What Critics Are Missing When Attacking Florida Guidelines for Black History

For the record, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida isn’t wrong when he describes Florida’s Black History curriculum as comprehensive and more inclusive than most other states. The Florida State Academic Standards for Social Studies 2023 provides an in-depth outline that includes far more than I expected. I cross-checked for the things I imagined I’d find missing; the Black Codes, the Slave Codes, the Black Panther Party, the Rosewood Massacre, and Malcolm X. They were all there. Nowhere to be seen, though, were the Compromise of 1877 and the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which effectively ended Reconstruction and ushered in Jim Crow. There was no mention of Partus Sequitur Ventrum, which dictated that every child born to an enslaved woman was also a slave and that their fathers’ had no responsibility.

The line is there about enslaved people receiving benefits from their training. “Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” That line has been widely criticized for the underlying assumptions that the enslaved possessed no worthwhile skills when they arrived and that slavery was a net plus for which Black people should be thankful. There’s been a considerable back and forth about skills that Black people did possess but couldn’t generally use freely without white permission due to the aforementioned Black Codes and Jim Crow. I submit the worst parts of Florida’s guidelines have been missed entirely.

What they include is just as bad as what they leave out.

The guideline refers multiple times to “natural reproduction,” which many historians have called “natural increase.” Natural reproduction tries to explain the statistical growth in the number of enslaved people in America, especially when compared to other slave populations in the West Indies and South America. In those places, often more slaves died than were born due to the harsh conditions of their enslavement.

The enslaved of America faced many of the same conditions; malnutrition, infectious diseases, and excessive labor, often in humid conditions. The life expectancy of enslaved Black people in America was much lower than free White people. Infant and maternal mortality were high, yet the enslaved population increased significantly, including in the State of Florida, hence the term “natural reproduction.” The unsaid truth behind this increase was systemic forced breeding and rape.

Nowhere in Florida’s guidelines are forced breeding and rape mentioned. There’s no mention of Sally Hemings, who had six children, by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson once wrote George Washington about the value of a slave woman exceeding his best male laborer because of the children she produced. Florida’s guidelines contain no language about bucks and breeders and the practice of mating the largest slaves to create big, strong children of more value. Florida omits one of the worst parts of enslavement; you’ll have to ask them why.

What they include is just as bad as what they leave out. Throughout the guidelines is the steady drumbeat about the efforts to end enslavement from our nation’s beginnings. Florida details the efforts of abolitionists and constantly points to the end of the International Slave Trade in 1808 as proof that America meant well. They will not say that ending the importation of slaves was a protectionist measure that made the breeders of domestic slaves in Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland richer as the value of their products increased.

You’ll never hear about John C. Calhoun’s 1848 Senate speech describing America’s intention to be a white country.

“I know further, sir, that we have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race — the free white race.”

Abraham Lincoln is credited several times for his commitment to abolition, yet he said this in the first Lincoln/Douglas debate:

“I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.”

My personal preference would have been for Florida to include, The Casual Killing Act of 1669, which absolved owners of killing slaves when administering “extreme punishment.” But that was in Virginia, so I understand the omission. Florida’s insistence that acts of violence against Black people be offset by describing things Black people did to deserve it is disturbing too. But the worst, by far, is the omission of the systemic pattern of rape and forced breeding and crediting America for its innate goodness during a period where it exploited entire races of people.

In some areas, Florida’s guidelines are not that bad. Taken as a starting point, one could do their own research and discover things they didn’t know as I already have. While discussing the benefits, but not the harms of slavery was harmful, the worst part of Florida’s guidelines is not being widely discussed. Perhaps many journalists and politicians feel uncomfortable discussing forced breeding and rape enslaved people experienced, but their discomfort is being weaponized to get away with whitewashing history. Nevertheless, preventing white children from feeling bad shouldn’t be the determining factor as to what history is told of the type of facts that are recorded and retold.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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