Kamala Harris to Lie About Florida's Social Studies Standards

I know this seems shocking and unbelievable, but Kamala Harris is going to lie about Florida's academic standards in an effort to score some political points.  No, she's not just operating under a different interpretation of those standards, she's going to lie, openly and brazenly:

NBC reports that Kamala Harris intends to visit Florida today to criticize its new school curriculum:

In remarks Thursday, Harris blasted efforts in some states to ban books and “push forward revisionist history.”

“Just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery,” she said at a convention for the traditionally Black sorority Delta Sigma Theta Inc. “They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it.”

This is a brazen lie. It’s an astonishing lie. It’s an evil lie. It is so untrue — so deliberately and cynically misleading — that, in a sensible political culture, Harris would be obligated to issue an apology. Instead, NBC confirms that she will repeat the lie today during a speech in Jacksonville.

I have been trying to work out how best to illustrate the sheer scale of Harris’s falsehood, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to achieve it is to list in one place all the relevant parts of the course about which she is complaining. So, below, I have copied and pasted every single reference to slavery, slaves, abolitionism, civil rights, and African Americans that is in the document. For those interested, the full curriculum (along with the curriculum for the teaching of the Holocaust) is here.

That list of references to "slavery, slaves, abolitionism, civil rights, and African Americans that is in the document" is long and extensive, and I encourage you to read it at the end of the linked article.  The entire Florida document is linked in the above snippet.

As for the impetus for Harris' remarks, they seem to revolve around standard SS.68.AA.2.3:

Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).
Benchmark Clarifications:
Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.

Slaves were sometimes allowed to earn their own money and even buy their freedom.  It's true, so why is that controversial?  Answer:  it's not.  Harris' (and her compatriots') outrage is entirely ginned up, twisting the meaning of one sentence in the standards so as to score some political points. 

If you have to lie to score political points, you're not doing a very good job.

Update, 7/24/23:  It's not just me saying so:

Dr. William B. Allen , a longtime academic, former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and a member of Florida’s African American History Standards Workgroup called claims made by Vice President Kamala Harris in highly-publicized remarks last week “categorically false"...

Asked how he would respond to critics of the new standards, Allen replied that “the only criticism I’ve encountered so far is a single one that was articulated by the vice president, and which was an error. As I stated in my response to the vice president, it was categorically false. It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans.”

Update #2, 8/1/23:  Shocking, I know:

MAKING AN OFFER SHE CAN’T ACCEPT: DeSantis invites Kamala to meet as early as Wednesday unless she has “a trip to the southern border planned that day.”

“I am prepared to meet as early as Wednesday of this week, but of course want to be deferential to your busy schedule should you already have a trip to the southern border planned for that day,” DeSantis wrote in the letter. “Please let me know as soon as possible. What an example we could set for the nation – a serious conversation on the substance of an important issue! I hope you’re feeling up to it.”

Spoiler alert: She’s not.

UPDATE: Called it.

Of course she won’t debate or discuss the substance. The whole point of her attack is a drive-by political smear, not pursuit of historical fact or truth. https://t.co/qfzX3sMcnb

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 1, 2023