BLACK HISTORY
taught in Florida’s public schools follows a decision by the College Board earlier this year to leave out references in its new AP African American Studies course to the Black Lives Matter movement and slavery reparations, among other topics. The Board’s decision came after Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized the pilot course.
Florida already underperforms at teaching Black history. Although the instruction has been required since 1994, only 11 of the state’s 67 school districts sufficiently teach Black history, according to Bernadette Kelley-Brown, principal investigator and former chair of the African American History Task Force, which monitors how districts heed the law.
“This new statute now basically says if African American history is being taught, it is going to be taught in such an inappropriate, historically inaccurate, watered down way that it makes it untenable,” said former
State Sen. Dwight Bullard, a Democrat, who attended the Board of Education meeting in Orlando on Wednesday.
The meeting seemed designed to deter the average person from going, Bullard said. It was held on a weekday in the back of resort with $28 parking (more than $30 for valet). After the guidelines were explained, a public comment portion ensued during which the vast majority opposed the changes. Then the board voted to approve the curriculum.
“’How is it that a group that has no racial diversity basically bringing forward changes to African American studies and history that African American folks who have spoke are actively opposed to,’” Bullard said.
A former high school history teacher, Bullard couldn’t fathom telling his students that there’s a “silver lining in slavery.” He then took it a step further.
“Imagine the blowback of the same teacher trying to give you the upside of Nazi Germany,” said Bullard, now the senior political advisor of Florida Rising, a voting rights group in Florida. “Not only would it not be allowed, there would be bipartisan outrage over the idea that any teacher, a teacher or a curriculum trying to give the sunny side of Adolf Hitler. Yet we now have an African American history statute that is supposed to now give you this notion of the benevolent master, or the upside or benefit of being enslaved in America. It’s crazy.”
To Marvin Dunn, a man who has made a career off of keeping Florida’s Black history alive, most recently through his “Teach the Truth” tours, the issues with the new curriculum were plentiful.
He called the “attempt to reach some sort of equivalency for racial violence in our history” flat-out wrong. He called the idea that enslaved people benefited from their subjugation “evil.” And he called the sparse mention of lynchings, which was only found twice in an explanation of guidelines, downright disrespectful.
Dunn also questioned why students had to learn about “slavery in China, slavery in Asia, slavery in Africa” in a Black history course, something he saw as an an effort to show that “we were just another country that had slavery.” American slavery, however, was very unique.
“It was the only system of slavery in the world in which the people who were enslaved were defined as property, were reduced to chattel property,” Dunn said.
“For a Black child to sit in a Florida classroom and hear that their ancestors benefited from enslavement, how do you think” they will react? Dunn asked. “They are going to be hurt, they are going to be angry, they are going to tell their parents that this is being taught in the school.”
That, if anything, is the only positive takeaway from the situation: “These standards have awakened a sleeping giant that’s Black parents in this state,” Dunn said.
Reporting from the News Service of Florida contributed to this article.
C. Isaiah Smalls II: 302-373-8866, @stclaudeii