Florida education officials approved new standards for teaching African-American history last week that include a requirement for students to be taught that slaves received some “personal benefit.”
Yes, according to Florida’s new standards, students must be taught that in a system in which women were raped, babies were ripped from their mother’s arms and sold and people were murdered without penalty slaves received job training.
That the slaves could market their skills when they were freed after 150 years.
What next? How Jews benefitted from the Holocaust? Perhaps to found Israel and find opportunity in the United States?
Well, not so far in Florida, although Texas schools are being told to teach “opposing views of the Holocaust.”
This followed after Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law that requires if teachers explore controversial subjects, they must do so “from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.”
Florida’s new standards for teaching African-American history came in response to the ”Stop W.O.K.E. Act” signed into law in 2022 by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican candidate for president who was recently welcomed here by Nassau County Republicans.
The Stop W.O.K.E. Act prohibits instruction that could prompt students to feel discomfort about a historical event because of their race, sex or national origin.
The DeSantis administration had already updated the state’s math and social studies textbooks, scrubbing them for “prohibited topics” like social-emotional learning, which helps students develop positive mind-sets.”
This has become known otherwise as the “Don’t Say Gay” rules.
The book bans are actually part of a national movement often highly funded by right-wing members of the Republican Party that is centered on race, history, sexual orientation and gender, according to PEN America, a group that champions the freedom to write.
PEN American said the book-banning efforts are focused on Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah and South Carolina.
But they are not limited to the five states. The movement also extends to New York, including Nassau County.
Project Veritas, a right-wing group known for deceptively edited exposé videos with ties to prominent conservative and Republican groups, earlier this year released a posting on Instagram of David Casamento, the former director of technology in East Williston School District, discussing the teaching of diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools
Casamento had left the East Williston School District six years before and was now assistant superintendent for the East Meadow School District,
More than 100 people attended an East Williston school board meeting, many of whom expressed anger with what they saw on the video posted.
Around the same time as the East Williston school board meeting, a Project Veritas video was released of Donald Gately, who oversees the Manhasset School District’s instruction and personnel.
Gately could be seen in the video discussing the teaching of diversity, equity and inclusion at a grassroots event that brings together educators from across the region to share their ideas and expertise
An email signed by “Manhasset Parents” called for an immediate investigation into Gately.
Manhasset Superintendent Gaurav Passi said in an email to parents the claims made by Project Veritas would be a cause for concern if the organization’s claims had any validity. But, he said, they don’t.
We have also seen the movement to ban books in an election for the Great Neck Library Board last year when some candidates called for restrictions on books related to families headed by same-sex couples.
A recent Great Neck school board election also included a candidate who had objected to allowing a book that discussed a family headed by a same-sex couple.
The efforts of DeSantis and others to revise the history that is being taught in the nation’s schools and the kind of books carried by libraries begs a question: Why?
Some have contended DeSantis and Trump have an authoritarian agenda and made historical comparisons to Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany and more recent heads of state like Victor Orban in Hungary who violated the rights of marginalized groups.
But perhaps a better comparison would be to the Southern states after the Civil War.
Once Union troops were removed from the South as part of a deal to determine the Hayes-Tilden presidential election, the former members of the Confederacy took control with Jim Crow laws that restricted blacks’ rights, voting and representation.
They did this with the use of force and terror mixed with a false retelling of history that labeled the Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression” and presented a positive portrait of life under slavery for blacks.
It may be no coincidence that the effort to ban books and change the teaching of history is concentrated in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah and South Carolina – four slave states and members of the Confederacy with the exception of Utah.
Or that several of these states and others are now doing all they can to restrict voting – particularly for blacks and young people.
So far, the efforts of those seeking to ban books, stop the teaching of diversity, equity and inclusion and change the teaching of history have been beaten back in Nassau County.
An email signed by “Manhasset Parents” recently called for an immediate investigation into Gately.
Manhasset Superintendent Gaurav Passi said in an email to parents the claims made by Project Veritas would be a cause for concern if the organization’s claims had any validity. But, he correctly noted, they don’t.
Rory Lancman, a former New York State assemblyman and New York City councilman who was appointed executive director of the LIPA Commission, recognized the threat to Great Neck by running for the library board.
