Florida. The state where history goes to die.
Issue #370 OpEd July 24, 2023
History can either be the salvation of civilization or it can be its ultimate ruin. It’s as simple as honesty versus lies; which values are most treasured by our society, and why?
The benefit of history is that simply speaking, you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.
So when you understand the events that have preceded your position in time - not just recognize those events but really understand them - then that knowledge is what can be used to inform (hopefully) better choices moving forward.
The hope is that a better-educated society is better for everyone because ignorant people tend to be more likely to do ignorant things, which isn’t good for anyone.
But more importantly, you can’t have a clear idea of why you’re choosing to go in a certain direction into the future if the road you’ve already traveled has been erased and covered over. It’s hard to know if you made a wrong turn if there’s no evidence indicating you made any turns at all.
I would argue that a society that places no value on an accurate recounting of its history is destined to perpetually start each and every day at Day 1. Never learning, never growing. And that’s what leads to ultimate ruin.
Let’s take what appears to be happening to African American history in Florida for example. Because for obvious reasons.
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Last week, as a cancerous outgrowth of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Stop WOKE Act of 2022 (which tragi-comically and quite awkwardly means the “Stop Wrongs To Our Kids and Employees Act”) the Florida Department of Education approved new teaching standards related to how school children should be taught about slavery. These shiny new standards say kids should be taught that slaves benefited from slavery because being enslaved taught them valuable life skills. Specifically, these standards say children should be instructed that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”.
I wonder if one of those valuable life skills may have been how and why to distrust white people at all costs if you wanted to survive?
Moving on.
The new standards in Florida are also pushing for kids to be taught that Black people were sometimes responsible for the damage caused when they had the nerve to rise up against being oppressed.
From the New York Times:
One contested standard states that high school students should learn about “violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” during race massacres of the early 20th century, such as the Tulsa Race Massacre. In that massacre, white rioters destroyed a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Okla., and as many as 300 people were killed.
But don’t teach kids that this was solely the fault of racist white folk. Goodness no! Because surely Black folk must have been doing something wrong too. Because why would those good and decent white folk destroy an entire Black neighborhood and then try and erase all evidence that it ever happened if they hadn’t been provoked in some way?
So rather than teach kids about the root causes of riots and uprisings, simply point to the end result and then teach them to shake their heads in shame. Except that it’s kind of like teaching them to blame someone who is on fire for causing noise pollution with all that screaming.
But then, hey, why not? I prefer the silence, don’t you?
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