DeSantis says Black people benefited from slavery by learning skills like ‘being a blacksmith’

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Black people learned beneficial skills as slaves.
• “They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis said at a press conference.
• Florida approved a new African-American studies curriculum that teaches about the “personal benefit” of slavery.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said Black people benefitted from some of the skills they learned in slavery — and students in the state will soon learn about that “personal benefit” in Florida’s education curriculum.

Florida’s Department of Education on Wednesday approved a new curriculum for the state’s African-American Studies program in public schools which instructs students on the personal benefit of slavery to Black people.

“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis said at a press conference on Friday.

The state’s curriculum standards for the African-American Studies course say students will learn “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

DeSantis noted at the press conference that he did not play a role in the changes to Florida’s curriculum, but also defended the curriculum change as a purely academic decision by the state Department of Education.

“If you have any questions about it just ask the Department of Education. But I mean these were scholars that put this together,” DeSantis said. “This is not anything that was done politically.”

The curriculum change follows the “Stop WOKE Act,” which DeSantis signed into law in 2022 and aimed to ban the teaching of anything that made students in public schools feel “shamed because of their race.”

The law was intended to push back against the supposed teaching of critical race theory –  examining how America’s history of racism and discrimination continues to impact the country today — in public schools.