Some of the issues raised surrounded standards that include instruction on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” and lessons that touch on acts of violence perpetrated “against and by” African Americans.
These standards were developed to be compliant with the “anti-woke” policies advanced by Governor DeSantis and supported by the Florida legislature and state Board of Education. The result is a distorted attempt to teach our nation’s history in a comprehensive way without making anyone feel distressed or uncomfortable. With that goal in mind, the horrors of American slavery are minimized to the point that a phrase such as “personal benefit” gets applied to enslaved people. After emancipation, the racial terror and violence inflicted on Black people from Reconstruction to the mid-twentieth century gets reduced to violence “against and by” African Americans. This misses the point that such violence was initiated to enforce white supremacy and sometimes met with acts of self-defense by the Black community. This is reminiscent of the ex-President’s response to the racial violence in Charlottesville, VA in 2015 by asserting that there were good people “on both sides.”
While Florida’s history standards have caused a national controversy, using the teaching of history to minimize the reality of slavery and racial injustice is not new. The image posted above comes from a Virginia history textbook used from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. Both the visual image and the printed text distort the reality of slavery to make it seem “beneficial” for enslaved people. This was part of the successful “Lost Cause” strategy of The United Daughters of the Confederacy to influence the historical narrative following the defeat of the Confederacy. This included editing history text books to present a “benign” view of slavery and a noble view of the Confederate cause. Many white people who opposed and resisted the modern Civil Rights Movement were educated during the years these history textbooks were used. The first video posted below summarizes the profound impact of the UDC on generations of school aged children.
With this in mind, it occurs to me that the connection between Florida’s commitment to an “anti-woke” agenda and the state’s history standard represents a kind of Lost Cause 2.0. If school aged children are taught to minimize the horrors and sin of slavery along with its legacy of ongoing racial injustice, there is no reason to awaken to the need for change. Yet the truth of history cannot be finally hidden or denied. Any of us who believe that all people are make in the image of God cannot remain satisfied with a distorted view of our history that denies the suffering and trauma of some people in order to comfort and pacify others. The way toward justice and healing is to go through these painful realities rather than to try to deny or avoid them. The second video posted below addresses the current situation in Florida and features the Black historian, writer, and teacher Jelani Cobb who is the Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University.