Dozens of teachers and students marched to a Miami school district headquarters on Wednesday to protest Florida’s new standards for teaching Black history.
The protesters who made their way to the School Board of Miami-Dade County objected to new curriculum standards approved by The Florida Board Of Education, which among other things, require teachers to teach middle school students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Some of the examples they provided of people who benefitted included notable Black Americans like Lewis Latimer who were never enslaved. In fact, some experts say that nearly half of the Black people highlighted were not enslaved.
Other language that educators and advocates criticize includes teaching that Black people were also perpetrators of violence during race massacres, NBC News reports. According to the text, “instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans, but is not limited to the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C. Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre, and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre.”
In his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has repeatedly defended the new language while stating that his critics, including Vice President Kamala Harris and two leading Black Republicans in Congress, are deliberately misinterpreting one line from the sweeping curriculum.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, has repeatedly defended the new language while insisting that his critics, including Vice President Kamala Harris and two leading Black Republicans in Congress, are intentionally misinterpreting one line of the sweeping curriculum.
“I think it’s very clear that these guys did a good job with those standards,” DeSantis said, according to the local NBC News affiliate in South Florida. “It wasn’t anything that was politically motivated. These are serious scholars.”
Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, traveled to Florida last month to condemn the curriculum. “How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities, there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Harris said.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican in the Senate and a 2024 presidential candidate, also condemned DeSantis’s support of the state’s new curriculum standards.
According to critics, the governor’s administration has a record of attacking Black history, and the new school standards are just the most recent example.
At the start of the year, a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies was prevented from being offered in high schools by DeSantis’ administration because it was against state law. Additionally, DeSantis passed the “Stop WOKE Act,” which bans state and federal funds from being spent on diversity programs at state universities.