Florida’s new standards for teaching Black history are part of a long tradition of white supremacy

The long war on Black history continues.

The state of Florida approved a new set of standards for teaching Black history, and students at the state’s public high schools will now learn that slavery was a benefit to some Black people because it taught them skills.

Consider the language from state standard 68.AA.2.3., which examines the duties and trades performed by enslaved Africans, such as farming and blacksmithing. The instruction “includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

What’s more, additional state standards are asking educators to discuss with students how slavery existed before 1619 (i.e., “not our fault”), and “acts of violence” that were perpetrated both against and by Black people, including during race riots such as the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.

Were I simply an educator, I’d be disheartened to read these words. But I am a Black educator. When I read these words, I think about my K-12 experience. I think about the many lessons my teachers failed to teach, because of the traditional practice of “whitewashing” U.S. history. Now, decades later, I anticipate Florida students receiving a deficient retelling of history, similar to the one I received. It’s as if nothing has changed.

Needless to say, the Sunshine State’s new standards were deemed a “step backward” by a state teachers union. Both Vice President Kamala Harris and NAACP President Derrick Johnson have also condemned the new language.

The approval of these standards is a continuation of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ war against Black history and Black studies. It’s an attempt to codify a sugarcoated telling of history that fails to wholeheartedly acknowledge enslavement as what it is: a violent evil that deemed African people as unhuman to justify an economic system that enriched the capitalist class of white settlers.

What’s happening in Florida isn’t anything new. It is a mere continuation of the white supremacist tradition of whitewashing history.

What’s happening in Florida isn’t anything new.

Throughout history, publishers, universities, religious authorities, and social activists were responsible for disseminating the ideology of white supremacy and Black inferiority through books.

For the longest time, this ideology included the myth that Black people were gifted civilization, government, and religion as a result of being transported to Europe and the New World. Now, the state of Florida adds to that the gift of skills and competencies.

Here’s the truth: African people had civilization, government, and religion long before they were stolen for labor, with the mighty empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai.

Likewise, African people had plenty of skills and competencies prior to their arrival on the shores of the Americas. According to the Encyclopedia of African American Society, planters in the Southern states had to learn from West Africans, such as the Ashanti and Yoruba people, who knew about crop rotation and the importance of diversifying crops. Africans also knew how to grow rice, and manage plantations.

Simply calling African people taken from their homes “slaves” — rather than saying that they were “enslaved” or an “enslaved person” — is already a denial of their humanity. But to say that Africans acquired skills as a result of enslavement is a denial of the genius that’s responsible for the skills they had gained prior to their enslavement.

The standards also fail to differentiate race-based chattel enslavement in the Americas from the historical enslavement that occurred worldwide prior to 1619, where enslavement wasn’t based on race. Crucially, the standards fail to acknowledge that race riots weren’t perpetrated by African Americans, but by mobs of violent white people.

My quest for the truth about Black history — which I didn’t get as a student — led me to the classroom, to becoming an educator. Were I a teacher in Florida, my quest to teach the truth would have me removed from the classroom — possibly by the angry attendees at a school board meeting.

» READ MORE: ‘Will I get fired for this?’ Rejecting white supremacy has a high cost in education | Opinion

Historically, efforts by white supremacists to perpetuate the myth of Black inferiority inspired W.E.B. Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, and others to fight back by writing books of Black people and Black history. It inspired me to write a book for kids about stories of Black resistance.

May the efforts of these fights over freedom in Black education inspire us all to fight back — with the sound of our voice, or the stroke of a pen.

Rann Miller is an educator and freelance writer based in South Jersey. His Urban Education Mixtape blog supports urban educators and parents of children attending urban schools. Miller is also the author of “Resistance Stories from Black History for Kids,” to be reissued in 2024. @RealRannMiller