Following an overhaul of Florida’s African American history standards, Gov. Ron DeSantis, the state’s firebrand governor who is campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, faced a barrage of criticism this week from politicians, educators and historians, who called the state’s guidelines a sanitized version of history.
For example, the standards state that middle schoolers should be taught that “slaves develop skills that, in some cases, can be used for their personal benefit” – a description that has drawn much criticism.
In a sign of the divisive battle over education that could affect the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has ordered her staff to immediately plan a trip to Florida to address it, according to a White House official.
“How can anyone suggest that in the midst of these atrocities there is any good to be subjected to this level of dehumanization?” Ms. Harris, the first African American and first Asian American to serve as vice president, said in a speech in Jacksonville on Friday afternoon.
Before his speech, Mr. DeSantis released a statement accused the Biden administration of undermining the new standards and “obsessed with Florida.”
Florida’s new standards land in the middle of a national tug of war over how to teach race and gender in schools. There are local battles over banning books, what to say about race in classrooms and debates over renaming schools that honor Confederate generals.
Mr. DeSantis has made fighting a “woke” education agenda a signature part of his national brand. He overhauled New College of Florida, a public liberal arts college, and rejected the College Board’s AP course in African American studies. And his administration updated the state’s math and social studies textbooks, scrubbing them for “forbidden topics” such as social-emotional learning, which helps students develop positive thinking, and critical race theory, which looks at the systemic role of racism in society.
With Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Biden who are now both official candidates in the 2024 campaign, each side is quick to accuse the other of pushing propaganda to children.
Florida’s rewriting of its African American history standards is in response to the 2022 law signed by Mr. DeSantis, known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” which prohibits teaching that causes students to feel uncomfortable with a historical event because of their race, gender or national origin.
The new standards seem to emphasize the positive contributions of Black Americans throughout history, from Booker T. Washington to Zora Neale Hurston.
Fifth graders are expected to learn about the “resilience” of African Americans, including how former slaves helped others escape as part of the Underground Railroad, and about the contributions of African Americans during westward expansion.
Teaching positive history is important, said Albert S. Broussard, a professor of African American studies at Texas A&M University who helps write history books for McGraw Hill. “Black history is not just one long story of tragedy and sadness and brutality,” he said.
But he sees some of Florida’s changes as too far-fetched, underestimating the violence and inhumanity suffered by Black Americans and resulting in only a “partial history.”
“It’s kind of sanitizing students to take,” he said. “Students ask questions and they demand answers.”
The Florida Department of Education says the new standards are the result of a “rigorous process,” describing them as “deep and comprehensive.”
“They include all the components of African American History: the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Alex Lanfranconi, the department’s director of communications.
A contested standard states that high school students should learn about “violence committed against and by African Americans” during racial massacres in the early 20th century, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre. In that massacre, white rioters destroyed a thriving Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Okla., and as many as 300 people died.
By saying that violence was committed not only against but “on African Americans,” the standards seem to be understood to teach “both sides” of history, said LaGarrett King, the director of the Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education at the University of Buffalo.
But historically, he said, “it’s not accurate.”
In general, historians say, the race massacres of the early 1900s were led by white groups, often to prevent black residents from voting.
Such was the case of the Ocoee Massacre in 1920, where a white mob, enraged by a Black man’s attempt to vote, burned Black homes and churches to the ground and killed an unknown number of Black residents in a small Florida town.
Geraldine Thompson, a Democratic state senator who pushed to require Florida schools to teach about the massacre, said she was not consulted on the formation of the new standards, although she had a nonvoting role on the Commissioner of Education’s African American History Task Force.
He said he would have objected to the standards as “slanted” and “incomplete.” He questions, for example, why more emphasis is not placed on the history of African people before colonization and slavery.
“Our history does not begin with slavery,” he said in an interview. “It started some of the greatest civilizations in the world.”
The Florida standards were developed by a 13-member “work group,” with input from the African American history task force, according to the Florida Department of Education.
Two members of the work group, William Allen and Frances Presley Rice, released a statement responding to criticism of one of the most divisive standards, which depicted enslaved African Americans as personally benefiting from their skills.
“The purpose of this particular benchmark explanation is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited,” they said, citing carpentry, shoemaking and fishing as examples.
“Any attempt to reduce slaves to mere victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resilience during a difficult time in American history,” they said. “Florida students deserve to learn how slaves took advantage of whatever circumstances they had for the benefit of themselves and the community of African descent.”
Florida is one of about a dozen states that require the teaching of African American history.
Other states with such mandates include South Carolina, Tennessee, New York and New Jersey.
The state mandate dates back decades – Florida’s passed in 1994 – and often comes in response to demands from Black residents and teachers, said Dr. King, at the University of Buffalo.
“There is a legacy of Black people fighting for their history,” he said.
But until Black history is taught, he said, there will be debate over which aspects to emphasize. Sometimes, certain historical figures and storylines come out more palatable to white audiences, said Dr. King.
“There is Black history,” he said. “But the question is always, well, what Black history are we going to teach?”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed to the report