Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is tripling down on his state’s newly approved social studies curriculum guidelines that erroneously teach students that enslaved people “developed skills” that they could use for “personal benefit.”
I've had enough of this. There are plenty of problems with Florida's Black history curriculum,¹ but the "skills" passage isn't one of them. It is:
- A single footnote to a single standard in the curriculum.
- True. (In fact, not even controversial.)
- In no way minimizes the evil of slavery.
This is an example of the way liberals spend way too much time focusing on the wrong stuff whenever race is in play. We are still claiming that cops shot a defenseless Michael Brown in Ferguson even though this was debunked years ago. We insist that police kill lots of unarmed Black suspects even though the actual rate is extremely low and declining (a grand total of seven in 2022). We blame standardized tests for low Black admittance to selective high schools instead of accepting the fact that we do a lousy job of educating them. We refuse to come to grips with the fact that Black men really do commit violent crimes at triple the rate of white men.
Conservatives are so horrific on race that it's only natural for liberals to feel that they can never cede even the slightest ground to them. I get pissed off all the time at the fact that conservatives virtually never even acknowledge racism aside from the occasional pro forma "Of course...." As in: "Of course racism is still around, but ________ is not the right way to deal with it [followed by 3,000 words on why we shouldn't do anything]." In these kinds of constructions, _______ is every single racial remedy ever proposed in American history.
But spending time on ridiculous stuff does nothing but give right-wing apologists more ammunition. We really need to be more serious about where we focus our energy.
¹Among them: (a) It spends too much time telling kids that American slavery was unexceptional because everyone did it; (b) It spends too little time describing the actual conditions of North American slavery; and (c) It significantly overplays the virtue of white abolitionism.
Look folks, it's incontrovertibly "true" that some people who were slaves in early 1865 were doing things for their masters which involved gaining a skill, learning how to apply it, learning when NOT to apply it, and developing good "work skills". For at least SOME of those people, when December 6, 1865 rolled around and emancipated those who had not already left their bondage, the skill they learned from their master did provide them a living. We should celebrate that.
But that was NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER the point of the training by the master, his overseer(s) or another his slaves. The point was to ENRICH THE MASTER and MAKE HIS PROPERTY MORE VALUABLE.
That's it.
All caps does not render the comment more relevant. It is irrelevant over-done over-compensating moralising (rather what Drum was pointing to as being ineffective as a response)
Nothing in the Florida statement indicates movite, only effect.
I train workers so they are more valuable to my production, not for their own good, mine. However as free labour they also benefit.
Certainly in that relatively small percentage - absolutely small percentage of American slavess that were trained in trade skills as like coopers (wheel makers) joindary, etc. anything was done for the ultimate employer-by-force... duh. It's not bloody charity. However those are niche cases where real extra benefit came out (and why such profiles are over-weight in freedmen/women profiles pre emancipation).
The Why is utterly besides the point.
Drum's note is more spot on:
"(b) It spends too little time describing the actual conditions of North American slavery; and"
That is the real evil (as North American slavery was particularly nasty by any standard, exceeded sadly only by Carribean slavery).
Although in politics terms
"(c) It significantly overplays the virtue of white abolitionism."
It is useful and wise to build commonalities. Denazification illustratively allowed and pushed on Good German narratives so that German social identification switched sides.
Going Versailles on a population, while clearly morally satisfying to the angry scolds, in long run does not pay off as well.
More emphasis on that (narrow yes) fringe of the anti-Slavery white southerner is propaganda but it is propaganda that can serve a positive identarian purpose to help break down the Southern Myth that you all have foolishly let as a singular response (rather as if one continued to treat all Germans as full Nazis - although careful history says that's rather closer to the truth in 1940 than not, but truth is not the purpose, deconstructing and rebuilding a social identification network is)
I was talking about SLAVE OWNERS (those pesky all caps again), not "White Southerners", some of whom certainly were anti-slavery. But so what? They were scorned and sneered at by people for whom the practice was "good economics" and their resentful followers in the non-slave holding hills and hollers.
If you think "motive" doesn't matter then you are beyond the moral pale. Motive matters because this seemingly innocuous "footnote" has become a cause celebre for hacks attempting to minimize the BRUTAL TORTURE (more all caps for your reading enjoyment) that many of these "Massas" dealt out to their "property".
So far as "identitarian" issues, I have counted over fifteen ancestors on the primary lines of all four of my paternal great-grandparents who owned slaves. Since women's ancestry is quite difficult to trace in the ante-bellum South, I don't know how many generations of slavers the wives of the men in those primary lines (and the wives of their fathers, etc) would add, though it's several where documentation does exist. So far as I can ascertain the ownership of slaves for three lines began in that very first period when the form of slavery still bore some elements of indenture, not chattel, and in most cases lasted until the Civil War. I am certain that some of the wealth that my father's family had was a residue of that plantation economy, though the movement west certainly consumed a good part of it.
So I'm not some "Yankee Snob" looking down on the poor unwashed White Southerners.
"But spending time on ridiculous stuff does nothing but give right-wing apologists more ammunition."
I think politically you're dead wrong on this. This is one of those issues where the liberal position bothers you personally a good deal, but I don't think the general public would put consider it an example of liberals going off the deep end.
Republicans bother me greatly about many things, but they have learned that you don't win points saying, "Well, actually my opponent has a point..." I doubt many people even know that yes, occasionally slaves were allowed to earn a little money on the side, and most of those who do would think it's in poor taste to make it a point to include as part of a statewide high school curriculum.
