Here We Go Again

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.
Florida’s State Academic Standards – Social Studies, 2023

And so it begins. The problem with Democrats and Republicans being members of a mutual hostility society is that it breeds suspicion to go along with the hostility. Talk to enough American conservatives, and you'll eventually come across one who believes that being slaves in the United States was better for the enslaved than the alternative. be warned, though. You may end up talking to quite a large number of people first. But as the political parties drift more and more towards their activist (and primary voter) wings, candidates for office find themselves needing to cater to those people, who often hold views that simply don't mesh with society at large. And that leads people on the other side of the political aisle, who are always ready to label someone an "extremist" in the hope of disqualifying them in the minds of the electorate, seeking to paint the whole of the party as subscribing to "dangerous" fringe viewpoints.

Into this environment steps Florida, with their new academic standards. Governor Ron DeSantis has already been very public with his disdain for "wokeness," and despite the fact that he tends to use it as a "'red meat' to the base" buzzword as opposed to anything that actually communicates meaning, there is a very real sense that "it promotes anti-Blackness," in the words of one academic. Even Donald Trump seems to understand that "[I]t's like just a term they use. Half the people can't even define it. They don't know what it is." Hours after making that statement, however, he was using it in its pejorative sense in a Fox News town hall. (Say what you will about the former President, but he knows how the game is played.) And now that Republicans in general have acquired the whiff of pervasive anti-Blackness, they no longer receive the benefit of the doubt.

So the snippet from the Florida Academic Standards for Social Studies for sixth through eighth grades is seen as yet another attempt by an anti-Black state government to portray slavery as something that was good for the slaves, in the service of appeasing modern White conservatives who bristle at the idea that some or other of their ancestors might be relegated to the ranks of history's villains. Republicans, within and without Florida, meanwhile, can't seem to understand how any right-thinking person could genuinely think that was at all what was possibly intended, and the mutual hostility society spirals another turn.

Part of the problem is that the wording chosen is a very clunky way of attempting to note that slaves may have been able to build or improve their own homes or make their own clothing, most likely in the service of maintaining themselves as fit to labor for their owners. After all, for many slave owners, the slaves were valuable property and a reflection on them. Having them going though their lives poorly clothed and exposed to the elements could reduce their ability to work. And if a person escaped, was freed et cetera, the skills they possessed would have been useful in finding a way of making a living. So personally, I'm not clear on why such a specific call-out is needed. I doubt that I'm the only one. And so this too plays into the suspicion that Florida Republicans are attempting to downplay slavery.

But I think that's what really going on here, similarly to the dust up over country and western singer Jason Aldean's video for "Try That in a Small Town," is that people who live in echo chambers don't think much about how what they're doing is going to be perceived outside their bubble. And why should they? They're in the echo chamber and the people whose opinions are important to them are also in the echo chamber. So as long as the residents of the echo chamber are happy, nothing (and no one) else matters. But the mutual hostility society suspects intentional hatefulness and responds accordingly. By the same token, there's little incentive for the department of education in Florida to actually seek a range of views on the curriculum and the language used to describe it, because they've been hemmed in by Governor DeSantis' theatrics concerning "wokenss." Even if they'd rather not cause a stir, taking steps not to is seen as a form of surrender to the hated enemy.

And so the merry-go-round keeps turning, even if many would rather get off than ride it again. Now that American politics has become about perceptions of good and evil, the incentives to ride, however, have only grown stronger.