Florida OKs black history standards amid criticism

One rule requires instruction for middle school students to include "how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit".

Another rule requires that when high school students learn about race massacres, such as the 1920 Ocoee, Florida, massacre, that instruction must include acts of violence perpetrated by African Americans.

Both rules are part of a new set of standards approved last week by the Florida Board of Education at a meeting in Orlando for how black history should be taught in the state's public schools.

The standards were created by a 13-member group of educators and academics, with inputs from the African American history task force, according to the state's Education Department, and were the result of a "rigorous process "described as "in-depth and comprehensive".

"They incorporate all components of African American history: the good, the bad and the ugly," said Alex Lanfranconi, the department's director of communications.

While some of the new standards seem to emphasize the positive contributions of black Americans throughout history, they have drawn criticism from education advocates who said students should be allowed to learn the "full truth" of US history. Civil rights advocates have called them "a sanitized and dishonest telling of the history of slavery in America".

One standard has especially drawn criticism — that "slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit".

On Friday afternoon in Jacksonville, Florida, Vice-President Kamala Harris criticized the standards and singled out that standard.

"How is it that anyone could suggest that in the midst of these atrocities that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?" Harris, the first African American and first Asian American to serve as vice-president, said in a speech.

Ahead of her speech, Governor Ron DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president, released a statement accusing the Joe Biden administration of mischaracterizing the new standards and being "obsessed with Florida".

Two members of the group who created the standards, William Allen and Frances Presley Rice, released a statement responding to the criticism.

"The intent of this particular benchmark clarification is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited," they said, citing blacksmithing, shoemaking and fishing as examples.

Rewriting facts

Education Commissioner Manny Diaz rejected assertions by groups such as the Florida Education Association teachers' union and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) Florida State Conference that the standards "omit or rewrite key historical facts about the black experience "and ignore state law about required instruction.

Paul Burns, chancellor of the Department of Education's Division of K-12 Public Schools, also rebuffed the criticism.

"For the folks in the media and in the teachers' union who are watching, we want you to please pay close attention because you've been peddling really a false narrative," Burns said.

Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, condemned the new standards.

"Our children deserve nothing less than truth, justice, and the equity our ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for," he said in a statement. "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."

Jim Crow laws were the state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation.

Agencies contributed to this story.