New Florida curriculum says slavery had “personal benefits” for slaves

Cool, teach about that too. My issue is if you guys had it your way, apparently that's all we're allowed to talk about. At least I'm criticizing the Florida DOE for going too far. I drew a pretty strong line there. You guys generally don't do the same for your own. Maybe a slap on the wrist if we're lucky, but no calls to dial it back, and more often than not... just attacking the source of the complaint rather than its subject matter.

Apparently we're not allowed to talk about Blacks seizing control over their own lives during reconstruction and beyond, we're only supposed to talk about how they were victimized, and only how they were victimized by White America. THAT is not history, that is race-hustling propaganda.

 

Howdy, river. You're one of the good mods on here, would you mind telling me what rule "pointing out someone is lying" violates? Thanks in advance.

 

Simple, to show that Black slaves didn't give up on life because they were dealt a bad hand. They made chicken salad out of chicken s*** under the circumstances, and that's admirable, perhaps even heroic.

Why deprive Black people of any success over the course of 100 years unless you just want to teach today's Black youth that they are nothing but victims in a hopeless situation? Because that's apparently all we're allowed to talk about.

"The war happened, apparently nothing changed because there was still racism, Jim Crow, lynchings, lack of education, etc... yeah there were three Constitutional Amendments and we fought a whole war to end slavery, but none of that matters until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, but that doesn't matter because there were still Jim Crow laws, lynchings, racism, etc. Then, Brown v. Board of Education happened, but that doesn't matter because there were still Jim Crow laws, racism, etc. Then the CRA of '64 was passed, but that doesn't matter because there was still redlining. Then, we passed laws banning redlining, but that doesn't matter because there's still inequity, then we elected a Black President but that doesn't matter because Trayvon Martin was killed by a Hispanic dude, George Floyd was killed by a White cop, and James Aldean filmed a music video at a courthouse where a lynching took place almost 100 years ago. And the worst evidence of all, Donald Trump was elected, sure it naturally encompassed a bunch of people who voted for Obama voting for Trump, but it was just about White Supremacy guys."

So basically Blacks today are just as poor off as they were 160 years ago, and if you're saying otherwise you hate Black people and are suggesting SlAvErY wAsN't AlL bAd.

 

On a general level, yes... they had extraordinarily little leverage and bargaining power, which is an explanation for continued exploitation.

But if we're only allowed to talk about the exploitation even after the Civil War, you're portraying a false history where no progress happened in 100 years (and frankly, likely longer than that) because racism was still rampant and institutional.

 

Civil War to Civil Rights: Work - American Civil War Museum.

From the American Civil War Museum website:

"With the end of slavery, newly freed people needed jobs. A majority of freedmen and women drew up contracts with the plantation owners and became employees of their former owners. Men mainly worked as farmers, while the women worked in houses as maids and cooks."

Before a mod comes at me, are links disproving Too Hot lefty talking points against the rules as well?

 

Up next on the agenda for the lefties:

"Why the Nazis Still Control Germany."

Normal Human: "They don't control Germany anymore."

Too Hot Left: "So you're saying Nazi Germany isn't that bad and anti-semitism doesn't exist? Reeeeeeeeee!"

 

We do that a lot…

 

More accurately to 1963 or so

 

DeSantis hemorrhaging Democrat votes.

 

Yes there were enclaves of blacks who prospered during that time. Black history courses usually celebrate them that doesn’t mean basic history should teach that slavery was a mixed bag. It was evil, pure and unadulterated evil.

 

Reconstruction and the Formerly Enslaved, Freedom's Story, TeacherServe®, National Humanities Center

"With a few notable exceptions, however, most of the scholarship on Reconstruction from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s ignored or denied the prominent role of African Americans in the era’s events. Blacks were rendered as the pawns and playthings of whites, whether they be white northerners or southerners. The most notable exception to this willful silence about blacks and Reconstruction was W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction (1935). Du Bois dissented from the then current interpretation of Reconstruction as a failed experiment in social engineering by placing the former slaves and the battle over the control of their labor at the center of his story. For him, Reconstruction was a failure not because blacks were unworthy of it but because white southerners and their northern allies sabotaged it."

Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP.

 

They may have gotten 401k’s, but apparently no Ambien …

 

Sharecropping and Changes in the Southern Economy | American Experience | PBS

"One of the miracles of the Reconstruction era and the period that follows is that despite the fact of having been slaves, and despite the fact of starting with nothing, nothing, that through their hard work, [freed slaves] were able to scrimp and save and buy a little bit of land for themselves, and build a better future for their children. They educate their children somehow, out of all this. How could they afford to do that? Just through sacrifice.

So we don't want to let the story of subjugation and poverty so overwhelm us that we don't understand that despite all those things, that African Americans in the South were able to fight their way up into a better life for themselves and their families."

Dr. Edward L. Ayers - History - University of Richmond

- Ed Ayers: "Edward Ayers has been named National Professor of the Year, received the National Humanities Medal from President Obama at the White House, served as president of the Organization of American Historians, and won the Bancroft Prize for distinguished writing in American history."

