florida schools to not offer AP Psychology after state says lessons about gender identity and sexuality would violate state law:

CNN said:
The College Board is encouraging school districts in Florida not to offer Advanced Placement Psychology classes after it was informed the state’s education board reportedly told districts the course can no longer be taught in the state if it includes lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity, the organization said in a statement Thursday.
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Stacyhs said:
[/HILITE]

Exactly, but unless and until a slave was freed, those skills benefited the owner, not the slave.
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Well, yes and no.

In a similar, but less complicated manner, an enslaved man named Jehu Jones purchased his own freedom in 1798. Jones was as a mulatto man (of mixed African and European ancestry), born around the year 1769, who worked as a tailor alongside his owner, Christopher Rogers. The enslaved man apparently sewed clothing with such skill and dispatch that, over a number of years, he managed to accumulate a significant private savings. After receiving £100 sterling from Jehu in January 1798, Christopher Rogers recorded a formal acknowledgement of the payment and declared Jones henceforth to be free “from all manner of bondage and slavery whatsoever, and to hold such manumission and freedom unto the said mulatto man named Jehu Jones forever.” In the early years of the nineteenth century, Jones continued to prosper in Charleston. He purchased a large house on Broad Street and, with the help of a growing free family, became a fixture in the city’s cultural life. Jones’ Hotel or Jones’ Establishment, as it was commonly known, stood for many decades as Charleston’s most respectable accommodations for white visitors to the Palmetto City.
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https://www.ccpl.org/charleston-time-machine/self-purchase-price-freedom-slavery
 
Stacyhs said:
Jones' ability to save some money was entirely at his owner's discretion. Just because some owners allowed their slaves to keep some of the money they were paid on the "hiring out" service system and to buy their freedom, it certainly wasn't the norm. Hundreds of thousands of slaves, if not millions, never received a penny for their labors.
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So you agree with the Florida curriculum?
 
Stacyhs said:
Jones' ability to save some money was entirely at his owner's discretion. Just because some owners allowed their slaves to keep some of the money they were paid on the "hiring out" service system and to buy their freedom, it certainly wasn't the norm. Hundreds of thousands of slaves, if not millions, never received a penny for their labors.
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Yes, this needs saying again. It may well be that this owner was a nice guy and had some affection for a slave and his skills, but it was still the owner's decision (probably a good business decision) to let him keep some money, the owner's decision to sell him, and the owner's decision to set the price. It went well for Jones, who clearly was an exceptional character, but he worked long and hard and bought his freedom dearly, and popular though he may have been, he lived and stayed free at the discretion of others. And, of course, the reason we hear about him in such detail is because the anecdote of his life is so unusual and rare.

And once again one must mention that the only reason slaves' skills served them after emancipation is that their owners lost a huge and bloody civil war trying to prevent that emancipation. Had they their way there would be no after. For this the enslavers deserve not just to have no credit, but an active and enduring discredit. The after-effects not only of slavery but the villainy of the Confederacy resound still today, as evidenced by the mere fact that social studies programs must have a section on African-American history.
 
Do USA schools cover WW2 in history lessons?

If so is

Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.

Also appended to cover the slave workers in WW2?

ETA: From Wikipedia



So good of his masters to help him learn motor vehicle repairs!
 
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Ron Peri, appointed by DeSantis to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (formerly known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District), wants everyone to know he is not a racist.

Why would anyone think he's racist?

Because he has made quite a few false statements about slavery and race in America, such as
CNN said:
"Look at old newspapers, as old as you can find, and you’ll find that Whites were also slaves in America,” said Peri. “The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the new world. His proclamation of 1625, which you can go back and see, required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies.

“By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat,” Peri added. “From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English, and another 300,000 were sold as slaves.”
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According to Peri, James II made that proclamation eight years before James II was even born. In 1641, Charles I was the king of England. Charles I was executed in 1649; from 1649 to 1653, England had no king. James II didn't become king until 1685.

CNN said:
Peri’s claims are based on fabricated material that has circled the Internet over the last two decades and has been the subject of repeated debunkings....

