DeSantis Faces Flak Over Florida Black History Curriculum

WASHINGTON—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis received criticism from members of both parties over his state’s new African-American history curriculum that directs middle-school teachers to highlight useful skills that slaves may have developed while in bondage.

The revised curriculum, which was approved last week by Florida’s board of education, features a section that examines the tasks performed by slaves—such as trades like carpentry and blacksmithing in addition to agricultural work. It prescribes teaching middle schoolers “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The change has sparked an outcry from teachers’ groups and the NAACP, and harsh criticism from Vice President Kamala Harris. Asked by a reporter about the curriculum last week, DeSantis defended it while saying he wasn’t personally involved in the change and directed questions to the state board of education. 

“But I think, uh, I think what they’re doing is I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” said DeSantis, who is trailing former president Donald Trump in polls for the Republican presidential nomination. “But the reality is, all of that is rooted in whatever is factual.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is also running for the Republican nomination for president, accused DeSantis of igniting the controversy through a 2022 law he championed, dubbed the “Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E.) Act.” DeSantis has made his record on education issues a key plank of his presidential bid.

“‘I didn’t do it and I’m not involved in it’ are not the words of leadership,” Christie said Sunday on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” quoting the Florida governor’s response to questions about the curriculum. “Gov. DeSantis started this fire with the bill that he signed, and now he doesn’t want to take responsibility for whatever is done in the aftermath of it.”

Another Republican presidential hopeful, ex-Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, also took aim at new curriculum. “Unfortunately, it has to be said—slavery wasn’t a jobs program that taught beneficial skills,” Hurd tweeted. 

Spokespeople for DeSantis and Florida’s state department of education didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. The chair of the board of education, Ben Gibson, also didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

The controversy prompted Harris to make a hastily planned visit Friday to Jacksonville, where she strongly criticized the curriculum.

“There is a national agenda afoot…that there are many aspects of our history that some would like to overlook, erase or at least deny,” the vice president said. “This is unnecessary to debate whether enslaved people benefited from slavery. Are you kidding me?”

DeSantis defended the standards as “very thorough, very factual” during an appearance in Utah with local GOP leaders. He accused Harris of trying to “demagogue” the curriculum while the Biden administration ignores more-pressing issues.

“Florida is focused on teaching true and accurate African American history. If you actually read our standards you’d know that,” Manny Diaz Jr.

Passed in response to the conservative fervor over critical race theory, Florida’s Stop W.O.K.E. Act purports to ban “teaching kids to hate our country or to hate each other,” DeSantis said in introducing the legislation.

The law has generated fear and confusion among educators and administrators across Florida. Some have said they altered or cut material from lessons to avoid running afoul of the law’s expansive prohibitions against leading people to feel guilt over past actions by members of their racial group.

Florida’s curriculum mentions slaves or slavery roughly 200 times. The updated curriculum for high-school social-studies courses frames slavery as a longstanding practice that predates European colonization of the Americas. It directs teachers to include lessons on how the slave trade developed in Africa, how slavery was used in some Asian and indigenous American cultures, and how Europeans were kidnapped by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery in Muslim countries.

Write to Paul Kiernan at [email protected]