Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis accused Vice President Kamala Harris of trying to “perpetuate a hoax” Tuesday night after she claimed that the Sunshine State’s new middle school black history curriculum includes lessons “that enslaved people benefited from slavery.”
The 2024 Republican presidential hopeful said during an interview on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime” that contrary to Harris’ statements, the curriculum adheres to high standards set by African-American scholars.
“There is no agenda here. It is just the truth,” DeSantis said. “And they talk in gory detail a lot of the bad in American history, including, of course, the injustice of slavery. But she is trying to perpetuate a hoax.”
The governor added that Harris and other Democrats in the Biden administration have latched onto what he called a “fake narrative” about Florida to use in their political attacks against him in the run-up to next year’s presidential election.
“She hopped on that plane very quickly on Friday to come down to Florida to spew this hoax,” DeSantis told host Jesse Watters of Harris.
Last week, the Florida Board of Education unanimously approved the new curriculum, which includes instruction on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Harris jetted off to Jacksonville just days later to deliver a fiery speech slamming the new standards.
“They want to replace history with lies,” Harris, the nation’s first black female vice president, told her audience, “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.”
Harris’ remarks were swiftly condemned by Dr. William Allen, the former chairman of the US Commission on Civil Rights who helped create the new curriculum.
“The only criticism I’ve encountered so far [on the new curriculum] is a single one that was articulated by the vice president, and which was an error,” Allen, who is black, told ABC News.
“As I stated in my response to the vice president, it was categorically false,” Allen added. “It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans.”
Williams argued that what the curriculum actually teaches is that “Africans proved resourceful, resilient and adaptive and were able to develop skills and aptitudes which served to their benefit, both while enslaved and after enslaved.”
