The Florida State Board of Education has approved standards for a new curriculum regarding African American history, drawing controversy from politicians and educators alike.
The guidelines included one particularly divisive learning objective: Florida public schools will now teach that slavery benefited some Black people because it taught them useful skills.
The Florida BOE's 216-page document detailing the changes to history lessons in Florida's schools wrote that teachers must include the notion that "slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."
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Attorney Stephen Hunter Johnson said the updates to the standards “water down” the difficult truths of slavery in this country.
“You can’t soften the blow and stain of slavery on this country,” said Johnson. “No one in Florida had been calling for significant revisions besides members of the Black community who were just asking for a deeper dive. We didn’t get a deeper dive.”
Critics point out an update that requires teachers to talk about the skills African Americans gained while enslaved that could have led to their personal benefit. They also criticize the board for using “outdated language” like “slave” instead of “enslaved.”
“Slavery is presented as a training ground where enslaved people were taught skills that they could use for their benefit," said Florida Sen. Geraldine Thompson. "This whitewashes the brutality that occurred when families were separated by being sold off during slavery."
Thompson is a member of the Commissioner of Education's African American history task force, which aims to promote the development and teaching of African American history in schools. She called the idea that slavery was a benefit to some Black people a "misconception."
"Florida statute requires that instruction be provided on African civilization before colonization and slavery. This focus is totally missing from the newly adopted standards," Thompson wrote in a statement. "The standards should not advance the misconception that our history as a people began with slavery and not with one of the most advanced civilizations in the world."
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education said the standards “were created by a workgroup consisting of 13 educators and academics including nominations from the commissioner’s African American History Task Force.”
Dr. Donna Austin, also a member of the task force, told NBC 6 on Monday several members were never looped in on updates to the curriculum. The task force was created decades ago to help contribute recommendations on how African American history is taught in schools.
As of Monday, NBC6 was still working to confirm which members of the task force were involved in that conversation.
The new curriculum also includes a subsection that will force teachers to instruct that African American people participated in racial violence throughout history.
Instruction must include "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," according to the document.
Thompson explained that the instruction of the Ocoee Massacre as detailed in the document does not mention the demands for voting rights, which "sparked the massacre of more than 30 Ocoee residents."
The Ocoee Massacre was a historical event in which 30-35 African Americans were killed by a white mob. Black residences were burned, and the remaining Black residents were driven out of the town of Ocoee, making it a "sundown" or all-white community.
The Florida Parent-teacher Association President Carolyn Nelson-Goedert urged the BOE to reevaluate the decision as well.
"The State Board of Education rushed to approve, with only cursory questions and no Board debate, revised Social Studies Standards including an African American History strand that many found incomplete, inaccurate, even distorted," Nelson said in a statement from the Florida PTA.
Nelson explained that "nearly an hour" of statements from parents, African American activists, former state legislators and education experts yielded nothing from the BOE.
"Their pleas fell on deaf ears," Nelson said.
"We are proud of the rigorous process that the Department took to develop these standards," a spokesperson for Florida State Rep. Manny Diaz Jr. said. "It’s sad to see critics attempt to discredit what any unbiased observer would conclude to be in-depth and comprehensive African American History standards. They incorporate all components of African American History: the good, the bad and the ugly."
Vice President Kamala Harris arrived in Jacksonville on Friday to detest the new education standards.
“Middle school students in Florida to be told that enslaved people benefitted from slavery, high schoolers may be taught that victims of violence of massacres were also perpetrators; I said it yesterday, they insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not have it,” Harris said to applause.