He won and was elected president.
This past week, Great Neck businessman Alan Mindel stepped up by taking out an ad in Blank Slate Media’s papers to share a recent Instagram post by former President Barack Obama that saluted the nation’s librarians and their work in protecting the free flow of information.
“Here in America, the First Amendment of our Constitution states that freedom begins with our capacity to share and access ideas – even, and maybe especially, the ones we disagree with,” Obama wrote.
The former president went on to say some of the books that shaped his life are now being challenged by those who disagree with their message, particularly those written or that feature people of color, indigenous people and members of the LGBTQ+ community.”
Obama concludes with a plea, saying “the free, robust exchange of ideas has always been at the heart of American democracy.”
We salute Mindel for expressing his support.
It is probably no coincidence that Mindel is the board chairman of the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center in Glen Cove, dedicated to remembering one of history’s greatest tragedies and preventing anything like it from happening again.
We hope others in this community are willing to join Mindel in the battle to protect our freedom to share ideas and expose those who are seeking to revise history for their political benefit.
We have all seen where that leads when we don’t.
To the Editor:
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
George Orwell, 1984
Thank you for your sobering and accurate editorial, “Oppose the White Washing of Slavery, Banning of Books” against revisionist history, and in support of civil liberties, including the First Amendment rights to share ideas, to religious expression, and to peaceably assemble.
I join you in applauding the presidents of the Holocaust Tolerance and Memorial Center and library boards, and to thank each of you for bringing a national point home to our local community.
The very dynamics you describe made me feel compelled to seek for re-election to our local school board recently in a contest you reference; I won. The views expressed in this letter are personal and my own, however.
It seems to me that the prevalence of cancel culture, and its backlash, continue to erode regard for history, civic insititutions, the rule of law, and legal precedent as far as the eye can see.
Recall that nowadays, in addition to the Diary of Anne Frank, and Maus, even Dr. Suess books have become controversial. Statues and curricula have, literally and figuratively, been upended across the country. Roiling arguments are taking place, but not permitted in so-called ‘safe spaces’ which shield academicians and policy makers from critical thought, while conspiracy theorists continue to spread their rot.
In lieu of the discipline and rigor of critical inquiry to interrogate texts, cancel culture thrives in echo chambers and foments conspiracy theories, against Jewish Caucasians (a contradiction in terms for Mizrahi Jews, in my experience) and, also, against other minority groups, whether female, black, Hispanic, LBGTQ, or otherwise. Intersectionality and identity politics have reduced history and public policy to little more than spin.
Peddling loathesome revisionist histories, aka “alternate facts” -whether regarding enslavement of African Americans, or the annihilation of millions of Jews and others during the Holocaust, or, for that matter, omitting the history and contributions of women, of Asian-Americans, and others entirely, undermines more than history: As Orwell noted undermining history guts the present and future, too.
I believe this insipid dumbing down of our populace also undermines due process, and civil liberties by the persistent canceling, chilling, of individual viewpoints of students, of teachers, of administrators, of job seekers, of candidates, or others, as your editorial suggests.
Surely, we would all be better served when the complexity of lived experiences of humanity (whether Jew, Muslim, Christian, atheist, woman, man, nonbinary, black, Asian, Latino, LBGTQ, abled or disabled, more) are not canceled and negated but, rather, appropriately represented in annotated historical accounts, in literature, in humanities, music, and the arts.
Yet, in today’s warped echo chambers, as cynical self-named ‘Truth’ projects engage in recording unknowing subjects in ‘woke traps’ to spread onesided narratives which spread like wildfire across social media chats to destroy careers, one realizes that Orwellian Florida-style authoritarian legislation requiring teaching curriculum that slavery was beneficial to slaves could occur anywhere, even here. (Some readers may recall that the state mandates in New York during the COVID pandemic presented a different form of authoritarianism; a point easily made in retrospect.)
Just as the highest court in the nation, the US Supreme Court may, also, continue its backlash to overturn decades of legal precedent- whether gutting women’s bodily integrity, students applying to college seeking affirmative action, and who-knows-what-next.
Worrisome times indeed; the backlash is real.