In a world where the former U.S. president faces criminal charges for inciting an insurrection to make himself a dictator; where the son of a former presidential candidate says COVID was designed to avoid Jews, and where Congressperson Lauren Boebert even exists, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ treacherous racism stands out.
Amid the hurtful and worrisome gay slurs and inhumane treatment of immigrants DeSantis regularly inflicts, this really happened:
DeSantis defended changes he’s forced into Florida public schools that teaches children his version of the Black experience in America.
He defended curricula that instructs students to learn that Black American slaves actually benefited from being forced into labor by “parlaying” skills slave owners forced them to learn into something good, “later on.”
Not just weird, that’s sick beyond all standards of sick political leaders these days.
It seemed so dark and so repugnant, that this just had to be some kind of exaggeration of something DeSantis said that was sketch, but not this depraved.
Nope.
He not only did he say it, but he doubled down on his notion that the Black American slavery debacle had a silver lining for those who survived their captivity, beatings, rapes, and lifetimes of dehumanizing abuse.
While in Salt Lake City last week, DeSantis rewarmed his earlier arguments that a new Florida statewide history curriculum being inflicted on students in that state was actually an antidote to what DeSantis says is toxic “woke” liberalism. He says, frequently, that liberal teachers are trying to “indoctrinate” children into believing that gay and lesbian people exist and that they aren’t mentally ill aberrations.
DeSantis, and his faithful followers there, across the country and even some here in Colorado, are horrified that history teachers enlighten children with the fact that racism in America is sometimes systemic, helping to perpetuate it.
DeSantis does not believe that there are laws in Florida and other places that actually perpetuate racism and the degradation of Black people and other people of color. And, clearly, he doesn’t think Black slavery was all that bad.
He believes that Black men take up vastly disproportionate slots in jail and prison because they disproportionately commit more crimes.
Even though undisputed studies have consistently revealed that Black men are more likely to be targeted by police than white men, and that they are more likely to have inferior legal representation than white men, and that they are more likely to receive longer sentences than white men, the facts are disregarded.
Sure, it’s shocking to hear a sitting U.S. governor and presidential candidate justify and rationalize his racism. It wasn’t surprising, however, that DeSantis is trying to gaslight all Americans, including Black Americans, into believing that, sure, slavery kinda sucked, but it was actually good for the slaves.
“They’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed being a blacksmith into doing things later, later in life. But the reality is: All of that is rooted in whatever is factual,” DeSantis said, according to an Associated Press story.
Those would be Florida alternative facts widely used these days.
“Parlayed” being an enslaved blacksmith in the South into, what? Shoeing a horse to ride into a town that would lynch his friends and family for generations to come? DeSantis, like so many southerners, still long for Tara, and for DeSantis, tomorrow is another, better, day.
People like DeSantis, who try to gaslight Black people into thinking slavery and generations of the segregation and racism that followed weren’t all that bad, don’t care about an accurate representation of history. This has nothing to do with the liberal arts of academics and intellectualism.
It’s impossible to seriously suggest that slavery’s silver lining was teaching Black people to sharpen axes or repair cotton gins. It’s no less depraved and insulting than insisting that Japanese Americans actually learned valuable farming skills for free when forced into internment camps, or that indigenous Americans were saved from having to walk so much of their lives by being forced onto small reservations.
American slavery existed for generations because it was normalized by similar tropes and justifications.
The lesson here is to keep politics and politicians out of academics. It’s anathema to the very foundations of American education to allow for such shameless propaganda and devious attempts to rewrite history. If American education isn’t based on facts, we’re doomed to return to DeSantis’ good ol’ days of the South.
Archie Bunker, in the 1970s sitcom “All in the Family” was a satire on this kind of American pseudo-intellectual veil over racism and hatred. There’s no good reason to tolerate this absurdity now, let alone elevate to top public offices.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
Well said.
Amen.
:eyeroll:1984: Freedom is slavery will come out of DeSantis’ mouth next.
Great column! DeSatan is a joke. I’m starting to wonder if a Harvard degree is worth anything.
LOL, he went to Harvard AND Yale, and considering your kind runs those places, no, they aren’t worth anything irrespective of whether he went there or not.
DeSantis also overlooks the over-representation of Blacks in another facet of the U.S. criminal justice systems.
“Nearly 60% of the people that the Innocence Project has helped to free or exonerate since 1992 are Black.”
Gee Governor DeeeeSantis or is Governor DumbSantis, would you like to volunteer to be a slave?
