Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis eviscerated Vice President Kamala Harris’ smears about the teaching of African American history in his state’s education curriculum.
Harris accused the curriculum of teaching students how “enslaved people benefited from slavery” and “victims of violence, of massacres were also perpetrators” during a Friday speech. DeSantis said the vice president is pushing a “fake narrative” about the new curriculum in a Tuesday interview with Fox News host Jesse Watters.
“You know Jesse, she hopped on that plane very quickly on Friday to come down to Florida to spew this hoax,” DeSantis said. “She wasn’t going down to the border to actually do the job there to secure it, she wasn’t working on all the cities that are decaying because of Soros-backed prosecutors, she’s not worried about the military running low on ammos and weapons stocks. No, she’s here to try to push a fake narrative about what Florida did.”
Left-wingers have raged over the line included in the curriculum stating how “slaves developed skills” that could be used for their “personal benefit” in certain instances. That portion is under the category teaching of the “various duties and trades” performed by slaves, according to the curriculum’s outline.
The curriculum also includes content on “African Americans who demonstrated heroism and patriotism” and those who made “positive contributions to the state of Florida,” according to the outline. It further examines the “conditions of slaves.”
The governor touted Florida’s elimination of critical race theory (CRT) in K-12 schools to “stop indoctrinating kids.” He said the state’s ban on CRT in April 2022 led left-wing critics to falsely accuse the state of banning the teaching of African American history. (RELATED: NYT Columnist John McWhorter Says DeSantis ‘Did The Right Thing’ By Prohibiting AP African American History Course)
“There is no agenda here. It is just the truth,” DeSantis continued. “They talk in gory detail, a lot of the bad in American history, including of course, the injustice of slavery. But she’s trying to perpetuate a hoax. And I know they’re using it to attack me because Biden’s administration and Harris have been attacking me since they got in office and they’re always attacking Florida. But they’re really impugning the work of people like Dr. Allen who were not involved politically, were just trying to do a good job and produce really robust standards.”
Dr. William B. Allen, a member of Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup, helped outline the educational standards for Florida’s curriculum. In a statement to ABC News, he called Harris’ claims about the curriculum “categorically false.” (RELATED: ‘Devoted To Telling The Truth’: Co-Author Of Black History Curriculum Slams Kamala Harris’ ‘Lies’)
Yesterday, @abcnews aired a very small section of their interview with a member of Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup, Dr. William B. Allen.
Here’s more of the interview, where Dr. Allen debunks @VP’s narrative and calls her criticism “categorically false.”🧵 pic.twitter.com/hPFbKNZPs1
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) July 23, 2023
“As I stated in my response to the Vice President, it was categorically false. It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans. What was said, and anyone who reads this will see this with clarity. It is the case that Africans proved resourceful, resilient, and adaptive and were able to develop skills and aptitudes which served to their benefit, both while enslaved and after enslavement.”