Via WaPo: DeSantis doubles down on claim that some Blacks benefited from slavery.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is intensifying his efforts to de-emphasize racism in his state’s public school curriculum by arguing that some Black people benefited from being enslaved and defending his state’s new African American history standards that civil rights leaders and scholars say misrepresents centuries of U.S. reality.
“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis said on Friday in response to reporters’ questions while standing in front of a nearly all-White crowd of supporters.
Again, the whole point of this is to muddle contemporary debates on race by making slavery look good even if in some small way. This is not about accuracy in history. This is about giving some level of excuse to clearly evil practices that have had long-term implications for contemporary socio-economic structures.
And it is Ron DeSantis, yet again, trying to capitalize on racism and bigotry.
DeSantis issued a statement Friday saying, “Democrats like Kamala Harris have to lie about Florida’s educational standards to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students and pushing sexual topics onto children.” His campaign did not respond to an email on Saturday requesting comment.
This is just getting so very tiresome (but I know that it works).
Will Hurd provides a corrective:
“Slavery wasn’t a jobs program that taught beneficial skills,” Hurd, the son of a Black father and a White mother, tweeted. “It was literally dehumanizing and subjugated people as property because they lacked any rights or freedoms.”
I must confess that I continue to wonder why Hurd remains in the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, on Fox News:
Some on the right defended DeSantis, including Fox News host Jesse Watters.
“No one is arguing slaves benefited from slavery,” Watters said Friday on his prime time show. “No one is saying that. It’s not true. They are teaching how Black people develop skills during slavery in some instances that can be applied for their own personal benefit.”
I continue to note: the reason is to soften views of slavery.
And Watters third sentence directly contracts his first from the quote.