Think of all the benefits:
1. Free food
2. Free room
3. You don’t have to think for yourself as others will tell you what to say, what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
4. And if you don’t do all of the above, then you will learn to do it after the beatings and whippings.
Try it sometime and then report back and tell us how you liked it.
While I don’t agree or like the idea of making anything about slavery positive, there is one thing in this editorial that needs to be addressed. All of the studies show that black suspects commit a disproportionate amount of crime. A small percentage of the black population commits a large percentage of the crimes, especially violent crime. There is a cultural problem in the black community, especially among black youths, that is being systematically ignored. The media will not address the fact that a great many of the mass shootings are cases of black suspects shooting at each other. There is a concerted effort by the media and our own legislature to ignore the cultural problem that is causing much of the violence. The mass looting by black teens and the random beatings administered by black teens are being ignored. Our legislature and the Attorney General have labeled disproportionate police statistics as racist. They are, in fact, inevitable when officers are doing their job. The knee jerk changes in the Police Reform Bill have crippled law enforcement and made your communities less safe. The lack of courage to honestly address these problems have harmed all of us.
Thomas Sowell, a black researcher and noted economist, explained in his books that the intellectual elites have gotten the race problem wrong for over a century. In the early 1900’s the intellectuals, including the president, said that blacks were genetically and intellectually inferior. They were wrong. In the present time, the intellectual elites, including the president say that the problem is systemic racism. They are wrong again.
The problem is one of culture. That culture needs to be examined and we need to quit making excuses for it. At the same time, we need to understand that well meaning welfare programs that drove the black fathers out of the home caused many of the problems. We also need to insure that black children are given the best chance for an early quality education, including school choice. We must first have the courage to acknowledge that the black community has cultural problems that discourage education and promote violence. Let us be honest about it. The real answer is often the most difficult answer.
Men, who abandon their offspring, no matter the culture, are the problem. They leave the mother of their children with the nearly impossible task of providing and guiding and protecting the children 24 -7 for 18 long years.
The curriculum was written by two black scholars. The degree of lying the left believes they can get away with is infuriating. Yes, slavery did prepare people for life after slavery because they learned skills. No slavery was not a good thing and should never have happened. Both of these can be true at the same time. Grow up you incessantly whining children masquerading as intellectuals.
So, good things did come out of slavery, in your view? Would you have been willing to be a slave if maybe later you could get a job as a blacksmith? Also, regarding your comment about scholars, please bear in mind that our only M.B.A. presidents were W and Trump, two of the biggest boobs who ran two of the worst and most destabilizing administrations in our history.
Are you admitting that you only accept information that fits your own biases, Gene?
Huh?
LOL, thanks for conceding the point with that tactical ignorance that your side loves to deploy.
I am not at all informed on the facts behind this issue. But one thing you have said is very true and goes against the distortions we see in every issue today. Often, two things can be true at the same time. If we really look at the facts objectively, we can see that what may seem contradictory is not. This all or nothing taking of sides is not helping and is not honestly addressing any issue. Thanks for sharing.
Mr. Perry,
Maybe before generating an opinion piece that can influence people you should get out of your confirmation bias box and try and take an objective look at what you are writing about and do some research. Just because someone is Republican/Conservative does not automatically make there position or action on a issue automatically evil.
In the interview below Dr. William Allen talks about how the team collaborated in writing the 216 page document and his perspective of the offending sentence. (FYI Dr. William Allen is Black.) I believe he makes a good point, read/listen to the interview via the address below.
“William Allen, who helped write Florida’s new history standards, stands by curriculum” from an Interview with NPR – https://www.npr.org/2023/07/27/1190427952/william-allen-who-helped-write-floridas-new-history-standards-stands-by-cirricul
Why would Perry, the Sentinel staff, or any of the face-fanning commies who post here actually read the primary source? These ideologues all get their information from social media and other intellectually lazy “journalists.” They wouldn’t know a primary source document if it was slapped across their face.
Commies??? Wildly off the mark.
It is a moral obligation to speak against the gross inhumanity of slavery. That includes calling out these recent attempts that disguise, omit, and minimize the painful truth about slavery in America.
“Commies??? Wildly off the mark.”–No, they’re definitely marxists. It’s not like they make a secret of it.
“It is a moral obligation to speak against the gross inhumanity of slavery. That includes calling out these recent attempts that disguise, omit, and minimize the painful truth about slavery in America.”–I’d take that duty seriously if the left-liberal establishment condemned the Arab/Berber and African slave trades with the same passion and fervor that they condemn the trans-Atlantic one. The US is hardly the only sinner in this regard.