It's depressing that something like that is needed in the first place.
Yeah it is. I've actually heard people make this argument too. How stupid do you have to be to believe that?
How stupid do you have to be to believe that?
stupid enough to re-elect DeSantis
Ol' Pudding Fingers, himself, king of the Go-Go boots! The meatball-iest of Rons!
At the Atlanta History museum there's a whole "both sides" exhibit on the civil war that makes this argument (and makes me vomit).
They put it in just in time for the '96 Atlanta Olympics and it's been there ever since.
Atlanta has a bunch of traitors carved into a big rock on the side of a mountain too.
Having read the standards, possibly the worst part about them is that it's not written such that you have to teach that racist bs, but it's obviously written to give cover to those who do. So it's not so much that it's supporting a bullshit way of looking at slavery as an institution in the past. It's really supporting the horrible people who continue to think that way today, and enabling them to pass it on to a new generation.
They're not stupid, but they're trying to ensure the next generation is.
Alright I'll bite. Why did it help?
IIRC, the common argument is that modern Black Americans have great opportunities by virtue of being in America. Without slavery, they would have been born in Africa.
This is ludicrous for a variety of reasons. It's the same kind of thinking that leads to people saying your relative died "because of God's plan", as if suffering always has a good reason to it.
They overlook the destabilization of Africa that went on during colonialism that led to its current state
The lesson Florida is teaching is that slaves learned 'useful skills.' They don't say who those skills were useful to though.
The only good thing about Florida is eventually climate change will destroy it
hopefully, we can wall Florida off before that happens. you know. and make them pay for it.
Let me out first!
maybe we can figure something out.... I jest, mostly. It just really pisses me off that as a whole Floridians are going against climate change- and immigration/refugees as hard as they are, despite a simple fact that they're about become internally displaced refugees themselves. (okay, so 'about' is maybe a decade away? or three.)
kind of like how certain people were voting against aid for hurricane victims, then demanding FEMA aid when it hit them.
The problem is that Florida is actually fairly purple, but gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc. are altering the outcomes of our elections.
I could see that.
Fuck Gerry and his mandering ways.
Our government is broken.
We shouldn't need to pass a bill to prevent lies and irrational theories from being taught. Honestly, I can't think of a reason why government should be telling teachers what they should be discussing at all (just like telling mothers how to deal with their health) - other than ensuring that children be given the best opportunities in the real world.
new standards published by the Florida State Board of Education earlier this year, which included language on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
How the hell does a school board even exist that could adopt this? This should never have passed in the first place. There's too many bandaids in government resolving things that shouldn't have ever been passed by idiots in the first place.
How the hell can anyone (DeSantis) continue being a government leader while claiming that slavery is beneficial?
This is what happens when people have little choice in elections but to vote for the candidates they dislike the least. We don't get to vote for people we like, for people we believe to represent our values. We're screwed by a two party system that's funded by corporations and legislated by lobbyists. Ranked. Choice. Voting.
I had a sociology professor who taught us about Harriett Jacobs as a counter to racist claims like this (because apparently students now have to have evidence to back up why slavery was bad. That's where we are.)
Harriet Jacobs lived in a crawl space for seven years after escaping her enslavers until she could make it to the north. I wish I could find the video we watched, but it basically said it was so small she couldn't even stand up. That would be considered torture in other circumstances. And imagine living in a crawl space with no heat in the winter or AC in the summer, in the South? But it was still preferable to being property.
How the hell does a school board even exist that could adopt this?
Florida is a retirement state full of old white people. They are the last vestiges of racism in its old form. Of course those old assholes are pushing back against the idea that it was their families that caused racial inequality in America.
It's like when descendants of Nazis try to say that their own grandpappy didn't do any of the killing, he just had the swastika on his uniform he wasn't that bad.
We shouldn’t need to pass a bill to prevent lies and irrational theories from being taught. Honestly, I can’t think of a reason why government should be telling teachers what they should be discussing at all (just like telling mothers how to deal with their health) - other than ensuring that children be given the best opportunities in the real world.
We have a public school system, and you very much want that public school system regulated. You cannot ensure that students have opportunities without regulating education.
What you don't want is fucking lunatics in your legislature, saying things like "slavery good."
This is what happens when people have little choice in elections but to vote for the candidates they dislike the least.
Their candidates ran on exactly this. This was their campaign promise. Their voters got exactly what they wanted.
Government isn't broken. People are.
Even with a lobotomy i wouldnt come up with such braindead takes as "black people benefited from slavery". As sane as saying homeless people benefit from fentanyl addiction or that african people benefit from hunger.
It's white man's burden BS slipping back in, where people (like Robert E. Lee) would say "We don't want to enslave these people, it's just our duty to civilize them."
I assume it's some kind of mechanism for maintaining their cognitive dissonance.
Good. Put out a plain bill that bans something they claim won't happen, and get them on record.
DeSantis is going to invariably weigh in on this and make things even worse for himself
"get them on record" nobody cares about that shit anymore when they have an 'R' next to their name. Pointing out the hypocrisy has been a waste of time for a long time. They don't care.
correct. getting them on record doesn't do shit -- but making sure they are legally liable if they do try that bullshit might help.
We have Trump on record admitting that he committed tons of crimes.
He’s still allowed to lead this country.
If racism doesn't exist anymore why do we need this?
Didn't you hear? Racism officially ended when Obama got elected! We did it everyone!
I love that the same people who say that will turn around and say Obama wasn't born in America.
We need to know Obama's last name
The great thing about this is that any argument against this which isn't explicitly focused on confronting the racial aspect, is an argument against the Don't Say Gay law.
Good. Black people did not.
And while we're at it, neither did Native Americans. And we enslaved them far longer than we enslaved black people:
This practice continued throughout the colonial era aided and encouraged by Native American tribes themselves up through 1750 and, after the American War of Independence (1775-1783), natives were pushed into the interior as African slavery became more lucrative. Even so, the enslavement of Native Americans continued even after slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865. Americans got around illegal enslavement of natives by calling it by other names and justified it in the interests of "civilizing the savages". The practice continued up through 1900, dramatically impacting Native American cultures, languages, and development.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1742/native-american-enslavement-in-colonial-america/
Guess how much of that they teach in U.S. schools?
Saying that black people benefited from slavery is like saying a kidnapping is beneficial when people are rescued from it.
This is cognitive dissonance if I've ever seen it.
Breaking news: Teaching children blatantly, shamelessly false information is bad. More on this unexpected development at 11!
Hopefully more on this Tuesday November 5th 2024
Everyone is talking past each other on this issue.
Some people who don't know anything are arguing that enslaved people literally benefited from slavery, but that's not what started this discussion.
Mm, yes, and what would happen if they tried to take these "transferable" skills and make money elsewhere?
Fucken rubes, how did we end up here?
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