Same methods 'used on the plantation': Black task force member scorches Florida slavery guidelines

Three members of Florida’s original task force on African American education are outraged over having been “purposefully kept in the dark” about the state’s new academic guidelines ascribing “benefits” to slavery, the Daily Beast reported.

The guidelines, approved July 19 by the Florida Board of Education as part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “anti-woke” culture war in the state, have provided national attacks on DeSantis across party lines. But the Daily Beast story reported on how Florida officials snubbed a task force established nearly three decades ago to advance its revisionist history.

The Florida Commissioner of Education’s African American History Task Force, created in 1994, was required by law to have input on the standards and the new working group that revised them, according to one of its longstanding members, Dr. Donna Austin, reported the Daily Beast. But Austin was “completely unaware” of the standards until they were released to the public, the report said.

“I’m an African American, and I’m not expecting any type of standard to imply that my ancestors benefited from slavery,” Austin said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “I thought that that was very disrespectful, extremely demeaning, and it supports what people want others to believe about African and African American people.

“It’s the same divide techniques that they used on the plantation,” Austin told The Daily Beast. “It’s the same, identical thing. They always use methods of dividing the African and African American people. That’s what they do.”

“I've been on the Task Force for years, and we were making great strides in getting districts to implement African and African American history in their classrooms,” she said. “We were doing very well at helping them to understand how to infuse the standards and their curriculum so that children from K-12 can really learn the truth about African and African American history. And for this to come… it seems to me that this was something that was applied and planned.”

Austin squarely laid the blame on DeSantis, saying his people had purposely utilized conservative Black people in the second group to do their dirty work, the report stated.

“These people are very conniving and cunning,” she said. “I’m gonna be honest with you: This is a race war. And we have too many African Americans on the wrong side of the battlefield.”

Austin was not alone in her outrage over the new guidelines. Two other members of the Task Force, neither of whom had input on the offensive new language also were cited in the report:

“Florida statute requires that instruction be provided on African civilization before colonization and slavery,” state Sen. Geraldine Thomas said. “This focus is totally missing from the newly adopted standards. The standards should not advance the misconception that our history as a people began with slavery and not with one of the most advanced civilizations in the world.”

“This whitewashes the brutality that occurred when families were separated by being sold off during slavery and the resulting long-term trauma still experienced by current generations.”

And there was this:

“Kimberly Daniels, a Florida state representative who was appointed to the Task Force by Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, insisted she was also totally iced out of the process.

“I never participated in any conversation about the state’s Black History standards. In fact, I was never consulted about these standards,” she said, according to local outlet CBS 47. “I disagree with and would have immediately challenged and resisted any notion that slavery was a benefit to African Americans.”