To paraphrase the great philosopher Inigo Montoya, “I do not think this means what you think it means.” The Board is not saying the institution of slavery benefitted the descendants of slaves, but despite slavery, future generations were able to parley the tools & skills they brought to the American continent as well as those developed & learned while slaves into basic survival skills. I know, a subtle difference (NOT), but a difference nonetheless.
Pete
Here is the Florida guideline:
MIDDLE SCHOOL STANDARD AA.2.3
Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, [and] transportation). With the clarification: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.
The College Board AP course:
EK 2.8.A.4:
“In addition to agricultural work, enslaved people learned specialized trades and worked as painters, carpenters, tailors, musicians, and healers in the North and South. Once free, American Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.”
Not a lot of difference between “skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” and “skills to provide for themselves and others” unless you think providing for yourself is not beneficial.
These skills were taught to increase the value of the slaves and their productivity to the owners. Obviously, the benefits could not be applied and accrued to the blacks until after the they were freed, so I don’t think either section justifies slavery.
DB2
Wow, White Man’s Burden, Florida style.
The key difference is that in the AP version the statement is:
“Once free, African Americans used these skills to provide for themselves and others.””
Those skills became a benefit to the enslaved after they became free. The personal benefit is contingent upon being free. Without the freedom, the skills are only a benefit to the slave masters. That is an important distinction.
This point isn’t even subtle. The FL wording is like saying that foreigners held hostage in Iran personally benefitted by the improvement in their Farsi language skills and lo-cal diet provided while in captivity. Technically correct if you look at it in isolation but ridiculous in context.
The FL wording doesn’t say that nor is there an “obvious” implication that slavery is bad. IMO, the strongest suggestion of the FL wording is that slavery benefitted African-Americans by teaching them skills. Yuck.
Short answer is no.
I agree with Tim Scott. “As a country founded upon freedom, the greatest deprivation of freedom was slavery. There is no silver lining … in slavery,” Scott —
My point was that one of the co-authors went on record to give more insight as to how the whole Florida State Board of Education’s new standards came to be. No where in my post did I say I agreed with any of it.
I was not surprised at the reaction here. There is quite an echo chamber here on certain topics.
And I’ll add this. Thanks for your response. Instead of replying mockingly or resorting to name calling, you posted a reasonable question. I consider you one of the few reasonable posters here.
Exactly, we are in agreement.
Andy
I am mocking but that is the attitude, “we done us some good”. So damned condescending. No amount of evil will be admitted. Which is a scary place for this country.
I don’t mind mocking, but the mockers can’t stand it when you mock them back. 
Andy
Some say it better than others.
Yeah, too bad for all those millions who lived and died in the 200 years of slavery prior to the civil war. Then there was a brief respite as reconstruction began, but even that smidgeon of progress was decimated by a brick-by-brick roll back of rights, from poll taxes to segregated housing and schooling, so it took another 100 years before the Civil Rights act picked up the ball and got it rolling again.
PS: Many, perhaps most of the slaves brought to this country already had skills . Indeed, slave traders brought those from certain areas where such trades were well established and charged a premium for them.
Here are some simple, historical facts: Africans already were skilled before they were enslaved. And, in many cases, enslavers sought and purchased people coming from specific African societies based on skills common in those societies. Decades of research — slave ship manifests, plantation ledgers, newspaper articles, letters, journals and archaeological digs — by dozens of scholars supports this, much of it compiled in the 2022 book “[African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Freedom](https://www.amazon.com/African-Founders-Enslaved-Expanded-American/dp/1982145099),” by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer.
Hackett Fischer explains how, in the mid-1700s, enslaving colonists in the Lowcountry of the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida targeted people from the Windward Coast of West Africa, where rice had been cultivated for thousands of years. In the Lowcountry, enslaved people then built complex systems of canals, levees, floodgates and fields, just as they had in West Africa, providing the region with its first massive cash crop.
More;
What Goofyhoofy said.
And then this:
The Business Plan of USAian mass industrial level slaveholding, the only way it COULD function and therefore HOW, by design, it DID function, was via torturous coercion and rape of the people trapped in its net. To excuse this extremity of immorality (historically even the Arab and Roman and Mongol slavers rarely denied the humanity of their slaves in similar fashion) required a pseudo-exculpatory racism (1/32 admixture of African heritage meant you HAD to be treated as an inferior talking animal) embedded by law in the “Land of the Free”. This embedment required intellectual enforcement within its turf via violent suppression of all opposition, whether religious or intellectual, black or white.
Any teaching of USAian history that talks about the skills slaves learned while neglectng the above is obviously simply a continuation of the slaveholders’ exculpatory, enabling, evil mythology of benevolent masters caring for sub-human beasts.
