..On the controversy surrounding Florida’s “African American” history curriculum that has been swirling in the news cycle. My first thought was that this is just another opportunity to play politics over something that we really need to move on from. My second thought was that the offending potions of the curriculum, when read in context, are absolutely true and undeniably so. My third and final thought was that this was an unforced error by the DeSantis administration’s Dept. of Ed., which will hang as an albatross around the neck of the governor’s already struggling presidential campaign. For those who haven’t heard this story yet, I’ll share the gist of it.
In an effort to create and disseminate a history curriculum to students that is true, balanced, and fair, Florida had a team of educators, which included black Americans, to put together a black history curriculum. It’s over 200 pages long, covering everything from the arrival of the first slaves in 1619, to the accomplishments of people such as Marva Collins and Thomas Sowell, names most Americans are unacquainted with. So far, so good.
However, tucked within those 200+ pages are a few phrases which ignited a firestorm. Specifically, this:
“Examine the various duties and trades performed by slaves (e.g., agricultural work, painting, carpentry, tailoring, domestic service, blacksmithing, transportation).”
And follows with this one-two punch:
“Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
Those words have been interpreted in the media and pontificate landscape (i.e. cable news and the Twittersphere) into a new talking point. Namely, that Florida is going to teach kids that “slaves benefited from slavery.” Leaving aside for the moment the reductionist sleight of hand required for 200+ pages of instruction to boil down to “man, those slaves were lucky to have been enslaved!”, let’s use another example.
In the Bible, the book of Genesis tells the story of Joseph, who is sold into slavery as a young man. He suffers many indignities over the course of several years, including a stint in an Egyptian prison, before God plan began to unfold, working things out in Joseph’s favor. He was ultimately catapulted to a position where the lives of millions of people were saved. Does the ultimate good that resulted from Joseph’s time in slavery negate the evil that was done to Joseph? Does it make his bondage and the suffering he endured any less unjust? Of course not!
Multiple things can be true at once. Joseph’s brothers committed evil against him by selling him into slavery. Potiphar’s wife committed evil against Joseph by lying and accusing him of attempted rape. This is unequivocally true. However, it is also unequivocally true that the aftermath of all that was the salvation of not one, but two, nations of people.
Returning to the issue of the Florida curriculum, the cultural skeptic in me immediately realized that there was more to this brouhaha than the buzz implied. The history teacher in me has always been struck by the distance between the narratives and the truth of what happened during pivotal moments of previous generations. Overwrought rhetoric, combined with our need for clearly identified black hats and white hats, has always caused us to miss the nuance and complexities of historical events.
All of this is to say that there is nothing in the Florida curriculum that is untrue nor implies that slaves benefited from being enslaved in any regard which would negate the evils of chattel slavery in America. One of the curriculum’s developers, Dr. William Allen, a black American, had this to say about the study’s contents:
“It was never said that slavery was beneficial to Africans,” he noted. “What was said, and anyone who reads this will see this with clarity, it is the case that Africans proved resourceful, resilient and adaptive and were able to develop skills and aptitudes which served to their benefit, both while enslaved and after enslavement.”
Despite my sympathetic posture towards the curriculum, and my belief that taken in the context the purported offensive content is only offensive to those whose emotional temperament meter is stuck on outrage, this was a massive political blunder which could have been avoided with little more than verbiage tweaking and shifting of the placement of a few things. This particular debacle could have been avoided.
They’d have had to come for Ron DeSantis another way.
Our family recently watched the 1995 film Father of the Bride II. If you haven’t ever seen it, spoiler alert applies.
The movie is the sequel to the 1991 film in which George Banks, the titular character played by Steve Martin, deals with the crisis of releasing his only daughter in marriage. He and his wife, played by Diane Keaton, cross that hurdle and settle into life as parents of a married daughter and a junior high school aged son. A few years later, as the 1995 sequel opens, their daughter announces that she is pregnant, sending George off into a mid life crisis at the thought of being a grandfather at 45. Things get interesting as George’s wife Nina also learns that she is also expecting a child. At this point, our teenagers pause the action to ask, “Wait. How old are these people supposed to be?”
