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Florida Schools to Tell Kids Slavery Benefited Black People (www.thedailybeast.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Middle school students in Florida will soon be taught that slavery gave Black people a “personal benefit” because they “developed skills.”

After the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for African American history on Wednesday, high school students will be taught an equally distorted message: that a deadly white mob attack against Black residents of Ocoee, Florida, in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

There is a reason slavers are a common villain trope in a lot of fiction. The idea that slavery is in any way good is generally thought to be a universally rejected concept. Way to undoubtedly show your cards ~~leadership~~ slavers of Florida.

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[–] PortableHotpocket -2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

In a long term sense, the enslavement of Africans kind of helped. The modern descendants of American slaves live better lives than the citizens of most African countries.

It's still absurd to propose that the benefits of slavery were worth the consequences, but I'm not actually sure that's what they're suggesting here.

Personally, I'm tired of talking about slavery as a black and white issue. I'm tired of the racial guilt people try to impose on whites because some white people a long time ago did awful things. Slavery is wrong no matter who does it, and white people were not even close to being the only slavers.

The narrative in these stories is always "white people enslaved blacks", when it should be "shitty people enslaved other people". 1000x more lip service is paid to the enslavement of blacks before most of us were born than is given to actual slavery taking place in the modern day.

Get over it. My ancestors were enslaved barely more than a century ago too. Here I am, went to school, got a career, and now I own my own house and car. All because of the freedom North America provides. And I'm not even one of those visible minorities who benefits from affirmative action. It could have been even easier for me to get where I am.