Florida Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate Ron DeSantis is standing by a new curriculum for public schools in Florida that includes teaching the benefits of slavery. That is not a misprint - the benefits of slavery.
Students will be taught that the benefits of slavery included slaves developing skills that could lead to their personal benefit. For example: some slaves learned to be carpenters and blacksmiths, and those skills would benefit them later on in life if they ever got their freedom. The notion that slavery was in any way beneficial to the people in chains is beyond absurd - because both white Americans and free people of color learned those same skills without being slaves. And over the course of centuries, the number of enslaved people that were later emancipated absolutely pales in comparison to the number that were born, lived and died under the whip in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
It has been obvious for a long time that some Americans want to try to sanitize or whitewash slavery to ease any collective guilt felt by white America. As a white American, I am deeply saddened by the past but I never owned slaves and never supported the idea of owning a human being, so I don't personally feel guilty. But it seems that some Americans and their elected leaders want to make the legacy of slavery seem somehow less horrific for political reasons. Telling your voters you are going to protect them from having to be honest about their past and their ancestors might be a winning political strategy - but how can you lessen the severity of slavery? You can’t, if you’re being honest.
Slavery was barbaric. And I don't think there is anything wrong with admitting that, and teaching that to students at an age where they can understand that. Yes, some slaves were treated much better than other slaves, but would you feel better about being treated better than others if you were still being violently denied your freedom, your basic humanity? Any attempt to dismiss the horrific reality of slavery and the horrible treatment of humans during that era is akin to changing the past for the purpose of easing guilt.
As a presidential candidate, DeSantis continues to push a cancel culture and anti-woke agenda as he sinks in the polls. Supporters of his 2020 re-election campaign point to his massive victory as a mandate to make sweeping changes to what students are taught, and how - this new controversy is a direct result of his new policies, and now his 2024 Presidential campaign thinks they can capitalize on that momentum.
It's sad that American students were never taught the truth about our history - and now there is an effort to further disguise the truth by pointing out the benefits of the inhumane treatment of human beings. If German students can learn the truth about Nazism, then surely American students can learn the truth about slavery. Americans are tough enough to handle that.
