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The more we study history, we can see patterns in human behavior, as it has the tendency to repeat itself over and over again.
Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defended his state’s school administrators’ curriculum suggesting that children in Florida will now be taught that enslaved persons picked up skills that they later escalated into profitability after slavery was abolished. Since slavery of Black people has been documented from as early as the 1500s and didn’t end until President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, I question how many enslaved people lived to 250 years old to see said profits.
But this is not the first time Americans have tried to twist themselves into knots convincing themselves that they were helping Africans by looting their freedom and brutalizing them into submission to perform back-breaking work in sweltering heat. South Carolina Sen. John C. Calhoun said on Feb. 6, 1837, “Never before has the Black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually.”
Anyone with an ounce of gray matter knows this is not true, but some Americans want to teach this same 1837 philosophy that Blacks were better off having been enslaved to middle school students, more specifically white middle school students. To teach that plundering Black people of their past, present and future for the sake of profits was almost divine ordination is an effort to remove the disgust that accompanies knowing otherwise.
To believe being enslaved in the United States by white people was better than being free in one’s native land, speaking their native language and being called by their native familial names is nonsense and astoundingly racist. Mind you, these are the same people during the height of the pandemic who argued it was against their God-given right to be forced to wear a mask. Yet they find no issue with believing being beaten, raped, tortured and having family members forcibly separated was somehow a benefit to Black people. Make it make sense.
While visiting Cologne, Germany, over the summer, I learned of Stumbling Stones, small brass stones embedded in the cobblestone streets outside of residential buildings. Each stone has an inscription that begins with “Here Live” followed by the name, date of birth and fate of the individual, the vast majority being deportation and murder, who lived where the stone was placed. The thought behind the more than 70,000-stone monument is to remind German residents of the horrific events so as to never commit those atrocities again.
In America, we would rather pretend the atrocities committed against Black people weren’t all that bad to make us feel better. However, in doing so, we never actually humanize the Black people who suffered unthinkable trauma and sacrificed everything without choice in the matter.
Not ever getting the chance to experience their God-given rights.
There are many who will suggest that, since slavery was so long ago, we Black folks should just get over it. With education, we are now in the position to tell our own stories, with our own voices, and technology makes it possible to share that history all over the world. No one will erase Black Americans’ history because they feel discomfort from our disgusting past. No matter how folks like DeSantis and his ilk protest.•
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Black is former deputy chairwoman for engagement for the Indiana Democratic Party and a former candidate for the Indiana House. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.
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DeSantis did not write the curriculum; Black Black History Scholars did. But why let facts get in the way of Democrats dirtying up a candidate.
I believe the point of this piece was to draw attention to the fact that desantis supports such a curriculum, not that he created it. However, it is very interesting that you identify writing such a curriculum as a negative – something that would “dirt[y] up” a candidate. I think that natural inference suggests supporting such a curriculum does equally “dirt[y] up” a candidate for political office. And to be clear, I think that for myself, not as position that all Democrats would hold. Nothing in the piece above seems to suggests whether Ms. Black is speaking for all Democrats with her comments, but my reasoned opinion is that she does not.
Randall C you can’t stop spinning can you. We all know the point of her spin was to dirty up a candidate. No one “identified writing such a curriculum” as dirtying a candidate. It’s the left’s spin that is meant to dirty. Once again the basic lack of honesty from the left supersedes all else.