The conflict over a curriculum proposed for Advanced Placement students offered Governor DeSantis a rare opportunity to demonstrate how one can combine an unflinching assessment of United States history with an optimistic, pro-America vision, but he completely blew it.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is purported to be the no-drama alternative to former President Donald Trump, a skilled political operator and a competent, no-nonsense leader that gets the job done without chaos or confusion. He produces results, putting wins on the board that no other Republican politician can match, and is not afraid to address some of the most controversial issues of the day, at least in their view. Earlier this year, conservatives cheered when Governor DeSantis singled out a proposed African Studies curriculum for high school Advanced Placement students, rejecting the new program for running afoul of his signature Stop WOKE Act. “As submitted, the course is a vehicle for a political agenda and leaves large, ambiguous gaps that can be filled with additional ideological material, which we will not allow,” explained Bryan Griffin, the Governor’s press secretary. Of particular concern was inclusion of material on the corrupt Black Lives Matter movement, Critical Race Theory, and reparations, what supporters of the new curriculum described as “a comprehensive view of the culture, literature, historical development, political movements, [and] social movements,” to quote Christopher Tinson, the chair of the African American Studies department at Saint Louis University. The Governor’s messaging at the time was simple, direct, and to conservatives, non-controversial. “Florida rejected an AP course filled with Critical Race Theory and other obvious violations of Florida law,” Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, Jr. wrote on Twitter in January. “We proudly require the teaching of African American history. We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education.”
The conflict over the curriculum offered Governor DeSantis a rare opportunity to demonstrate how one can combine an unflinching assessment of United States history with an optimistic, pro-America vision. This was a chance to show Republicans and the broader public how it was done, to make a statement about American values even under the strain of the slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Act, to showcase how one can be pro-Civil Rights, anti-racism, and conservative all at the same time, or at least it should have been. The Governor and his team, unfortunately, were not up to the challenge, releasing a proposed curriculum last week so politically tone deaf it is astonishing. It is impossible for me to imagine who could’ve written much less approved two statements seemingly crafted in the early 20th century. First, they claimed “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” and then that some slaves perpetrated violence against whites. Both are of the kind that even if you believe them, you should be smart enough to keep it entirely to yourself, especially as a savvy politician in a racially charged environment, but not Governor DeSantis and his team. They went so far as to double down after being called out on both, issuing a list of some 16 examples that were quickly torn apart as many of those cited were never slaves at all. The Governor himself defended it this way, “I think what they’re doing, is I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a black smith, into doing things later in life,” he said. “But the reality is all of that is rooted in whatever is factual.”
Needless to say, such a nonsensical “nuance” defense didn’t matter to Democrats along with many Republicans, and rightfully so. “The much anticipated DeSantis reset: Teaching our kids that slavery had its benefits,” Jaime Harrison, chair of the Democrat National Committee tweeted on Friday. “Disgusting.” “Just yesterday, in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” explained Vice President Harris. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it. We who share a collective experience in knowing we must honor history in our duty in the context of legacy. There is so much at stake in this moment.” Fellow Republican and Presidential candidate Will Hurd noted, “Unfortunately, it has to be said – slavery wasn’t a jobs program that taught beneficial skills. It was literally dehumanizing and subjugated people as property because they lacked any rights or freedoms.” Former New Jersey Governor and current Presidential Candidate Chris Christie was even more blunt. “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. And from listening and watching his comments, he’s obviously uncomfortable,” he said in an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Of course, there are some who would likely defend Governor DeSantis on technical, rather obtuse grounds in my opinion, insisting these points are accurate in a strict sense and therefore it’s unfair to criticize. Millions of people were enslaved. There is no doubt that someone, somewhere might have learned something that benefited them later in life, but that’s akin to claiming there were some Jewish people who made friends in a concentration camp, bonding with people they wouldn’t have otherwise met. The violence comment is even less explicable. Would we have considered it bad if the Jews rose up in the concentration camps against their Nazi imprisoners?
