Black slavery trade. Free Microsoft Bing image.

“I want to begin by reading a standard from another area, another course [which course?]. In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, musicians…. Once free, African Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”

“That is the essential knowledge component of the College Board’s AP African American studies course that the Indian River County and NAACP endorsed in February. This is the same course that Vice President Harris, also endorsed…” 

These remarks were made by Thomas Kenny as he began his public comments at the August 28, 2023, School District of Indian River County, FL school board meeting.  

Thomas Kenny is a media consultant who was endorsed by the Republican party during his 2022 campaign for school board against Terri Barenborg. Barenborg was reelected to her seat with 57% of the vote and Kenny received 43%. Mr. Kenny, pictured above, is associated with Moms for Liberty.

The Florida Board of Education approved a new set of standards developed by the College Board for how Black history should be taught in the state’s public schools, sparking criticism from education and civil rights advocates who said students should be allowed to learn the “full truth” of American history. 

The “official” curriculum was approved at the board’s meeting Wednesday, July 19 in Orlando. The College Board is a nonprofit which oversees the Advanced Placement program, as well as the SAT and PSAT exams.

The Florida State Board of Education’s new standards, developed by the College Board, includes controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” according to a 216-page document about the state’s 2023 standards in social studies, posted by the Florida Department of Education.

Florida’s public schools were faced with teaching students that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills.

The Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers’ union representing about 150,000 teachers, called the new standards “a disservice to Florida’s students and are a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.”

Regarding Mr. Kenny’s assertion that Vice President Harris’ endorsed the course:

Vice President Harris delivered an impassioned speech condemning Florida for its new framework for how Black history will be taught in K-12 schools, including guidelines that slavery was beneficial to enslaved people.

“It is not only misleading, it is false and pushing propaganda,” she said in Jacksonville, Fla. “Pushing propaganda on our children.”

Harris also criticized Florida’s new standards for requiring high schools to teach that African Americans were perpetrators in some racially motivated massacres. She described these lessons as efforts by “extremists” to replace “history with lies.”

With regard to Mr. Kenny’s reference to the NAACP endorsing the course, they spoke out against the changes, saying Florida history books now “convey a sanitized and dishonest telling of the history of slavery in America. The NAACP is outraged by the Florida Department of Education’s recent ‘whitesplaining’ of Black history and culture. It was clear from the onset that the DeSantis administration’s decision to reject the College Board’s African American Studies AP course was an attempt to whitewash history and ignore the experiences and contributions of Black people in America.”

With regard to the Florida Education Department, “How can our students ever be equipped for the future if they don’t have a full, honest picture of where we’ve come from? Florida’s students deserve a world-class education that equips them to be successful adults who can help heal our nation’s divisions rather than deepen them,” said Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar, in a press statement. “Gov. DeSantis is pursuing a political agenda guaranteed to set good people against one another, and in the process, he’s cheating our kids. They deserve the full truth of American history, the good and the bad.”

Mr. Kenny is an advocate for political advisor William B. Allen, who helped approve Florida’s African American history curriculum.  Mr. Allen called out Vice President Kamala Harris for her comments on the new course material during a brief interview with ABC News.

Supporters, like Allen, have maintained that the outcries are meritless, and many have not read the actual changes.

According to CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION,  August 13, 1999 by Sara Hebel: “In the late 1980s, Mr. Allen headed the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, where he expressed his adamant opposition to affirmative action. He also came under fire, in 1989, when he delivered a speech titled “Blacks? Animals? Homosexuals? What Is a Minority?”

In February 1989, a mother filed a kidnaping charge against Allen. He was arrested by local police, detained for five hours and later released.  Reactions to the incident would later throw the United States Civil Rights Commission “into disarray”, with commission member Robert Destro saying that the charges were “most serious, and have the potential for severe damage to the commission, to the credibility of its members and to the credibility of its work.”

With regard to the College Board, on July 28, 2023 Nicole Chavez and Justin Gamble reported on CNN that The College Board said Thursday it “resolutely” disagrees with any notion that enslavement was beneficial for African Americans – a statement coming after some people compared the contents of its  Advanced Placement course on African American Studies with Florida’s recently approved Black history curriculum.

“We resolutely disagree with the notion that enslavement was in any way a beneficial, productive, or useful experience for African Americans,” the College Board told CNN on Thursday. “Unequivocally, slavery was an atrocity that cannot be justified by examples of African Americans’ agency and resistance during their enslavement.”

Where does all this stand?  The Florida Department of Education has stalled the release of the curriculum due to complaints they have received so far.

It will not be fully implemented until next year. There has been no approval of standards in IRC.

SDIRC school board chairman Peggy Jones said about the standard: “It is truly unconscionable. The standard is an embarrassment to the State..” 

What about Governor DeSantis?

“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis said in response to reporters’ questions while standing in front of a nearly all-White crowd of supporters.

“Democrats like Kamala Harris have to lie about Florida’s educational standards to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students and pushing sexual topics onto children,” DeSantis wrote on Facebook prior to her speech.

At the Republican debate on from the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California,Moderator Ilia Calderón asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to address the descendants of enslaved people regarding his state’s new standards on how to teach Black history in schools. 

Calderón: “Florida’s new Black history curriculum says, ‘slaves developed skills, which in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.’ You have said slaves developed skills in spite of slavery, not because of it. But many are still hurt. For descendants of slaves, this is personal. What is your message to them?” 

DeSantis: “First of all, that’s a hoax that was perpetuated by Kamala Harris. We are not going to be doing that. Second of all, that was written by descendants of slaves, these are great Black history scholars, so we need to stop playing these games,” DeSantis said. 

Facts First: DeSantis’ claim is false. Florida’s new standards for teaching Black history do include the clause that Calderón read out.

While Mr. Kenny is advocating for the essential knowledge component of the College Board’s AP African American studies course that “…slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” what about the slave owners?  How did they justify slavery?

The following is a report by Michael McClennan, a Research Informaticist, Department of Geoscience, UW-Madison on how slave owners justified slavery.

How did slave owners justify slavery?

Slave owners justified slavery in a mind-numbing variety of different ways. First of all, one needs to distinguish between race-based slavery versus captive-based slavery.

For captive-based slavery, the following arguments were typically used:

• I risked my life to capture these people in war, so they are my booty and I can do whatever I want with them.
• Life is hard for everybody, and almost everybody has to work hard under somebody else’s direction. At least I am going to make sure that they don’t starve, so their life could be a whole lot worse.
• If they work really hard, they can buy their freedom from me.
• God says that slavery is okay, so what’s your problem?
• People have always kept other people as slaves, so why do you want to go about changing things now?

For race-based slavery, the arguments were more along the lines of:

• The slaves aren’t really human beings, and they are fit for nothing but hard labor. Somebody who is actually intelligent has to tell them what to do.
• They would be much worse off if they weren’t slaves. They would be so undisciplined that they would starve, or start fighting with each other, or otherwise die in misery. We’re actually doing them a favor.
• If we let our slaves go, they will be so angry at us that they would kill us all. We need to keep them under control for our own protection.
• God says that slavery is okay, so what’s your problem?
• People have always kept other people as slaves, so why do you want to go about changing things now?

Would you say slaves benefited from race-based and captive-based slavery?

Related Article: https://verocommunique.wordpress.com/2023/02/20/governor-desantis-banned-the-advanced-placement-course-in-african-american-studies-based-on-a-draft/

Sources:

Jacksonville.com

Nea.org

CNN

Treasure Coast Newspapers

NPR

nbcnews.com

NAACP