FLORIDA’S SHAMEFUL, SINFUL, EGREGIOUS NEW REVISIONIST HISTORY CURRICULUM

I usually try to keep my “concerns” about the directions much of the U.S. has been taking in the past several years to myself, at least in public posts. After all, it’s not my country. But it turns out that there are some issues that transcend one’s intention to remain civil and respectful.

I get that not everyone agrees on all human rights issues, like respecting people’s right to love who they chose to love, or people’s right to terminate a pregnancy in the case of, at the very least, rape, incest, or for a medically-confirmed nonviable fetus. The rhetoric around these issues and the ensuing legislation are unbelievably cruel to those impacted, but apparently, that’s the society some people want, cruelty and all. We’ll just reluctantly agree to disagree.

However, for the state of Florida – the 3rd most populous state in the union at 22M+ people – to approve a clearly false narrative of history to be taught in their public schools is so beyond an outrage that it’s hard to know where to start. To stay silent is simply not on. This approved curriculum is intended to minimize (a polite word) the impact of slavery on millions of enslaved people, thereby reinforcing the historic false narrative of white supremacy. For God’s sake, even the Pope has now disavowed the Doctrine of Discovery, which gave formal approval to this convenient notion of white supremacy way back in the 1400s, in the early time of the destructive force of European explorers on native populations. It boggles the mind that this has been allowed to happen in Florida in this day and age. Why is there no rioting in the streets? Or organized protests to overturn this travesty?

In case you’ve missed the news in the past few days (and we get plenty of U.S. news, even if we’ve lost our local news), the new Florida curriculum makes the extraordinary observation that some Black people benefited from slavery because it taught them useful skills. Who came up with this brilliant interpretation and how did the State manage to have a Board of Education that would agree to it?

To be clear, when you are a slave, you don’t benefit from learning skills, your master does. When you’re a slave, you aren’t a free individual looking to improve yourself to get a better job and make a better life for your family. Your family unit is not a free agent of its fate; you, your wife (or husband), and your children are all the property of your owner, just like your owner’s other possessions: their home, their furniture, their livestock, their land … and all their slaves. You, your spouse, and your children can be sold to another owner at any time, and not as a family package. If you don’t do your job well, you’ll be whipped. If your master wants to sleep with (or rape) your wife or daughter, you have no say in the matter, nor do they. If your master decides to sell your wife or one or more of your kids, that’s just the way it is. If they don’t like your attitude, you may be lynched. This is slavery. Slavery did nothing to help those enslaved be self-sufficient, free men (or women) earning an honest living. WTF!!!!

People were brought over in chains in the bottom of ships, a perilous 2-3 month forced journey from their homeland in Africa. Little food, disease, and many deaths en route. Then they got to live in shanties and pick cotton in the heat of the day with the outside hope of staying alive in this new land, nothing more. And Florida’s new curriculum is going to teach kids that slavery helped some slaves gain skills like being a blacksmith. OMG!! My heart breaks at this travesty.

Canada has plenty of wrong-doing of its own. The tragedy of the Residential Schools is one of the biggest, if not the biggest. Indigenous children were taken from their parents, often without the parents having any notion of what was happening or where their kids were going, and placed in miserable excuses for residential schools. They were church-run, and financed by the federal government. Believe it or not, these schools operated for well over 100 years, usually well out of sight of non-Indigenous people. The intention of these institutions was to “take the Indian out of the child.” They stripped them of their language, their traditions (including their cherished long hair), their spiritual beliefs, and any connection with their families (including siblings at the same institution). When some children did see their families during the summer, they could no longer communicate with their parents in their native language. The intergenerational dysfunction began and has yet to end. The very worst thing the institutions (church-government-run) did to these children was to strip them of any and all sense of self-worth. Purposefully. The point was made, over and over again, that they were worthless natives, never to be on a par with the white folks. The same white folks who were not infrequently beating and sexually abusing them at the schools. The children were broken, and so were their families.

There are people in Canada who prefer to disbelieve that there was anything badly wrong with the residential schools, despite the government’s apology and the ongoing actions being undertaken to reconcile these acknowledged egregious wrongs. Naysayers exist everywhere and always have, just ask Ron DeSantis. And, until I read the over-the-top shameless statement that some Black people learned personal skills thanks to being a slave, I didn’t think these Canadian naysayers had even a toe to stand on, less a leg. One of their arguments is that the residential school survivors (so-called because many actually died at these institutions) did receive an education. Most of the education was minimal at best and can in no way compensate for the incalculable damage done to the psyche at the individual and collective levels. To me, such an argument is insulting and misleading, to say the least. However, the case the Florida naysayers make, promoting an upside to being a slave, takes insult and egregiousness to a whole new level.

It’s hard to think of any valuable lesson Black people learned from slavery except to distrust all White people. What a sad thing to have to learn, although no doubt of critical importance for survival. And, very sadly, this lesson remains all too valuable today. Just ask the Black families whose kids have been shot recently just by showing up at someone’s door. Or by cops in their own cities.

For the outside world, it’s been sad to watch the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country slowly lose its aspiration of being a “shining city on a hill”, serving as a beacon of hope for the world. It’s still great at the money part and the power part, but the hopefulness of a better future for everyone seems to have been greatly diminished. Florida’s new curriculum feels like a nail in the coffin for hope. Please, someone, prove me wrong.

Source: Reddit