Upon learning that they are portraying characters in their mid-40s, they seem a little taken aback. They are not taken aback at the idea of a mother giving birth in her 40s. It’s not terribly common, but our family knows of women who have given birth in their 40s. This reaction was based on the fact that to our kids, George and Nina Banks looked like people closer to 60 than 45.
This set me to thinking about how the aesthetics of age in our culture have evolved and affected our perceptions about aging and what it looks like now versus our parents generation. I would argue that even in 1995, nearly 30 years ago, the characters of George and Nina Banks were miscast for the sake of having these particular A-listers play the parts. Ironically, or maybe not, one of our children came across this meme online:
To be sure, a large part of this particular perception is the clothing. How often does any man wear a suit anymore? Keaton’s buttoned blouse and pearls is also reminiscent of a bygone era. Although Martin and Keaton are both older than 45 when the film is released, they were only slightly older (both were 49). Because of this conversation and line of thought, I decided to look up images of what a healthy-looking, middle class45 year-old couple might look like to most of us today, and I mostly found some variation of this:
This is much closer to what my kids think a white, 45-year-old couple looks like. It got me to wondering about the difference, and if they are true differences, just an aesthetic evolution, or a media construction. Do most 45-year-olds look closer to the Martin/Keaton pairing, or the stock photo models? I went out of my way not to pick the images of the most beautiful 40-somethings, or the most plain 40-somethings when choosing an image.
I recently had the pleasure of exploring The Old Florida Book Shop. It’s one of those places that I am simultaneously excited to have found yet embarrassed that I had no idea of its existence. It was a significant drive from our home base of operations, so we made a weekend of it. That weekend tuned into a delightful experience for our entire family. We’ll get to some natural beauty as well, but first, the titular thought of the post.
What looked from the outside like a simple store front, opened up into this magical, slightly dusty place:
As I perused the shelves, I spied a little book with an odd title. It was called I Saw Esau: The School Child’s Pocket Book, which was originally published in 1947. The content within it caters to a demographic of childhood that our children have outgrown, but it’s title so captured me that I picked it up and bought it, along with a few other titles. Here I am giving the cashier my money.
The book is full of familiar -and not so familiar- children’s rhymes. I thought I might keep it for babysitting, future grandchildren, or maybe even gift it to someone for a child’s birthday. When I read the foreword, I knew it was a keeper, and not a giver away. This quote at the very end of the introduction struck me as words to remember:
We find we are born, so we might as well stay and do as well as we can, and while we are here we can at least enjoy the absurdities of humankind.
Iona Opie, from the introduction of I Saw Esau
Now to be fair, I am certain Iona Opie, who died at the ripe old age of 94 in 2017, would be shocked to learn that even she had not witnessed the levels of human absurdity that we’ve experienced in the 6 years since she died. Nevertheless, this tiny bit of wisdom is worth contemplation when we are tempted to despair at the depth -or peak?- of human absurdity.
Besides the absolute sublimity of an old book shop, there was also the transcendent beauty of creation as displayed in the Florida Everglades National Park. The best way to appreciate its beauty is by air boat, so that’s exactly what we did! The Everglades were often referred to as the “river of grass”, but I couldn’t help but think as we rode through, that it could just as easily have been given the moniker, “river of glass” as the reflection of the sky onto the water is crystal clear:
Alligator sightings are not particularly exciting to anyone who has lived in Florida as long as we have, but seeing them in the Everglades adds a layer of interest:
This grass with the purple blooms is certainly pretty, but it’s called sawgrass for a reason, so don’t grab a hold of it unless you know the right direction to hold it. Otherwise, you will need a lot of stitches:
Remember, while we’re here, we may as well do as well as we can, and even laugh a little at some of the absurdities of humanity.
Oh yeah, and go outside. The fresh air’ll do ya good.
Reading in Between the Life... 