Whitewash?

Untangling the controversy over Florida’s black history curriculum.

By
351
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a fundraiser on July 15, 2023 in Ankeny, Iowa. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Fairness is good for the soul even when the beneficiary doesn’t deserve it.

There are many in politics who don’t deserve it. Like Ron DeSantis.

No modern Republican has done more to normalize using state power to target cultural enemies than he has. It’s the core of his presidential campaign: His argument against Donald Trump is that Trump talks a good post-liberal game but the governor of Florida is the only one actually playing. DeSantis, not Trump, punched Disney in the face for criticizing right-wing policies, muscled tech companies on how they should police their social media platforms, demanded an investigation of COVID vaccines, and signed bills various and sundry aimed at LGBT constituencies.

He’s so keen to position himself as an enemy of gays that his own campaign aides have reportedly resorted to creating gay-baiting web videos and laundering them through friendly social-media users.

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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    I’m with Charlie Cooke on this. The freak out on the left over this is totally disingenuous.

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    Sharon.Slaten

    Re: "When the updated curriculum was released last week, it included this line in the lessons for grades 6-8: “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” I can not for the life of me understand why this made it into the curriculum. What was the intent? What were the students to make of it?

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      Ben Connelly

      When I was in school we learned that kind of thing - more of from a lefty/minority-empowerment standpoint than anything else. It was kind of like a “the white people at the time said blacks and women and Native Americans couldn’t do X, but they persisted and achieved despite their obstacles” narrative than anything else. At the time, the idea that slaves were helpless victims was seen as a racist position that made blacks out to be inferior to whites.

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  3. Kelly Windsor

    I love reading comments where people defend DeSantis. The man is a tyrant and a cruel idiot. And people defend him…. No wonder we’re contending with Trump being on the verge of demolishing our democracy.

    People can’t get enough of this populist crap. Even the one’s who pretend to be offended by Trump’s relentless attacks on the constitution and good old law and order.

    Give me a break. Trump’s not the problem. DeSantis is not the problem, it’s the people that support these whack jobs who are the problem.

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  4. Chuck Almdale

    Does anyone teaching or taking Black History care that blacks in Africa were already slaves owned by other Africans before they were bought by slave traders and taken to the Americas?

    Or does Black History as taught in the Americas begin only when blacks first stepped onto an American shore?

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      Stephanie

      Not exactly.

      Tribes would capture and sell members of other tribes they were warring with.

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      1. Chuck Almdale

        Not sure what "not exactly" refers.

        Agreed, tribes captured people from other tribes and either kept them or sold them. Sometimes the point of the war was to capture slaves. Slave trade had been going on for millennia; a slave could work for you or you could trade them for other things. In Africa among the tribes, women and children were the most wanted slaves as they were more docile and were least likely to fight back or try to escape. They were frequently taken or traded away over long distances, as the further from home you're taken, the less likely you'll try to escape and find your way back. Men were often killed outright, at they were more likely to be very difficult to control, and not worth the trouble. From the point of view of black African slave traders, selling slaves to Europeans in ships was ideal as they were never coming back so the problem of they're trying to escape was nil, and the male slaves increased in value because they could work harder than women or children.

        Slavery was worldwide. For example, in central Asia, major slave markets existed in Istanbul and Cairo, dealing far less with black slaves than European and central Asian slaves. Over a period of about 400 years, the "Tatars" of Crimea captured about 2 million Poles, Lithuanians, Rus', etc. and sold them in their own market in Caffa [Theodosia] or shipped them farther south. In China the innumerable dynastic changes - which were really changes in tribal dominance - typically involved enslaving members of the tribe of the former dynasty.

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          Stephanie

          And so what is the point here?

          Are you saying slavery in the US was no big deal because it is “history and tradition”?

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          1. Chuck Almdale

            If you want slavery to be a big deal in the U.S., that's your prerogative. But if you ignore the fact that it was just as big or bigger a deal in most if not all other places in the world, especially in Africa between black Africans, and was so since before written history, everywhere, then it's a skewed argument.

            As an aside, many people hold that there are currently ~50 million slaves in the world, more than ever before in human history. Google it. It's harder to get upset about slaves 150-400 years ago when they're vastly outnumbered by slaves right now.

            Starting around six million years, human ancestors began evolving the ability to survive within small groups. Individuals support the group, the group protects and supports the individual, we evolve behaviors that enhance cooperation and communication within groups; we also evolve competition between individuals and between groups. This is fundamental "tribalism" or "groupism," without which humans could not have succeeded to the level we have. Knowing our "group" and distinguishing it from other groups is fundamental to human behavior. Today 8 billion people have possibly 1 billion ways of grouping ourselves, and every in-group creates one or more out-groups. Skin color is one such way of distinguishing between groups. There are innumerable other ways. Groupism is as automatic as breathing.

            We will always view some differences as vastly important, and discriminate for or against them. What the important ones are will change over the years. But physical appearance, language and religious or quasi-religious belief systems are perennially important.

