Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic President Joe Biden recently criticized a Florida Department of Education’s new curriculum about African American history involving slavery. Harris and Biden argued the curriculum teaches how slaves developed skills “which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” suggesting “enslaved people benefited from slavery.”
However, some Republicans, including Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, have taken issue with the sentence and said it is only one part of an overall excellent curriculum. “I’ve been very clear that the standards are robust, they are accurate, they are good. Students in Florida will learn black history. But my issue is with one sentence of the entire thing. One sentence of 200 pages,” Donalds said on Fox News.
Meanwhile, left-leaning co-hosts of “The View” accused Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of attacking black people and not caring about their history or vote.
“We’ve built the White House, we have — listen. I’m tired of explaining it. I’m tired of explaining it. You know, and just so we’re clear, we’re not going anywhere. We’ve been here, Mr. DeSantis. Many of us have been here for generations. Can you say the same? No, I don’t think he can,” said co-host Whoopi Goldberg.
Co-host Joy Behar then suggested DeSantis is “overseeing gerrymandering in Florida to weaken the black vote.”
Despite being a Republican, the curriculum teaches about various aspects of slavery in the U.S., including instruction on “conditions of slavery, “African Americans who demonstrated heroism and patriotism” and those who made “positive contributions to the state of Florida,” according to its document.
President Biden and Vice President Harris’s comments are an insult to the Republican efforts for accuracy and recognition of African American history in the new Florida curriculum.
It appears they are trying to push a narrative that Republicans do not care about African-American history, yet the curriculum proves the opposite to be true. It is transparent and disgraceful for them to suggest that a sentence about how slaves developed skills they could use for their own benefit erases the oppression that came with slavery.
The left continues to prove how out of touch they are, especially considering the African American population in Florida is comprised of individuals whose families have lived through generations of slavery. The fact is that Governor DeSantis and Republicans want to emphasize the historical suffering, resilience, and legacy of African American people in the state. Biden and Harris’s accusations cannot be further from the truth and hopefully, they will recognize the efforts put towards this curriculum.