That is the lesson that ought to have been learned by 1876, but was overthrown by the resurgent racist system that remains a cancer in USAian society. That is the lesson that must be learned or the suffering will continue.
david fb
(born in the Hospital Ward of old Fort Monroe where Harriet Tubman spent a little of her invaluable time as head nurse)
Not surprising when it comes to the question of whether the victims in any way benefitted from American slavery. I hope you find the same echo if the claim is ever made that victims benefit from sexual assault or genocide.
Well, let’s take a look at this new insight.
Here again is the FL benchmark that is controversial:
“Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, [and] transportation). With the clarification: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
The rationale of the committee is given here in a statement by the two Black members:
“The intent of this particular benchmark clarification is to show that some slaves developed highly specialized trades from which they benefited…Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage and resiliency during a difficult time in American history.” PolitiFact FL: Do school standards say slaves benefited from slavery? | WUSF
I found it hard to see how the benchmark illustrates the stated intent. If this sentiment is genuine, why not say it directly as with a simple rewording:
“Instruction includes how slaves developed skills despite the oppression inherent in the American slavery system, thereby demonstrating their strength, courage and resiliency during a difficult time in American history.”
The statement by the FL committee is outrageous because it makes slavery sound like an apprenticeship where the enslaved personally benefitted by learning skills. The committee seems either remarkably ignorant of or totally insensitive to the historical bias underlying European colonialism and American slavery, namely that people of color are inferior heathens needing to be “civilized” and “saved”, while also being available for economic exploitation.
American slavery is a moral outrage of the same scale as the Jewish Holocaust or the Pol Pot genocide. The term “benefit” does not apply in any way to the victims.
Great post btresist. It’s obvious you read the FSBE standards and made your own intelligent opinion about them. That is not what some of the other posters did here. They just reacted to my suggestion of reading the source of the controversy and automatically believed I supported the offensive line(s). They are the ones that live in an echo chamber. They read headlines and believe them. They do no research.
I understand what your saying here, but it’s still a slippery slope for me. But you still have to have great admiration for people that can rise out of the most despicable situations. I’m not sure I could.
Agree 100%. However, at the risk of causing another onslaught of criticism, slavery is not just an American disgrace. Google the history of slavery worldwide.
Note to quick to judge posters: …ahhhhh…nothing. You wouldn’t listen anyway.
I am pretty sure you are not likely to find people here saying “Oh well that slavery in Ancient Rome or Ethiopia was OK, just not in America.” This is the kind of what-about-ism that demeans the argument, and the person making it. The standards in Florida are atrocious - under any circumstance, in any setting, at any time. And a politician defending them is simply a terrible human being. Sometimes mistakes are made, and someone with big boy pants says “That was wrong, slavery is wrong under every circumstance, and training someone to paint a fence does not excuse it. Ever.”
Why is it so hard for some people to hit a soft ball pitch like this? It’s like a Charlotsville N*zi parade all over again.
Agree. The thing about slavery is it should never be acceptable. And yet it still exists today.
You read a lot more into my posts then what I type. I’m suggesting that those interested in the history of slavery might google “world history of slavery”. Particularly slavery in the world during the mid 19th century.
How you connect this suggestion to thinking it’s defending the current controversy in Florida is beyond me. Learning more about current events and topics, including historically, makes you a more informed person.
Surely you think that is a good thing.
Related update:
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/florida-just-approved-educational-materials-220422633.html
Snips:
The materials approved by the Florida Department of Education were created by PragerU Kids, which enlists Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and other conservative personalities as narrators cartoons, story-time shows for young children, and other videos. They often parrot conservative talking points as a way of talking about hot-button topics. For instance, a 2018 video available on YouTube and narrated by rightwing podcaster Ben Shapiro titled “What Is Intersectionality?,” says that intersectionality is “a form of identity politics in which the value of your opinion depends on how many victim groups you belong to. At the bottom of the totem pole is the person everybody loves to hate — the straight, white male.”
…
The founder of PragerU, which despite its name is not an accredited learning institution, has admitted that indoctrination is the end goal of his videos. “We are in the mind-changing business and few groups can say that,” Prager says in a promotional video, according to the Sentinel.
…
Some of PragerU’s videos go so far as to tell students that their teachers are either misinformed or outright lying to students, according to the Sentinel.A Florida Department of Education spokesperson told the Sentinel that, after reviewing the videos, the agency determined that “the material aligns to Florida’s revised civics and government standards.”
Wow.
Yup. “Woke indoctrination” that teaches that all people have value, is B-A-D. But bigot indoctrination that teaches that straight, white, males are victims, needs to be propagated. Yeah…sure…
Steve