After the Florida Department of Education (DOE) updated its standards for teaching African-American studies, Vanderbilt Prof. Michael Eric Dyson compared the changes to teaching “good things” about the Holocaust.
“This would be akin to saying that Native American people when we teach their history, we should not only talk about the smallpox blankets that were distributed by the pilgrims but the attempt of Native Americans to defend themselves–that was equally violent,” Dyson said Thursday on MSNSC’s Ana Cabrera Reports. “This would be like teaching the Holocaust saying that there were some good things that Jewish brothers and sisters picked up in those death camps that should they survive it would be helpful for them to make their way in life.”
“This is ludicrous. This was an institution of enslavement,” he added.
This came after Florida DOE’s new standards received backlash for what critics said teaches that slaves “benefited” from slavery.
After the standards were made public, major groups such as the NAACP and Florida Education Association (FEA) took aim at Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The FEA claimed that the new standards “are a disservice to Florida’s students and are a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994.”
Among the FEA’s “concerns,” they took issue with middle school students being required to be taught that the experience of slavery was “beneficial to African Americans because it helped them acquire skills.”
Following the Florida Board of Education approving the updated standards, the NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson on Wednesday released a statement calling the new standards “an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected.”
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“It is imperative that we understand that the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow were a violation of human rights and represent the darkest period in American history. We refuse to go back,” Johnson wrote.
The Florida DOE pushed back on the criticisms, telling Fox News Digital that the new standards will address the “good, the bad and the ugly.”
“There have been questions raised about language within a benchmark clarification of standard SS.68.AA.2.3, which says ‘Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” the department said in a statement.
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“The intent of this particular benchmark clarification is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited. This is factual and well documented. Some examples include: blacksmiths like Ned Cobb, Henry Blair, Lewis Latimer and John Henry; shoemakers like James Forten, Paul Cuffe and Betty Washington Lewis; fishing and shipping industry workers like Jupiter Hammon, John Chavis, William Whipper and Crispus Attucks; tailors like Elizabeth Keckley, James Thomas and Marietta Carter; and teachers like Betsey Stockton and Booker T. Washington,” the statement continued. “Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resiliency during a difficult time in American history. Florida students deserve to learn how slaves took advantage of whatever circumstances they were in to benefit themselves and the community of African descendants.”
The statement accused critics of taking “isolated expressions” out of context.
