Republican Florida governor Ron DeSantis hit back at the Biden administration Friday over Vice President Kamala Harris’ claims the state is whitewashing Black history.
The governor defended the state’s teaching of Black history at a press conference, claiming the state teaches an accurate and balanced retelling of the nation’s past. (RELATED: NAACP Issues Travel Warning For Florida)
“I mean, I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. It’s totally outrageous. You guys can look on the website of the Florida Department of Education. You know, they got a lot of scholars together to do a lot of standards and a lot of different things. But these are the most robust standards in African American history probably anywhere in the country. Anyone who reads that will see that it’s very thorough, very factual, and for them to try to demagogue it, look, that may have worked in the past. Nobody’s buying their nonsense anymore,” DeSantis said.
The Florida governor implied the Biden administration has decided to focus on the internal matters of his state to deflect attention from their own purported failures.
“Nobody’s buying their nonsense anymore!”
MUST WATCH: @RonDeSantis hammers the Harris-Biden Administration for lying about Florida’s educational standards instead of doing their job.
“She’s going to come down to the state of Florida and try to chirp and try to demagogue …… pic.twitter.com/s0gAtit2UP
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) July 21, 2023
“And so, she’s going to come down to the state of Florida and try to chirp and try to demagogue … All she’s doing is ignoring the responsibilities that the administration has to secure our border — they’re failing at that. They’re not developing enough domestic energy — they need to. They’re not doing what we need to do to counteract China in the Pacific, and on and on it goes.”
“So, I would just encourage everyone to read it for yourself,” DeSantis added.
News circulated this week that the state of Florida would teach students black people benefitted from slavery. Conservative commentators denied these allegations, claiming the state’s education standards require teachers to teach how slaves developed skills that could be used for their own benefit. According to state documents, these skills include carpentry, domestic work, agricultural work and painting.
Vice President Kamala Harris shredded Florida’s Black history standards in a series of speeches this week.
“They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it,” Harris said Thursday in Indianapolis
Harris stopped by Jacksonville to speak out against Florida’s Black history education standards.
“They want to replace history with lies,” Harris said, “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not have it. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not have it.”