            Right now, each of us probably is a member of at least 50, maybe 100 groups, and if they added up 50 years of groupism, it might total to 500 groups/per person. I did an exercise a few years ago, adding up all the groups I'd been a member of from my earliest memory; I gave it up when I reached 50 groups before the age of 12.

            Groupism is fundamental to human behavior. Racism is one form of groupism. Eradicate it if you can, but something else will then take its place, and is doing so this very moment. Humans didn't evolve to find wisdom, truth or perfection. If we find them, that's wonderful. But our "purpose" was to survive, exactly the same as all other forms of life.

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      Kizedek

      Slavery throughout human history tended to be unrelated to race, and more about who conquered whom. Slavery could, and did, go both ways at different points in time. Children of slaves tended to be integrated into the conquering society as free citizens. And slaves could earn their freedom.

      New World slave traders, all the way down to some “Christians” and southern US politicians made the leap to how blacks (alone) were subject to slavery *in perpetuity* because it was somehow the “natural order” of things. It was their “lot in life”, “their place”. And they tried to justify slavery on that basis. In their quest to “civilize” it, they made it almost infinitely worse.

      And *that* has had serious repercussions down to the present day. It was even written explicitly into the Confederate Constitution.

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      1. Chuck Almdale

        Agreed, it was largely about conquest, whether between large groups of people, or one village on another.
        However, according to historian Roland Oliver (The African Experience), there was a gradient of percentage of slaves in various societies. Among the Taureg (southern Sahara) 70-90% of the population were considered slaves, elsewhere it could be as low as 10%. The difference was with the Taureg the descendants of slaves remained slaves, whereas in the lowest % the slaves' children were fully integrated members of the society. So it's not "once size fits all."

        Conquered peoples are typically considered to be "lesser" peoples by the conquerors, whether of same skin color, language, religion, or not. Even today, a lot of people consider people in the next street, town or state to be "lesser." That's what people, including politicians from anywhere, do.

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      JohnF

      Does it make a difference that some people who were enslaved by others were then enslaved by the people who bought them from their original "owners"?

      What's your point?

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        Stephanie

        It’s hilarious, how all these “learned” disquisitions with historical detail, come from supposedly educated white people, I picture holding a pipe in their hand and wearing smoking jackets and fezzes, with a whiskey on the side, explaining to us how it’s okay to have slaves (as long as they’re not the slaves, I assume. Then it wouldn’t be quite so okay).

        It’s not unlike how after a mass shooting by some unhinged young man with access to unlimited weapons of war, we get all this exegesis of all the different kinds of guns, what they’re good for, the size of the bullets, how far they shoot, and why people who want better gun control laws just don’t understand what all those technical terms mean. What “AR” really means, for example.

        If it’s not obfuscation I’d like to know what it is.

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      2. Chuck Almdale

        Yes, it makes a difference.
        Black Africans were captured by other black Africans - usually in tribal conflicts which included raids on other villages specifically for the purpose of taking slaves - and sent to market or traded village to village. Europeans (on Africa's west coast, Arabs etc. on the east coast) came to the markets and bought the slaves, like buying food or tools. If no slave market, then no slaves to buy. Black Africans had been taking and transporting other black Africans as slaves for millennia; they didn't begin slaving to satisfy Europeans or Arab needs, they'd been doing it all along, among themselves.
        But black history seems to pretend that slavery at American shores, instigated by Anyone but Blacks - ignoring the fact that blacks took and sold slaves just as much as did everyone else in the world.
        Slavery was a worldwide phenomena, and it was already there at the inception of written history.

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          Rdpulfer

          I think the origins of the slave trade are certainly worth exploring, Chuck. I would suspect many teachers would go into at least some detail mapping out the route of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and all its stop - including starting at defeated and enslaved tribes in Africa.

          However, it doesn't change the fact that those same Africans were treated as second-class citizens - if not less than human - throughout much of American history. The origins are certainly worth exploring - but the tragic outcome is ultimately the same.

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          JohnF

          Sure. Most other early civilizations also had slaves and even various indigenous groups in the Americas did the same. I'm still not sure what your point is though. Does slavery in the US become less bad just because it was practiced elsewhere?

          I'm also skeptical of your claim that black history ignores everything that went on outside US borders. Looking at a few curricula for African American history (including the recently released one in Florida), they include discussions of the slave trade in other places (including Africa). Is there a specific historian you'd like to complain about?

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          1. Chuck Almdale

            I had in mind what I've read about the Black History AP courses, newspaper articles, 1619 project.
            The antecedents of slavery in the Americas never seems to be discussed.
            What happened in America was not unusual or new in any way, considering slavery as a worldwide phenomenon.
            Treating it as if it was something altogether new or especially heinous is a misrepresentation. It may be currently popular to characterize it as uniquely terrible, but it really wasn't. It was well within the boundaries of slavery-as-a-whole.

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  5. Gbm311

    It is lamentable to me that so many Republicans are piling on to DeSantis. Yes, he has not been particularly clever in his defense of the curriculum but it is quite legitimate and VP Harris is an ignorant demogogue. The media has once again completely fallen down missing the obvious taking a sentence out of context, one of the easiest of nefarious criticism to reject.
    Meanwhile, the GOP is flirting with impeachment when the Senate is NEVER going to vote for dismissal under current circumstances. Oh, for a constructive focus.