 

I see our friend has decided that rather than continue to get lambasted for his awful stance, he's going to argue against a straw man of his own creation.

 

This thread is really depressing. It should have died on page 1 with everyone agreeing that teaching kids that slaves learned marketable skills is terribly wrong.

 

"Today, kids, we're going to learn about the silver linings of slavery. Yay!"

 

Wow. This is pure ignorance.

 

"Though slaves in the Americas are typically portrayed as either field hands or domestic servants, many slaves were in fact skilled laborers whose crafts were a vital part of the American economy, particularly in the antebellum South. There is ample evidence for skilled African and African American slave labor, including the manifests of slave ships, which identify artisans such as wood-carvers and metalworkers. Records of sale from the early years of the slave trade through the mid-nineteenth century indicate a higher price for skilled individuals."

Skilled Labor: An Overview | Encyclopedia.com

"The list of slaves at Mount Vernon in 1799, the year of George Washington's death, reveals that, of the 184 slaves listed, more than one-quarter were described as skilled workers; they included carpenters, bricklayers, blacksmiths, coopers, millers, distillers, spinners, weavers, and seamstresses. At Thomas Jefferson's plantation at Poplar Forest, Virginia, slaves performed tasks that included brick making, blacksmithing, woodworking, and masonry."

"Typically, such skilled labors provided goods for use on the plantation, though in many cases they became profitable enterprises in their own right, providing an additional source of income for the slaveholder, who sold the products made by the slave artisans."

Never let facts get in the way of a good narrative folks.

 

I haven't read the details of the Florida curricula, so I'm not going to comment on that for now. Either way, I think a critical piece of context is needed in this discussion. The argument that African Americans should be grateful for their ancestors' enslavement and are lucky to be here - rather than Africa - has been a common trope to minimize the brutality and impacts of slavery and to oppose reparations. Some probably because they're racist and yet others because they don't like acknowledging history that makes America or their White ancestors look bad. In the latter version, we may even hear hear emphasis placed on the slave owners who didn't beat and torture their slaves or the slave owners may even be presented as generally noble and caring.

As to your question about land ownership, here's what I have read. After Lincoln was assassinated, Johnson rescinded Field Order 15 in 1865, thereby killing the 40 Acres and a Mule plan. Black Americans were then mostly forced to work as sharecroppers for White owners. By 1910, Black Americans had worked and clawed their way to significant land/farm ownership. Over time, however, those numbers plummeted. We will see if the State of Florida actually intends to present this history in an objective and balanced fashion.

The Short-Lived Promise of '40 Acres and a Mule' | HISTORY

The Contemporary Relevance of Historic Black Land Loss

At the close of the Civil War, Black Americans owned very little farmland but began acquiring it at a rapid pace, so that by 1910, Black farmers owned more than 16 million acres. This, however, would be the peak of Black farmland ownership in the United States as the twentieth century oversaw the rapid dispossession of Black-owned agricultural acreage.


In addition to theft by state-sanctioned violence, intimidation, and lynching, Black farmers also lost land due to discrimination by banks and financial institutions; through the denial of access to federal farm benefits by local administrators who funneled those benefits to white farm owners; through forced partition sales brought about by predatory third parties; through government misuse of eminent domain, including many cases in which Black landowners were compensated well below market value; through discriminatory tax assessments and non-competitive tax sales; and through longstanding, coordinated discrimination by U.S. Department of Agriculture agents who wield power and control over access to credit and essential resources.

By 1997, Black farmers lost more than 90 percent of the 16 million acres they owned in 1910.

***

This intergenerational aspect of land wealth is precisely what makes the estimation of historic Black land loss so relevant to discussions of racial wealth gaps today. As a result of having their land stolen from them, many Black landowners lost a valuable tool for wealth creation. Accordingly, while the children and grandchildren of white landowners reaped the benefits of ready access to capital—education, home ownership, and entrepreneurial safety nets—the children and grandchildren of dispossessed Black landowners faced the perils of migrating to inner-city ghettos—crime, poverty, and instability.

 

I'm not saying they should be "grateful" for the treatment of their ancestors in America simply because they happened to be "slaves in America."

You say "minimize" the impacts of slavery. I say "contextualize." There is no doubt a point where the brutality and impacts of slavery are overrepresented. A classic case of this would be notion that we're just as racist now as we were in 1865, or that Blacks made no progress between 1865 and 1964, or that slavery was unique to the US. Yes, progress was stunted by racist policies and violence, but it lied just underneath. And that's to the credit of blood, sweat, tears, and years of hard work on the part of American Blacks.

I know a lot of people here like things like the 1619 project. To them I say "you can't have it both ways." You can't suggest that Blacks built the American infrastructure and economy while simultaneously suggesting that they possessed zero marketable skills post-emancipation. It simply does not logically follow. Were opportunities extraordinarily limited? Of course. But I think the success stories overcoming impossible levels of adversity are just as important as the tragic ones.