Florida Revisionist History
Revisionist history is not a new phenomenon. But in recent decades, it has reached a new arena of controversy.
Vice President Kamala Harris recently made headlines when she had strong words for the state of Florida’s plans to revise the African American curriculum, specifically pertaining to slavery being “beneficial” to African Americans. Writers Gloria Oladipo and Maya Yang, in their 2023 article for The Guardian, “Kamala Harris Condemns Florida over Curriculum Claim of Slavery ‘Benefit’, writes, “In an impassioned afternoon speech, the vice-president predicted the standards would rob children of knowing true US history that the rest of the world has been taught.”
In a board meeting that took place on July 19th, 2023, the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for how public schools should teach Black history. According to the Florida State Standards, “the new curriculum says Black people perpetrated violence during some race massacres, including the 1906 Atlanta race riot and the 1921 Tulsa massacre.”
Harris was not the only one that had strong oppositions toward the ruling. As Oladipo and Yang continued in their article, “On Thursday, at a conference for the Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta, Harris condemned the updated education standards as ‘revisionist history’…
‘Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,’ the vice-president said. ‘They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it.’ Advocacy groups have denounced the Florida curriculum changes for providing a sanitized version of history. In a statement, Derrick Johnson, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), said: ‘Today’s actions by the Florida state government are an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th-century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected.’”
Social Studies education has been under attack as many politicians and conservatives alike are policing how much of the historical narrative will be taught. This is a direct by-product of the ongoing actions to reverse and overturn legislation that encourages equality among race, gender, and sexual orientation.
This action should not be taken lightly. These actions will have repercussions for many generations to come as Americans, young and old, will live in a country where this kind of reversal will lead to more racial violence and less political or legal recourse for protection. Black children and young adults will grow up being gaslit into believing they are inferior to their white counterparts and can face physical and mental anguish.
Those who are in positions of authority and possess the ability to change these legislation need to be reassessed and need to represent the needs and concerns of all American people.