Historians who spoke to CNN said that the research Peri cited is ahistorical and based on invented research: Whites were never considered slaves in America, legally or socially; 300,000 Irish were not sent as slaves to the Americas; English King James II – who Peri cited as issuing the proclamation in 1625 – was not born until 1633 and did not take the throne until 1685. Even then, no proclamations by King James II on Irish slaves exist. The Irish did not “breed” with African slaves, as Peri claimed.
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Why would DeSantis have appointed someone with "a history of promoting homophobic conspiracy theories" such as Alex Jones's idea that tap water is turning people gay?

To be fair, Peri has now stated (during a CFTOD meeting) that he "never said that". But he did say that.

Peri's homophobia and absurdly ahistorical beliefs regarding slavery and race are well-documented. Perhaps that is why DeSantis appointed Peri to the CFTOD board.

DeSantis's other CFTOD appointees include a co-founder of the far right book-banning organization that calls itself Moms for Liberty, who happens to be married to the Republican Party of Florida's chairman.
 
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Great. History by your racist uncle”s Facebook memes.

I suppose Black Confederate soldiers are to be in the books soon.
 
Stacyhs said:
I think there are parts that are fine, but trying to claim that slaves 'personally benefited' from skills learned as slaves is putting lipstick on a pig.
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But some clearly did. That doesn’t make slavery morality right, it’s just true.
 
Trausti said:
But some clearly did. That doesn’t make slavery morality right, it’s just true.
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Right. It happened so often that William Allen, who was behind that particular "clarification" in the FL curriculum, gave two examples that turned out to be bunk.

I taught history and I know this 'clarification' is just an attempt to spin this part of history. As Darat pointed out, does FL now also need to teach that forced laborers 'personally benefited' from 'skills' they learned during that forced labor?

Why this need to defend something that historians have called just plain wrong?
 
Stacyhs said:
Florida: where education goes to die.
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I have a friend who was a History professor there who fled the state last year. The absurd and dangerous environment in education created by the GOP was a big part of it. Another is that even though he's married to a woman, he's bisexual and all the anti-LBGTQ stuff was getting legitimately dangerous.

Another friend of my mother who has taught middle school in Florida long enough that she was going to retire in another four years was just tell her about what he school has had to do to comply with Florida requirements. You now can't call any student a nickname that isn't on a list approved by their parents. Their parents have to fill out a form to add the nickname to the acceptable list. The nickname, even if the parents want it, cannot be anything but something close to the student's first name. You can't go by your middle name.

This includes generic nicknames as the administration has informed them that they can't call a student 'dude' or 'buddy' if they forget a student's name.

She's considering retiring at the end of this school year.

So the attacks on education aren't just in a nonsense requirement trying to 'both sides' slavery with a detail that is unjustifiably included. It is the hatred towards not just education but educators, against inconvenient people whose existence speaks against conservative lies.
 
tyr_13 said:
I have a friend who was a History professor there who fled the state last year. The absurd and dangerous environment in education created by the GOP was a big part of it. Another is that even though he's married to a woman, he's bisexual and all the anti-LBGTQ stuff was getting legitimately dangerous.

Another friend of my mother who has taught middle school in Florida long enough that she was going to retire in another four years was just tell her about what he school has had to do to comply with Florida requirements. You now can't call any student a nickname that isn't on a list approved by their parents. Their parents have to fill out a form to add the nickname to the acceptable list. The nickname, even if the parents want it, cannot be anything but something close to the student's first name. You can't go by your middle name.

This includes generic nicknames as the administration has informed them that they can't call a student 'dude' or 'buddy' if they forget a student's name.

She's considering retiring at the end of this school year.

So the attacks on education aren't just in a nonsense requirement trying to 'both sides' slavery with a detail that is unjustifiably included. It is the hatred towards not just education but educators, against inconvenient people whose existence speaks against conservative lies.
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It's as if the GOP, especially in FL, wants to see just how stupidly extreme they can push things.

This whole name thing is ridiculous. No student should be called something s/he doesn't WANT to be called but not allowing a middle name? My dad didn't use his first name until he left home. Growing up he went by his middle name and his nickname was "Buddy". His sister called him that until the day she died.
 
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