Vice President Kamala Harris couldn't get on the presidential jet fast enough to get to Florida in July 2023. She was not campaigning. She was on another kind of political mission. She was there to blast Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for claiming that slavery had some benefits; namely that it enabled the slaves to gain valuable skills.
DeSantis's ludicrous retort might have been dismissed as just another of the far-right Florida governor's never-ending assault against those who maintain that systemic racism is the cause of Black political and economic victimization. But DeSantis's pro-slavery defense was backed up by the decision by his hand-picked Florida Board of Education to ban school districts from "indoctrinating" students with teaching that systemic racism and racial oppression is the cause of Black suffering.
An enraged Harris quickly went on the attack in a talk to a Black sorority group she noted, "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 didn't stop there. She called on Blacks and others to vigorously counter any effort by DeSantis, the GOP, and rightist ideologues to put a pretty face on slavery, "There is so much at stake in this moment: our most basic rights and freedoms, fact versus fiction, foundational principles about what it means to be a democracy."
Harris had plenty of company in ripping DeSantis and the Board on their pro-slavery tact. And they'd need all the support they could muster. DeSantis quickly counter-attacked. He branded Harris a liar and claimed that she deliberately misread what the Board mandated in the history curriculum change. "So now they're saying there is a provision in there that says somehow this [slavery] was good. That's not what it says.
What it says was some slaves developed skills, which they did, but that was despite slavery. It wasn't because of slavery. And then they used those skills postbellum to be able to provide for themselves and their families."
DeSantis spoke for a wide body of GOP opinion which either distorted, twisted, deliberately ignored, or apologized for slavery in one form or another. However, in his lambaste of Harris and his critics, he inadvertently proved their point and why they were furious.
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