Whatever you truly believe, there is still the problem that the politics are so out of touch it feels like a false flag operation, as though there were a hidden progressive in his ranks putting this material in the curriculum simply to generate outrage and depict Republicans as retrogrades intent on defending slavery. To be sure, there is much of progressive opinion on the teaching of slavery in this country that is largely false. To hear them tell it, slavery was taught as some kind of positive development up until a few years ago, right about the time they started promoting Critical Race Theory and, of course, that noxious theory was precisely what was needed for an accurate teaching of history. This is not true, of course. I was a student in the 1980’s and 1990’s in New York and New Jersey. Even forty years ago, slavery certainly wasn’t taught as a good thing by any means, nor did our curriculum highlight any benefits of it. It was clearly taught as an abomination, but at the same time, there was a tendency to gloss over the specifics, including the personal stories of slaves, and the long struggle that continued after the Civil War, suggesting that American fast forwarded from Reconstruction to Civil Rights. The details from these periods are important, however, to understand where the country was, currently is, where it is going, and most importantly from a conservative standpoint, to demonstrate how the promise and the underlying framework of American government is the key to a better future for all. One of the reasons conservatives so strenuously objective to the anti-American perspective of Critical Race Theory is because we believe the country’s founding documents and underlying principles were the key to the promise of freedom for all, precisely as the first generation of Civil Rights leaders such as the formerly enslaved Frederick Douglass.
This is an understanding I developed later in life myself as I became more immersed in American history, both the good and the bad. It is impossible for one to learn about the struggle for freedom and the abuses heaped upon black men and women, and not be moved by both the capacity for atrocity and the willingness by many to confront it. Some stories seem almost impossible to believe in their cruelty and violence, and not all took place in the deep South at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan. For example, Teddy Roosevelt was in office in 1903 when a mob descended on a Delaware prison where a black man was being held after confessing to the murder of a white woman. This was no ordinary mob, however. They arrived complete with sharp shooters, tools, and the equipment necessary to break into the prison. They proceeded to shoot out all of the lights, systematically remove all the doors and gates in their way, forcibly remove the black man from his cell, take him into the woods, and burn him alive. There were those in the crowd that wanted the man, ironically named George White, dead, but believed burning him was too much. “For God’s sake, don’t do this! Shoot the man! Hang him…don’t burn him!” The ringleader, however, a man in a red sweater was unmoved. “We’re going to burn the n****r alive, and we’re going to do it right here and now.” When White escaped the fire the first time, they threw him back on. When he escaped the second time, they threw him on again before someone finally ended the man’s agony by shattering his skull. Many in the crowd were said to be disappointed White didn’t suffer more. His bones were later sold for souvenirs.
I do not write this to feed progressive fires about how horrible the country was or still is. Whatever one believes about the United States’ essential goodness or lack of it, there are two things that should be apparent to every modern reader. First, this atrocity occurred barely 100 years ago. 1903 might seem like the distant past, but in reality it is not that far removed from the present. Queen Elizabeth, for example, was born barely twenty years later; no one from that era is alive, but there are still those with us that have heard some of these tales first hand. This particular story, however, might as well be something from the dark ages specifically because we have come so far in such a short period. Progressives do everything possible to deny it, but we have made huge progress on race relations. An event this horrific, one organized so precisely and conducted so ruthlessly, is simply unimaginable today, nor would anyone in a position of any power even attempt to condone anything of the kind. Second, even in the midst of such barbarism, there were those who always stood for justice. Those who understood that a country so steeped in the blood of its citizens could not long continue to claim a mantle of morality, and that the longer these atrocities were condoned, the greater the problems that would arise. Roosevelt himself was horrified, and became a champion of anti-lynching legislation to his own political detriment. He clearly and succinctly described the moral stakes for the entire country in his sixth annual message to Congress. “The members of the white race…should understand that every lynching represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilization; that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence n the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered. Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it, and therefore just so much additional trouble for the next generation of Americans.” In short, for every atrocity, however dark, there were those who fought for a better America, and telling the true history of these events should only serve to highlight the underlying greatness of the American character that looked into the abyss and said this is not us. This cannot be us. We must be better for our citizens today and in the future.
This lesson – one both so valuable and so in counterpoint to the intellectual fetishes of modern progressives who believe we must address racism with more racism – was the opportunity before Governor DeSantis, the chance to showcase how a conservative curriculum can be simultaneously unflinching and uplifting. Instead, he completely and totally blew it, offering Democrats yet another opportunity to falsely portray Republicans as defenders of slavery. Whatever you call it, competence and skill, this is not. If you consider that he has equally botched the ill-advised war with Disney, one which also started out from a place where a conservative victory was all but assured, fair minded people should wonder if the Florida Governor is truly as talented as advertised. Time will certainly tell, but in the meantime he is unnecessarily consumed in an outrage of his own making and it is no wonder his supporters are starting to seem rather desperate. Otherwise, no one in the Republican Party or otherwise should be putting a positive spin on slavery, and he deserves all of the criticism coming at him.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 