Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he wants to set the record straight about his state’s black history curriculum. He accuses Vice President Kamala Harris of misrepresenting the state’s lesson plan about slavery.
“Florida is the number one state in the nation for education. We’ve achieved this by making record investments in our students, teachers, and schools and by enacting universal school choice. Our approach has empowered parents and families, who are actively disenfranchised in many other states around the nation. But we’ve also secured the top spot nationally in education by returning to the fundamentals,” DeSantis said in his letter to Harris. “Yet, time and time again, D.C. politicians choose to malign our state and its residents. Over the past several weeks, the Biden administration has repeatedly disparaged our state and misinformed Americans about our education system.”
DeSantis continued: “Our state pushed forward nation-leading standalone African American History standards—one of the only states in the nation to require this level of learning about such an important subject.”
He claimed that Florida had uprooted Marxist theories about race from the state’s curriculum, without explaining what those theories were. DeSantis has a habit of using opaque and esoteric language without explaining what he is trying to do in layman’s terms. This letter is just the latest example.
Kamala Harris Accuses Florida of Gaslighting Black Americans About Slavery
She accused Florida of trying to “gaslight” black Americans by saying there were positive aspects of slavery and called it an “insult.”
“I think that this is just a matter of whether one chooses to speak fact and truth or not, and it’s pretty much that simple,” Harris said in a speech in Jacksonville last month. “I don’t think this is up to any ideological debate to say that people who were enslaved did not benefit from slavery, period.
“It almost seems ridiculous to have to say what I just said, that enslaved people do not benefit from slavery,” Harris continued. “There are so-called leaders, extremists, who are attempting to require in our nation an unnecessary debate with the intention, I believe, to try and divide us as Americans. Stop. Stop.”
Harris warned that Florida alone was not the issue, because Florida could be part of a nationwide effort to change educational standards in the same direction as the Floridian curriculum.
“How is it that anyone could suggest that amidst these atrocities [of slavery], there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Harris said.
Ron DeSantis Looks to Debate Harris
DeSantis suggested that he would bring Dr. William Allen, a black professor who played a key role in developing the standard to dialogue with Harris and Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) over the curriculum.
“In Florida, we are unafraid to have an open and honest dialogue about the issues,” DeSantis wrote.
Allen told Fox News Digital the curriculum was misrepresented.
“I consider it a good thing that this has blown up in the way it has to. What it underscores is that this is not a Florida question, this is a national question. And without doubt, if the people who were speaking before they read, were to read before they spoke, they would learn a great deal,” Allen said. “They would discover that everything is talked about in this history, not just one portion of it. The horrors are not glossed over. The accomplishments are not ignored.”
Kamala Harris Not Alone In Criticism
Ron DeSantis has also received criticism from black Republicans Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Byron Donalds, who similarly have criticized the curriculum.
Donalds suggested that “the attempt to feature the personal benefits of slavery is wrong and needs to be adjusted.”
Scott slammed the curriculum saying there wasn’t any silver lining about slavery.
“There is no silver lining in slavery,” Scott said. “Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives. It was just devastating.”
Harris has thus far been silent as to whether she will accept DeSantis’s challenge.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting
