We’ve all heard that a white supremacist trope—that slavery had personal benefits for Black Americans—is now being taught to Florida’s schoolchildren. It stems from the lie from the Southern politicians and preachers of the antebellum era, who declared that the “white man civilized the Black man and gave him skills." Now it’s curricula. Of course, this is happening in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida. The governor is the same man who rejected having an Advanced Placement course on African American Studies because it “significantly lacks educational value.”
Yet there is another “benchmark clarification” for teachers that hasn’t gotten as much notice but is just as deplorable.
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In Florida schools, Black Americans now must share the blame for their own massacres.
The Orlando Sun-Sentinel:
“Instruction includes acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans but is not limited to 1906 Atlanta Race Riot, 1919 Washington, D.C., Race Riot, 1920 Ocoee Massacre, 1921 Tulsa Massacre and the 1923 Rosewood Massacre” (emphasis added).
And by?
In each of those massacres, Blacks were never the perpetrators.
A century ago, the Florida town of Rosewood was a small but self-sufficient and thriving Black community. As was the case in Tulsa, and elsewhere in the U.S., this led to resentment from white supremacists in the nearby white towns. Just like in Tulsa, there was an accusation that a Black man assaulted a white woman, and a racist mob was formed.
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The entire town of Rosewood burned for days. The buildings and homes were destroyed. Women were gang-raped, and as many as 150 people were killed. The survivors fled, and never returned.
To be perfectly clear, some white people in the mob did die, but only because some of Rosewood’s residents took up arms to defend their homes and their families from being murdered and raped. Yet such acts of self-defense by Black people are now being called violence now here in Florida.
I have had to make the argument over so many times during last week that the institution of slavery in America, as well as the concentration camps of the Holocaust—thanks to Fox News—were not trade schools. Black people didn’t enroll in chattel slavery to learn a skill for a business opportunity or personal growth. It was about raw survival in a hellish condition. Period. From 1619-1865, anytime someone enslaved learned a “marketable” skill, it was for the sole purpose for their labor to be exploited by the white person who enslaved them.
Further, in most cases, people who were enslaved didn’t learn “new skills.” They were already farmers and craftsmen in Africa or in the Caribbean. In fact, it was often the other way around: Enslaved people shared knowledge with their white oppressors. Writing for Daily Kos in July 2022, I told the story of Nearest Green, the enslaved man who taught Jack Daniels how to make whiskey. I wrote of enslaved Caribbean distillers who were highly sought after for their existing skills.
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Now as a Florida resident, it seems I can look forward to making arguments that all people are allowed to defend their homes from violence without being called the “perpetrators” of said violence. This holds true even for those who have dark skin.