Ron DeSantis Defends Florida’s New Guidelines Suggesting Slavery Benefited Black People
Charlie Neibergall/ AP Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.In a Sunday interview with NBC News, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stood by a new provision in the state’s education guidelines that implied freed African-Americans benefited from chattel slavery, claiming it would teach students that enslaved…
Henrietta Lacks’ Family Reaches Settlement With Company Profiting Off Her Stolen Cells
Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.The HPV vaccine. Genetic mapping. The polio vaccine. All of these medical miracles were made possible by Henrietta Lacks, a Virginia woman whose cells were taken without her permission in the early 1950s and used for…
When White People Became “White People”
Mother Jones illustration Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.How exactly did white people become “white” people? It seems like most white people have no idea about how they came to identify as “white”. That’s a problem. Overlooking this part of our history, I think,…
Federal Judge Blocks Arkansas Law to Criminalize Librarians for Providing “Harmful” Books to Minors
Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System, looks at a book in the main branch of the public library in downtown Little Rock.Katie Adkins/AP Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.On Saturday, a federal judge in Arkansas temporarily blocked a new law…
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!…