As the Florida Board of Education rewrites its school curriculum — allegedly to suit Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘s “war on woke” — President Joe Biden is using the power of his office to attack and contravene the GOP-led push to change how Black history is seen and taught in America.
Making racist history more prominent, not less, Biden will sign a proclamation this week establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Illinois and Mississippi.
The Chicago Defender describes the monuments as protecting and amplifying “the story of Till’s abbreviated life and racially-motivated murder, the unjust acquittal of his murderers and the activism of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who courageously brought the world’s attention to the brutal injustices and racism of the time.”
White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Olivia Dalton writes that Biden’s move “comes at an important time, when extreme officials in FL & across the country are trying to rewrite history & lie about slavery.”
This comes at an important time, when extreme officials in FL & across the country are trying to rewrite history & lie about slavery.
— Olivia Dalton (@ODalton46) July 23, 2023
This week, President Biden will protect 3 historic sites as a national monument to Emmett Till, Mamie Till-Mobley, & the activism they inspired. https://t.co/1eoOmsuXHG
If, as the White House asserts, DeSantis and the GOP are working to “rewrite history and lie about slavery,” Biden’s monument dedication seeks to memorialize and preserve that history, under the notion that forgotten history is doomed to be repeated.
The national monuments to Till’s truncated life and gruesome 1955 murder — and his mother’s fight to honor his name — will acknowledge the brutal reality of racism’s stain on American history and honor the perseverance and dignity of those who have battled against racial injustice.
Dalton portrays Biden’s action as diametrically opposed to Florida’s move to alter the narratives young students will now encounter concerning race.
Drawing especially harsh rebuke has been the Florida Board of Education seeming to suggest that slavery did its captives some good — “benefitted” them — by teaching them skills.
(DeSantis explained that charge by saying he thought it meant slaves who were blacksmiths “parlayed” that later in life.)
WATCH >> Ron DeSantis defends new curriculum that will teach children how slaves *benefited* from slavery.
— Ammar Moussa (@ammarmufasa) July 22, 2023
"They're probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into, into doing things later in life." pic.twitter.com/Ls1wyk3tr4
Vice President Kamala Harris, raging against what she characterizes as revisionism and the whitewashing of slavery’s core atrocities, said Florida’s attempt to diminish the real role of slavery and racism in the American story is pure “gaslighting.”
To suggest that enslaved people somehow benefited from slavery is not only misleading, it is false. This is revisionist history. pic.twitter.com/2j0sPWP5O8
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) July 21, 2023
