Black Republicans Aren’t Happy With DeSantis About Florida’s New Teaching Guidelines on Slavery
Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Republican Party of Iowa’s 2023 Lincoln Dinner in Des Moines, Iowa, on Friday.AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has built his political brand on attacking “wokeness” and refusing…
How Florida Undermined the “Benefits” of Newly Free Black People
Mother Jones illustration; Wikimedia Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.Upon learning that Florida’s new K-12 curriculum standards require teaching middle-schoolers that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” I tweeted, facetiously, “Hey, this slavery thing sounds swell!…
The Rich History and Underestimated Political Clout of the Black Working Class
Mother Jones; Katrina Wittkamp Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.The 2024 presidential election cycle has begun, and the white working class once more has commanded the spotlight. Pollsters obsess over how their economic struggles and resentments influence their political choices. Democrats and Republicans jockey to win…
The Creators of Florida’s Black History Standards Get an F on Their Homework
James Forten (1766-1842), cited by Florida policymakers as a Black man who acquired shoemaking skills under slavery, was neither a shoemaker nor a slave, historians say.Historical Society of Pennsylvania via Wikipedia Commons/Public Domain Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.Florida education officials and the state’s…
Florida Board of Education’s New Guidelines Imply Slavery Benefitted Black People
Charlie Neibergall/ AP Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.The Florida Board of Education’s new standards dictating how Black history will be taught in public schools includes a provision implying that enslaved African-Americans learned skills for “their own personal benefit.” The guidelines, approved on Wednesday,…
Wesleyan Did Right on Legacy Admissions. Let’s Talk About the Ivies Now.
A statue of college founder John Harvard in Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Mass.Charles Krupa/AP Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.As a UC Berkeley graduate, I never thought I’d type these words, but okay: Go Wesleyan! Wesleyan University, a small, elite college in Middletown, Connecticut, costs…