Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
It is a true statement that anyone learning to make and fit horseshoes over time develops a skill for making and fitting horseshoes, whether they’re paid for their labor or not. The skill bestows a personal benefit to the maker to earn a living if he can.
Most people prefer not to think about slavery in terms of personal benefits, which is understandable. But it doesn’t make the statement less true. Substitute the horseshoe example with plumbing or electrical engineering in a modern context.
Leftists who don’t like that Florida is deep red have accused the Florida Board of Education of sanitizing the teaching of the history of slavery in America by pointing out the “personal benefits” of former slaves using skills acquired during that dark time.
Vice President Kamala Harris stirred up the pot when she said as much last Friday. She criticized the standards and accused the board of wanting to replace history with lies.
So what do the standards actually say?
The Social Studies section (PDF) of the standards contains instructions for all kinds of aspects of slavery. For example, teaching about the Underground Railroad and abolitionists but also how slavery was utilized in cultures all over the world. The curriculum includes instructions about analyzing slave revolts, the expansion of slavery, and the abolitionist movement. In the section examining slavery around the world is this:
“Instruction includes the practice of the Barbary Pirates in kidnapping Europeans and selling them into slavery in Muslim countries (i.e., Muslim slave markets in North Africa, West Africa, Swahili Coast, Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula, Indian Ocean slave trade).”
What the board is trying to do is put slavery in its global context to counter the leftist view of history that paints white Americans and Western Europeans with the broad brush of being the sole perpetrators of slavery and indoctrinating children in this one-sided view, and instead teach children that all kinds of people enslaved others. The abhorrent practice is not unique to white people.
So, what about the “benefits” controversy? Here is the offending sentence in the 216-page document:
“Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Of course, the standards are so much more than that. At no point does the board try to downplay slavery or teach lies.
Dr. William Allen, a former COO of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) and a current member of CURE’s Advisory Board, is a member of Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup. He put the matter in context on ABC News. He said Harris’s criticism was in error and categorically false. Dr. Allen called the standards rigorous and comprehensive.
“It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans…It is the case that Africans proved resourceful, resilient, and adaptive and were able to develop skills and aptitudes which served to their benefit both while enslaved and after enslavement.”
Dr. Allen added that he’d read all the course and standards and is “quite confident in their validity, their historical accuracy, and their motivations and intent.”
If anything, the standards recognize how blacks overcame the odds and found ways “to make pathways for themselves, even in the presence of oppression,” Dr. Allen said. “And that’s what calls upon their resourcefulness, their resilience, and their adaptability. And from these things, we begin to see how it becomes possible for some people to see that even though people were enslaved, they made great contributions to the growing prosperity of this society.”
That’s a little different from what leftists are saying, isn’t it?
The tweet below is part of a Twitter thread posted by Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for Governor Ron DeSantis, which includes clips of Dr. Allen talking about his great-grandfather, who was a slave. Click on the time and date to open the whole thread.
Yesterday, @abcnews aired a very small section of their interview with a member of Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup, Dr. William B. Allen.
Here’s more of the interview, where Dr. Allen debunks @VP’s narrative and calls her criticism “categorically false.”🧵 pic.twitter.com/hPFbKNZPs1
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) July 23, 2023
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People peddled that nonsense (i.e. Black people benefitting from slavery) 200 years ago. It’s no more true today than it was then.
Merdies, what about Black Slave Owners, did they Benefit from slavery?
How about the high schools that require students to perform community service in order to graduate? Forcing students to work for nothing equates to slavery but educators claim it is a learning experience.
The military draft system could be construed as a form of slavery.
No one was required to serve in the military, there were alternatives such ad joining the Peace Corps, declaring to be a conscientious objector, medical exemptions (the favorite of the wealthy) and jail (such as chosen by Muhammad Ali and other men of conviction)
But so many were unable to make those choices and were forced to serve! So they faught and served like Slaves. And though many died or were mamed do to the service they were forced into, most of them learned skills that they were able to use when they were released and Freed.
I can’t believe that Kamala Harris had any comments about slavery considering her heritage that her family owned a plantation and owned slaves.
👍👍👍Slavery is a terrible thing and Leftist twisting History to make themselves heroes is also!
Harris was only trying to remind that slavery was not a jobs program.
Harris is always Trying to Say things and She is Never able say anything that makes sense!