Democrats get to attack DeSantis for politicizing education and get to attack conservatives for minimizing slavery. Both things are arguably true, fit popular narratives, and show Republicans in an unflattering light. I'm not saying it's a game changer or anything, but no one but you is coming away from this saying "Wow, Democrats are being unfair to DeSantis." (Well, and DeSantis fans.)
There's plenty that liberals and Democrats say that are unpopular (like "defund the police"). This just isn't one of them. It bothers you. You personally. That's OK, argue that. Argue Democrats are wrong. (I disagree, but I understand why you feel they are.) Argue there are more important issues. (And there probably are.) But don't argue that this is hurting Democrats' credibility on racism, cuz it just isn't. It's slavery, man, nobody's going to side with the "Well, actually..." side.
I logged in to write precisely this. Kevin is (to his moral credit) a poor Machiavellian. Somewhere in his heart lies the belief that being scrupulously fair wins you an argument, and painting your opponents as immoral garbage (when they're merely acting in bad faith) will turn off John Q. Public.
Sadly, for wingnuts, this is the factory setting. They're able to turn the slightest bullshit into Hillary's emails.
I say leave it in as long they include the story of how children were routinely taken from their parents and sold, never to be seen again by their mothers. That should reinforce to kids that any 'yes, but' has its origins in evil.
I think that is one of the basic truths of slavery that is taught whenever slavery is discussed.
We certainly didn't learn it in Iowa the 90s. We just learned there was slavery. The traumatic bits were left out. I suspect this was intentional white moderation.
And now we can move on to celebrating the fact that the children featured in child porn get money when people caught watching the films are sued. Or we can move on to the great medical advancements that came out of Dachau. There is absolutely nothing at all wrong with teaching children that nothing good came out of slavery.
Multiple states had laws that prohibited teaching slaves to read. Training a handful to blacksmith or whatever hardly made up for that deficit.
So why don't you want the schools to teach the whole truth?
Because teaching the "whole truth" about slavery isn't a realistic goal for an elementary or middle school curriculum, given the limited amount of time devoted to the topic. SO, there is no point (unless your aim is to soften the edges of the whole topic) in using any of that limited time talking about the relative few number of slaves who made very little money off a skill they happened to learn while being a slave.
There are probably hundreds of other tangential points and factoids that would be far more illuminating about the topic that aren't included in the curriculum. Maybe once all those horrors are covered, then we get discuss covering the "whole truth."
The schools should teach the whole truth! Trying to pick out the "good" aspects of slavery is wrong because it's an attempt to present slavery as something less awful than it was. There were Roman slaves that became senators too, but that still doesn't make slavery less awful.
Alongside the point that some few freed slaves acquired skills from their servitude at the order of their master, it should be noted that the preponderance of slaves did not have this advantage...
Much of this is valid.
But I think that the vast majority of the work to redress racism at the macro level has been done. It is now universally unacceptable for white people to voice or act upon racist thoughts. The civil rights acts provide meaningful remedies when governments or businesses commit racist acts or implement racist policies. And the vast majority personally eschew racist thoughts and actions.
The work now should mostly be on the micro level. We are ALL "otherists." It's baked into our DNA by natural selection. For as long as the homo sapiens species has been in existence, individuals who fear and are suspicious of other persons have reproduced at higher rates than those who think and act otherwise -- by doing so in times past they avoided harm that way. Think of it as a set of concentric circles. A person is typically most at ease with him or herself; less so with immediate family but more than with non-family (people who look less like me); even less so with people in my town or tribe; even less so with people who look dramatically differently than me, such as people of another race. It is a biological fact of life.
But we are not controlled by biology, thanks to our evolved brains. We can and must use our brains and good will to recognize that we are inherently otherist and work every day, in every encounter with others, to overcome this evolutionary legacy and treat everyone with the respect they deserve based on their own character and actions. That's what I try to do and I think (hope) that I succeed -- I get better at it each day, or at least that's my goal.
I predict this entire post by Kevin re: "some slaves gaining skills is just a footnote that is both true and insignificant" isn't going to age well.
Christopher Columbus Says Slavery Was ‘Better than Getting Killed’ in New Videos Approved for Florida Students
https://people.com/prager-u-videos-approved-florida-schools-christopher-columbus-frederick-douglass-7629350
I'm sure it's true that, given only 2 options, most people would choose enslavement vs. death but... it's obviously not the universal experience of all slaves - lots of slaves committed suicide rather than continue living as a slave, especially after horrific events like being raped - and it's also morally repugnant too. So of course Florida approved this video for students to watch in school.
Can't wait to see how Kevin dismisses this video's contribution to the idea that Florida is actively pushing that slavery was a good thing. My bets are on "well, only a fraction of Florida schools are showing the video."
Well this is a tone-deaf and misguided post if ever KD has posted one.
Add me to those who think Kevin is a bit off here. This is something the right is much better than the left at - taking a "truth" and manipulating it to great effect to reinforce a lie.
The ultimate purpose here - and it is happening in multiple states - is to minimize the impact of slavery. This is why we have these "you cannot upset the white children" laws popping up in various staes. Yes, as Kevin notes, this is not the only problem, nor even the biggest, with the Florida curriculum, but that doesn't change the purpose of the inclusion, which is to minimize the impact slavery had on the slaves. "They got free housing, food, and skills! How bad could it have been?"
Kevin also (incorrectly) thinks that not focusing on these "smaller" issues would take ammunition away from the right, but that's wishful thinking. It would have zero impact on the discourse.
Remember…
America banned importing slaves in 1808.
So for more than half a century, the south bred humans for labor.
That included selling children and breaking families.
The only party trying to defend that today is republicans.