One thing I never hear from the media coverage about the slaves "being taught marketable skills"

[halfulglas]

Discussion is the fact that those skills rarely benefited the enslaved person until he was free other than sometimes slightly better living conditions. Those skills - blacksmithing, etc., if they resulted in payment for services, the payment went to the slaveowner, not to the enslaved person. Those skills were to enhance the wealth of the slaveowner. If he trained the slaves in skills that were needed on his property, he owed less to others for necessary services. EVERYTHING was done to increase the owner's wealth. Just having the slaves increased his wealth because they were property and could be used for collateral when money was to be borrowed from the bank. Slaves were sometimes rented out to a neighbor for work for which the slaveholder was paid. If we can't change anything in the Florida educational system this year, the least we can do is not let them get away with the gaslighting.

Slavery is the original sin of this country and cannot be whitewashed.

[LakeArenal]

1. Some TradeSchool. All those scholarship winners.

[Captain Zero]

2. Reading is an employment skill. They didn't teach THAT

In fact anyone who taught a slave to read was probably soon headed north if they were lucky.

[hlthe2b]

3. I hate that there is a sense that we need to "counter-debate" the insane argument.

I get the urge to do so and of course, your points are fully valid. We are logical people, after all, but it is the same reason it is self-defeating for the most highly trained virologists, epidemiologists, and vaccine developers to debate someone like RFK JR or other anti-vaxxers. They don't care about facts and thus there can be no debate. They are committed to and in fact, invested in their conspiracy theories just as racists are to their slavery lies.

[orthoclad]

4. That's their goal,

a variation on the old Gish Gallop. Keep throwing outrageous crap on the wall, and all we ever do is try to clean it up.
Slave school, Holocaust, covid, nazis are just Americans, Barbie, sexual/gender identities, migrants... all we ever have time to do is react to culture-war stuff.
This lets them choose the battleground and dominate the discussion-space. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

[thomski64]

5. ..original sin, yes but let's not forget the twin

..to that sin ,the genocide of the indigenous peoples of this hemisphere. When people live from the land, and you drive them from their land. You are killing them off. From the Trail of tears to Oklahoma, which was later also appropriated, to Wounded Knee, to boarding schools that took their children (like Putin has done in Ukraine) to the insult of cultural appropriation that are spirts mascot names. We have much to teach ourselves about....

[halfulglas]

14. Yeah. College freshman history class in the 60s, prof was discussing

Manifest Destiny. We asked about the appropriation of native American land when they had lived on it for hundreds of years. I was told it was okay because they weren't doing anything useful with it.

Looking back years later, that was the same excuse for "urban renewal." They were just run down houses in "blighted" neighborhoods, not families and neighborhoods separated by highways to bring cars into the city and building stadiums for sports teams with the displaced people not adequately compensated for their move.

Slavery, genocide, displacement - all caused by greed.

[brooklynite]

6. Perhaps because everyone assumes its obvious?

[Butterflylady]

7. Obvious ?

[wnylib]

8. Even after slavery ended, former enslaved people often could not

use the skills that they use while enslaved. To set up a blacksmithing business required purchasing equipment.
Would have been necessary to work for somebody doing something else until you saved enough money for your own business.

And when formerly enslaved people were successful in business or managed to buy property, they were subjected to attacks and destruction for bring too successful.

[niyad]

9. Genocide and slavery.

[Frasier Balzov]

10. The skills they learned were probably taught to them by other slaves.

[yardwork]

11. Africans brought the skills of iron working, rice cultivation, etc. with them.

Does anyone really think that the slave owners in white linen suits taught anyone blacksmith skills? Really?

The Africans were brought to the colonies as slaves because they had skills. Iron working was developed in Africa and spread from there to Europe.

[Johonny]

12. I think the racist assumption

Is everyone not white is completely incompetent until being taught to do things. It's the whole premise behind ancient aliens on the History channel etc . . .

[NowISeetheLight]

13. Easy Question

Easy question for these state board idiots who passed this.

Slave A learned the skill of blacksmithing. How did that benefit him while he was enslaved?

Easy question.