"Florida Schools Will Teach How Slavery Brought ‘Personal Benefit’ to Black People"

The BBQ Pit
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" The Florida Department of Education faced angry reaction this week to new African American history standards suggesting some slaves benefited from skills they learned while enslaved.

Responding to the criticism, the department issued a statement Thursday offering 16 examples of historic figures it said fit that description. That they developed highly specialized abilities that helped them later in life is “factual and well documented,” the department stated.

Asked for more information Friday, it cited as references “The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution,” an 1895 book by William Cooper Nell, and “Encyclopedia of African American History 1619-1895,″ a 2006 book edited by Paul Finkelman." Benefited from slavery? Critics say some of the state’s examples were never even slaves.
It did not go well, it seems. Almost half on their lists were never slaves, while others on the list never benefited from the supposed trade they learned while being a slave.

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Well, hey, they all look alike anyway, so, easy mistakes, amirite?

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Thank you for sharing this—this is very helpful!

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Let’s put aside the issue of slavery and discuss a later period in history - 1920.

Here’s how Wikipedia described the Ocoee massacre:

The Ocoee massacre was a mass racial violence event that saw a white mob attack numerous African-American residents in the northern parts of Ocoee, Florida, a town located in Orange County near Orlando. The massacre took place on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election.

By most estimates, a total of 30–35 black people were killed in the violence. Most African American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground. Other African Americans living in southern Ocoee were later killed or driven out of town by the threat of further violence being used against them. Thus, Ocoee essentially became an all-white or “sundown” town. The massacre has been described as the “single bloodiest day in modern American political history”.

The new Florida curriculum will teach that the incident included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

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I get you are on about Florida but don’t forget the Tulsa race massacre in 1921 (36 dead and many, many more injured).

The Tulsa race massacre , also known as the Tulsa race riot or the Black Wall Street massacre ,[12] was a two-day-long white supremacist terrorist[13][14] massacre[15] that took place between May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents, some of whom had been appointed as deputies and armed by city government officials,[16] attacked black residents and destroyed homes and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The event is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in American history.[17][18] The attackers burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the neighborhood—at the time one of the wealthiest black communities in the United States, colloquially known as “Black Wall Street”.[19]

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But the portion you quoted answers that already.

Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).
Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.

That says flat out that they are going to talk about things slaves did, and how it benefited them, like indentured servitude. There is nothing there about how it is different and thus wrong.

I don’t think you support slavery. I just think you’re so willing to give the benefit of the doubt that you’re ignoring the plain reading or common sense about the statement.

If a Florida school specifies that “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” then that is synonymous with “Florida Schools Will Teach How Slavery Brought ‘Personal Benefit’ to Black People."

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I understand there were other racial attacks but the Ocoee attack was specifically mentioned in the new Florida curriculum. And I felt it illustrates that misleading intent of that curriculum.

The Ocoee attack was a group of several hundred white men choosing to attack a community of black people. (The attackers were angry because a few black people had tried to vote in the election.) The white mob was breaking into houses and dragging the black people inside out into the street. Dozens of black people were beaten and killed by the mob.

One black person, Julius Perry, attempted to defend himself when his home was attacked by the mob. Perry owned a gun and fired into the crowd. Two of the attackers were killed and one was wounded. But Perry was overwhelmed by the crowd and was killed.

So it’s factually correct in the narrowest technical sense to claim that “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” occurred. But that description is vastly misleading about what happened. It’s blatant both-siderism that makes it sound like both races were to blame for the violence. Which is not at all true.

And that’s also what the Florida program is attempted to do with regards to how it teaches slavery. By picking and choosing what it tells, it’s misleading students even if what it chooses to tell is technically true in isolation. Slavery lasted for over two hundred years and over ten million people were enslaved in America. So I’m sure there must have been a few slaves who experienced some benefits. But by presenting those benefits as typical, Florida is misleading students about the reality of slavery.

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It is certainly the case that in some rare instances the skills that the slaves learned could be used to their personal bennefit as spelled out in aruvqan’s post, and I think that this was an interesting historical fact, that indicates the capricious and contradictory nature of slavery and so should probably be taught. But as others have said its a question of emphasis. This was included as a significant point of the curriculum, suggesting that it was an important aspect of the history of slavery, rather than just an interesting historical anecdote.

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It is of zero historical interest at the school level and should not be mentioned. Illustrating just the evil of slavery is all we should be doing. We don’t need to teach that some few masters occasionally weren’t absolute bastards. That they were evil scum is all we should be teaching young kids. They’re too young for nuance. Hell, undergrad college kids are too young for it.

The race situation in America is a great case for something like Wittgenstein’s Ladder when it comes to teaching history.

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Not to mention that much of what they want to teach might not be too accurate (referencing the link in my previous post).