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      Stephanie

      But it was not taken out of context.

      In its proper context, it is deeply offensive.

      And not based on any evidence, either, as Nick points out.

      In fact, I don’t see any demagoguong going on here. I don’t especially like Kamala Harris, but she’s right.

      Charles C. W. Cooke may well be right in that the rest of the curriculum seems above reproach. That doesn’t cancel out the offensive parts.

      NR is all in for DeSantis, I know. They should still be able to criticize stuff that’s egregious.

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    Andy Napoli

    I agree, Nick. This curriculum argument is overheated AND DeSantis doesn't earn the benefit of the doubt.

    To be honest, I think that's exactly what he wants -- to be unfairly attacked by "The Left" and then have a very solid set of facts upon which he can fall back upon, to show his supporters (and those inclined to vote for Trump) how unfairly persecuted DeSantis is by the MSM.

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  7. John

    I was optimistic about DeSantis early. And I don’t disagree with his policies in general. But he went off the deep end trying to attract MAGA extremists. In doing so he painted himself as a far right extremist. I suspect that if he had simply been himself as I thought him to be, he would be in a much stronger position today. I wouldn’t touch him now with a ten foot pole.

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    Xsearnold

    It says something that a mention of "the Vice President" takes me a few seconds to come up with the name...

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    John Q. Public

    What an absolute joke of a column. Nick says at the outset (with much self-congratulation) that he is going to (hold your applause please) write a fair column about Ron DeSantis! Only, of course, after musing about whether or not he should do this given how *icky* DeSantis is. And, of course he will devote only a few paragraphs to explaining why this whole controversy is nonsense before spending the latter half of the column explaining why, really, this is all DeSantis's fault in the first place and who can blame Kamala Harris for lying about him? That's just good politics!

    Congratulations Nick for managing to squeeze about two non-negative paragraphs (mostly outsourced to Charlie Cooke) into the same anti-DeSantis column you churn out 2-3 times every week.

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      Stephanie

      On the other hand, I thought it was odd that Nick started out parroting performative outrage about Kamala Harris, amplified Cooke's selective and intellectually dishonest criticism.

      But then pivoted to show that, in fact, there are some serious problems with the curriculum--and that it was at the very least rolled out without being adequately vetted, and is an unfortunate reflection on DeSantis for illustrating the racism which he's been accused of.

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      JohnF

      DeSantis's problem isn't with Harris or the (non)-controversy, but in the way that he (mis)handled the situation. Christie nailed him by using the situation as an opportunity to point out that “I didn’t do it, and I wasn’t involved in it" isn't exactly "leadership". Christie then showed how to pivot from the controversy by shifting the conversation to testing and general education scores.

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      Rdoconnell

      It's still fair though.

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        John Q. Public

        The "Florida is excusing slavery" attack is a lie. Nick acknowledges that it is a lie, and then spends the vast majority of his column explaining why everyone should be excused for spreading the lie because DeSantis is a jerk. That's just the same "it's ok when we do it to our enemies" attitude that he loves to excoriate the right for, it's not "fairness".

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    4. RockyRacoon

      Couldn't agree more. It's exhausting to be subjected to Catoggio's constantly hostile stance on everything Desantis. Of course it seems to just be part of his pessimistic schtick.

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        John Q. Public

        I don't even really mind if he's going to be hostile to DeSantis, but spare me all the holier-than-thou BS about how you're swallowing your pride to be "fair" when you spend the majority of the column explaining why he totally deserves it

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  10. Mil001

    The failures of DeSantis and his staff to think all this through, and his penchant for a gross "weaponization of the State" aside, I had been struck by the Vice President's anger and outrage, on full display (perhaps a little over the top, no?). She gave the initial remarks in Jacksonville. Close enough to the border to give her an exit strategy. However, had she driven north to Charleston, SC, a pleasant and scenic trip of some 250 miles, and four hours of calming vistas, she could have visited the International African American Museum, just opened in June. In it, she would have seen several displays and exhibits that highlighted proudly the resilience and vitality of many of the African diaspora in the US. The IAAM was saying essentially the same things as the new Florida social studies curricula, that slavery was a cruel and inhumane stain on our nation, but that several who suffered under it found a way forward, a way to survive and grow. Not a bad lesson at all. The main difference between the sources of that lesson being that the Museum was not a candidate for the GOP's Presidential nomination. A candidate, it might be said, over whom the Democrats would much prefer another, more outlandish--and defeatable--one.

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      Citizen60

      Did I miss something? The VP’s comments were about a Florida school curriculum, not either Carolinas.

      Am sure the Black VP visiting the African America History Museum is nice, but doing so would add nothing to the curriculum issues related to Black history in Florida.

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      1. M L

        The point was, that this museum (with a perspective putatively favored by those criticizing DeSantis?) was saying essentially the same thing as the Florida curriculum when the latter is read in full context. Maybe not a direct correlation, but fairly read, the point stands.

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