Photo:getty (2)
getty (2)
Florida Gov.Ron DeSantisis getting support fromJesse Watters.
Last week, theFlorida State Board of Education approvednewacademic standardsthat will require middle schools to teach students that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Vice PresidentKamala Harriswas the first to speak out about the guidelinesin a speech atDelta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.’s 56th national convention in Indianapolis Thursday, stating that they pushed “revisionist history.”
“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” Harris, 58, said. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”
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Watters, 45,criticized Harris' remarks onThe Fiveandargued. “This is well documented among historians,” Watters claimed. “This is historical fact that slaves did develop skills while they were enslaved and used those skills as blacksmiths, in agriculture, tailoring, in the shipping business, to then use to benefit themselves and their families once they were freed.”
Stating that the issue is “not controversial,” Watters claimed that it “actually speaks to the resistance and the aptitude of the enslaved African Americans who were at the time able to better themselves and able to improve their situation despite brutal, brutal conditions.”
“No one is saying that. It’s not true,” he added,per Mediaite. “They’re teaching how Black people developed skills during slavery in some instances that could be applied for their own personal benefit.”
In his own defense of the new standard, DeSantis, 44, said Friday that schools will show enslaved people could “parlay” the skills they were forced to learn.
“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,“he said in an event in Utah. He added that “scholars” were behind the standards and they are “rooted in whatever is factual.”
However, DeSantis also sought to distance himself from the standards, telling reporters, “I didn’t do it. I wasn’t involved in it.”
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They were also a discussion on Monday’s episode ofThe View, which saw co-hostAna Navarro’saudio cut briefly as she expressed her frustrationstating, “I live in Florida, I have been spitting mad about the culture wars that Ron DeSantis has been creating, so when he says he has nothing to do with it, that’s bulls—. He has created the environment that’s led to this.”
source: people.com