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This kind of butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth, “seriously, what am I missing?” bullshit is not worthy of a response. Seriously. I don’t care if he’s absolutely sincere. It’s either trolling or obtuseness beyond remedy.

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Oh, come on. According to Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of instruction, the Tulsa Race Massacre (hereforth known as the Tulsa Really Bad Day Massacre) was not racially motivated. And if we can’t trust a pro-Trump Republican to tell us the truth about our past and race relations, then who can we trust?

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“Some were taught useful skills” is really no different than “Some weren’t tortured, raped, or murdered”, when we’re talking about slaves.

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‘They never talk about all the people the Nazis didn’t murder. Just another example of wokeness.’

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I was unfamiliar with the concept of Wittgenstein’s Ladder and had to look it up. I’m still not sure I understand, but from what I did manage to find, I’m not sure that’s what we want here. If I understand correctly (and I’m not sure I do), it involves telling people things that they will later come to regard as nonsense, or at least as “not what I really meant.” Is it anything at all like Terry Pratchett’s concept of “lies-to-children?”

In any case, what you’re advocating here makes me uneasy, for several reasons:

One: It sounds like you’re advocating teaching propaganda rather than history. Aside from my other objections to this, I’m afraid it could backfire, and that when people do eventually encounter a more nuanced view, they will conclude that they were being propagandized and lied to and just disregard everything they were taught.

Two: As with teaching other historical atrocities (e.g. the Holocaust), teaching that all the perpetrators were evil scum could lead to a dismissive, “it can’t happen here” attitude. Maybe better to learn that “normal” people can be brought to do evil, scummy things and participate in evil, scummy systems.

Three: It runs the risk of giving the idea that the evil wasn’t slavery per se but cruel and abusive treatment of slaves by some masters (#NotAllSlaveowners). I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin not too long ago. In the novel, several different slavemasters are depicted. Some are indeed absolute bastards, but others are much more benevolent. The book has taken flak for this, but I think what the author (Harriet Beecher Stowe) was trying to do was address the notion (probably common in those days) that the problem wasn’t slavery itself but abusive masters, and that if only slaves were treated kindly and humanely, slavery would be a good thing. She tries to disabuse readers of this notion by showing that even a slave with a “good” master could be literally sold down the river or have his family members sold away if that master died or encountered financial difficulties.

And, perhaps, four: I’d be wary of teaching too simplistically that slavery was the problem, so that when the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment ended slavery, the problem was fixed (and that, even before then, the races lived together in enlightened peace and harmony in the free states of the North).

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“You had people that were very fine people on both sides.” - Actual quote about Nazis by President Donald Trump.

It’s hard to satirize right wing beliefs when the things they actually are saying and doing are so extreme.

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I feel the goal should always be to teach students the truth. But we should start by teaching them the big (true) picture first and then work on the finer (true) details later.

With African American history here’s the big true picture:

  1. African American history is an important subject for all Americans to know.
  2. America has had a lot of racism directed against African Americans.
  3. Slavery was based on racism against African-Americans and it was really bad.
  4. Post-slavery racism against African-Americans was also pretty bad.
  5. Racism against African Americans still exists.
  6. We’re made progress against racism and it’s not as bad as it used to be.
  7. We should keep moving in the right direction away from racism.
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Wittgenstein’s Ladder isn’t quite the same as lies-to-children. They’re conceptually related.

All history is propaganda. I prefer it be the kind I approve of. And “propaganda” is not a synonym for “lie”.

But no, in any case, I’m advocating teaching children a simplistic view, not a lie.

“Slaveholders were evil” is not a lie. It’s the opposite, it’s tautological, in fact.

It’s a Ladder, not a Teleporter. The idea is incremental reveal of more complicated nuance. Not a sudden shift from simple to complex.

But in any case, if someone goes from learning “slaveholders were evil” to “some slaveholders might have had very minor redeeming features besides that definitely evil part” and concludes that the first version was a “lie”, and then disregards it, they are not worth saving. Fuck them.

You mean, exactly like the current system?

i.e. become evil scum. I’m fine with that. That’s not what’s being offered here, though.

What? No, that’s the exact opposite of what I’m saying we should teach. We should be teaching exactly that - that owning people is evil, and makes you an evil person.

The evil isn’t “slavery”, it’s “being a person who owns people”. Not an abstract concept, but human beings. All of them. There’s no slavery without slavers. Slavers are evil.

Sure. Teach all the rest of it, too. In simple terms for kiddies, but definitely teach lynching, the Klan, Jim Crow, etc. I certainly wasn’t suggesting to only teach slavery as the evil.
Probably not in Florida, though… or anywhere else like it where the White Supremacists currently hold sway.

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Not even factually correct in that sense, since there was an act of violence perpetrated by a single African American, not plural.

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I would argue not even that, since it was in response to actions taken by white animals. “Self Defense” isn’t perpetrating anything.