Kamala Harris addresses Florida Board of Education's new standards for teaching Black history in schools
Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the latest person to speak out against Florida Board of Education’s recent decision on teaching Black history in schools.
On Thursday (July 20), the Howard University graduate spoke at Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.’s 56th national convention in Indianapolis. Harris referred to the southern state’s new standards during her speech as a gaslighting attempt. “Speaking of our children, extremists pass book bans to prevent them from learning our true history – book bans in this year of our Lord 2023,” she said. “And while they do this, check it out, they push forward revisionist history.”
Harris continued, “Just yesterday, in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”
As REVOLT previously mentioned, on Wednesday (July 19), the education board approved the new principles in response to Florida’s 2022 Stop WOKE Act. Through the bill, instructors are only allowed to teach race in an objective manner that doesn’t “indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”
Some of the state’s new rules include incorporating “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” for middle schoolers. In high school, “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans” are also to be included in students’ lessons.
Like Harris, the Florida Education Association, a statewide teachers union, spoke out against the board’s recent decision. “Evidently, in an attempt to protect students from wokeness, these new standards will make sure that, through the fourth grade, elementary school students’ knowledge of African American history doesn’t extend beyond being able to know who a famous African American is when they see them,” the press release stated.
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