DeSantis Faces Swell of Criticism Over Florida's New Standards for Black History

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/21/us/desantis-florida-black-history-standards.html
https://archive.ph/byuqd

DeSantis Faces Swell of Criticism Over Florida’s New Standards for Black History
In one benchmark, middle schoolers would learn that enslaved Americans developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”
By Sarah Mervosh
Published July 21, 2023 Updated July 22, 2023, 12:42 a.m. ET

After an overhaul to Florida’s African American history standards, Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s firebrand governor campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, is facing a barrage of criticism this week from politicians, educators and historians, who called the state’s guidelines a sanitized version of history.

For instance, the standards say that middle schoolers should be instructed that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” — a portrayal that drew wide rebuke.

In a sign of the divisive battle around education that could infect the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris directed her staffers to immediately plan a trip to Florida to respond, according to one White House official.

“How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Ms. Harris, the first African American and first Asian American to serve as vice president, said in a speech in Jacksonville on Friday afternoon.

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https://democraticunderground.com/100218109960

[RKP5637]

1. DeSantis is a damn white supremacist Nazi homophobic authoritarian. Over and over again it

could not be more obvious. He will literally destroy the US if president, and look at what he's done already to Florida.

[dalton99a]

2. Anyone who doubts DeSantis' racist beliefs is a stupid fool.

Last edited Sat Jul 22, 2023, 01:54 PM - Edit history (1)

[RKP5637]

3. Exactly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! n/t

[allegorical oracle]

12. He's smart enough to know that his policies would get blow-back; probably why he created

his corps of brown shirts. To me, he always looks half afraid, especially when the camera catches him off guard.

[live love laugh]

4. If a red herring was a person...

[tanyev]

5. Many slaves were valuable because they had knowledge U.S. farmers did not.

The journey of rice to the US is the journey of the people whose labour and knowledge led to its successful cultivation. Between 1750 and 1775, the bulk of more than 50,000 enslaved Africans were kidnapped from the aptly named Rice Coast, the traditional rice-growing region between Guinea and Guinea-Bissau and the western Ivory Coast where part of my African forebearers are from, and whose heart is in modern-day Sierra Leone and Liberia. Because rice was not indigenous to the Americas and plantation owners had no knowledge of how to grow it, enslaved Africans were brought to fuel its husbandry, feeding the US' eastern seaboard, Britain and provisioning many parts of the British Caribbean. In the antebellum South, if cotton was the king of commodities, then rice was the queen. And the queen brought incomparable economic power, transforming Charleston, and later Savannah, into thriving cosmopolitan ports.

The women who brought this know-how were precious cargo. In their heads rested more than four millennia of experience, from the days of rice being gathered wild to its domestication around 3,000 years ago. And in their wombs lay the potential for centuries of wealth for their slaveholders at the expense of human dignity and the US' "democratic experiment" their descendants would ironically lay the economic foundations of.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210307-how-rice-shaped-the-american-south#:~:text=It%20built%20cities%20and%20fed,its%20cultivation%20to%20the%20US.

[LoisB]

6. Thank you.

[yardwork]

10. Thank you for posting this.

[malaise]

15. And the same is true of blacksmiths

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-blacksmiths-forged-powerful-status-across-continent-africa-180972065/


The history of the African continent—its wealth and politics—were forged on an anvil, says the Smithsonian’s Gus Casely-Hayford. “It’s one of those materials that, perhaps other than plastic, cannot be rivaled for its ubiquity, its diversity, for its complexity, for the breadth of its functionality and its application. It’s a glorious way to tell the story of the African continent, across time and geography.”

A ritual staff, for example, from the Ekonda peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has the edges and curlicues that make it a striking and somehow modernist artifact of its own. A smaller knife from the same area by the Central Pende peoples, depicts a character carved in wood whose tongue is the blade, suggesting that language can be sharp and cutting. There are fanciful-looking sculptures in iron depicting lightning streaking across the sky, as in a vessel by the Mumuye peoples of Nigeria. But it too, has an agricultural function: rainmaking.

[OrlandoDem2]

7. He's against diversity, equity, inclusion. He's agains CRT. He's against the LGBTQ community.

His DOE comes up with a racist standard for teaching black history. He banned AP African American history. He supports Moms For Liberty which has quoted Hitler.

JFC how much more do we need to show he’s a racist homophonic bigot?

[RKP5637]

9. It's damn sad when he and Trump are the best a major political party can come up

with in the US.

[republianmushroom]

8. Ron DeSantis, what and A-O.

Wanting to change history. History cannot be changed, only manipulate, but not changed.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

11. Nazi DeSantis and his minions are grooming a new generation of white supremacists.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

13. For this thread

Link to tweet

[dalton99a]

14. His Klan robe would match his white boots real well

[LetMyPeopleVote]

16. BREAKING: Florida Schools To Teach That Pompeians Benefited From Lava

Link to tweet

[dalton99a]

17. +1. And Hiroshima taught the Japanese nuclear physics

[LetMyPeopleVote]

18. Only a racist sack of shit would even try to sell such crap

Link to tweet

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

19. He wants to win the GOP primary BADLY... anything goes to win it.