Florida GOP: College Board Marxists don’t want students to learn about the many good things about chattel slavery

This (very well-reported) story about why Florida education administrators rejected AP’s African American studies course is sadly about what you’d expect:

But the state did not say that in many instances, its reviewers also made objections in the state’s attempt to sanitize aspects of slavery and the plight of African Americans throughout history, according to a Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times review of internal state comments.

For example, a lesson in the Advanced Placement course focused on how Europeans benefited from trading enslaved people and the materials enslaved laborers produced. The state objected to the content, saying the instructional approach “may lead to a viewpoint of an ‘oppressor vs. oppressed’ based solely on race or ethnicity.”

It would be very problematic if students inferred an “oppressor vs. oppressed” narrative based solely on a white supremacist system of chattel slavery! We need to hear Both Sides!

In another lesson about the beginnings of slavery, the course delved into how tens of thousands of enslaved Africans had been “removed from the continent to work on Portuguese-colonized Atlantic islands and in Europe” and how those “plantations became a model for slave-based economy in the Americans.”

n response, the state raised concerns that the unit “may not address the internal slave trade/system within Africa” and that it “may only present one side of this issue and may not offer any opposing viewpoints or other perspectives on the subject.”

It’s never been clear to me why “slavery also existed in other places” is some kind of important mitigating factor, but (and I think my personal God) I am not a Florida Republican.

The administrators also believed that the positive elements of the Fugitive Slave Act were not being sufficiently appreciated:

“Due to the high number of African Americans who fled enslavement, Congress enacted the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, authorizing local governments to legally kidnap and return escaped refugees to their enslavers,” the lesson plan stated.

A state evaluator, however, argued this unit about the abolitionist movement could violate state rules because it was not “factually inclusive or balanced.” The evaluator also made the comment that it would be more “accurate” to say the word “owners” rather than enslavers and that white men like Benjamin Franklin and John Jay should be cited as original activists for the abolition movement.

The story does a great job of putting this in larger context:

The commentary is also an example of how Gov. Ron DeSantis has transformed the state’s education system in his quest to end what he calls “wokeism” and “liberal indoctrination” in schools — a fight that began in the aftermath of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement that followed the high-profile murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minnesota.

“It’s not really about the course right? It’s kind of about putting down Black struggles for equality and freedom that have been going on for centuries at this point in time and making them into something that they are not through this kind of distorted rightist lens,” Weheliye said.

I’m so old I remember when conservatives used to rail against the alleged “moral relativism” of liberals.